The “But” Diet

I’ve come up with an idea for a new elimination diet.

A new plan to help you reach your goals.

It’s called the “but” diet (and yes, I totally tried to be funny by dropping that one ‘t’).

Most of us at some point in our lives (or today) have scoured the internets looking for the next best weight loss plan. The ONE thing that we haven’t tried before that may FINALLY be THE answer to all of our weight and food struggles. That elusive answer outside of ourselves that we think is the missing piece.

There are tons of options out there – and believe it or not – most of them do actually work. I’ve bought into the excuse before that diets don’t work – BUT they actually do, right? Or no one would ever do them. Most of the diets I’ve been on in the past actually did result in me losing weight. When I stopped losing weight (and gained weight back) was 99.9% of the time because I stopped doing the diet.

And most of the time I didn’t just decide one day to stop all together – it was a gradual change back to the way I ate before. A little of this habit came back in, a decision to tweak a piece of the plan – one thing led to another and typically a plateau would occur – and THEN I would declare that the diet didn’t work for me and I would stop it all together.

Now – this post is NOT about which of the 1 million diets out there are best for you. In fact, I believe the answer to your weight loss dreams lies within your ability to listen to and honor your body’s feedback (and leaning on Jesus instead of food – but that’s another blog post).

This post was inspired by the BUT that I hear a lot of times from my clients (and catch myself saying as well).

The idea is to become aware of every time you are discussing your goals (or anything else for that matter) and recognize each time you say BUT.

Typically that BUT is followed by a reason why you can’t do something.

Oftentimes BUT becomes the beginning of “proving” why something won’t work for you.

Or why your life/situation is so different and doesn’t allow for xyz to work.

I get it! We are all vastly different with different scenarios running in our lives.

Some of us work over 40 hours a week and find it “hard” to make time for exercise.

Some of us have 5 kids that are the pickiest eaters on the planet and want to live solely on chicken tenders, pizza, and cheeseburgers (and don’t you dare try to sneak a veggie into one of those items either).

Some of us have financial struggles that keep us from investing in the things we “need” to make our goals come true.

Some of us REALLY love cupcakes.

BUT – the thing that keeps us from ever achieving what we desire most in our lives is when we allow that BUT to be the reason why we stop – the reason why we don’t even try.

So here’s my suggested diet plan for the next month.

Take a look at every time you say that word, BUT, and use the very reason that follows it to be an opportunity to find a different way.

An opportunity to make the details of that situation work for you.

To get creative and figure out how you can find the blessings in your situation and flip that EXCUSE into a SOLUTION.

At the end of the day, you can allow the details of your life to be the reason why you achieve your goals or the reason why you don’t.

I challenge you to make the BUT – your next diet plan.

Leave me a comment below with what BUT you are struggling with or how you recently changed a BUT into a solution!