Most of us know how to eat well and to be well. You can probably think back to a time when you were ‘on fire’ with this whole eating business. Not literally, obviously, but what I mean is that whatever you were doing just WORKED and everything went just as you wanted it to.
And then, well, life starts to take over, things slip and slide and, before you know it, you’re back to eating crisps in the car.
‘How did things get like this?’ you ask despondently.
More importantly, it can feel really hard to even see how you can get yourself back on track because the work to do seems so monumental.
The answer? Find your tipping point and take action right there.
How can finding your tipping point help with weight loss?
In epidemiology, the tipping point is that moment when a small change tips the balance of a system and brings about a large change – this is what New York Times writer and author Malcolm Gladwell writes about. He’s talking about big social change, of course. I’m talking about not secret eating the biscuits.
Your tipping point is the thing that, if it goes right, everything else in life works. It releases a cascade of good habits through your life where whatever you’re up to feels possible. But if it goes wrong, it knocks down all those good habits like dominoes.
Your tipping point might change
What’s to know about your tipping point is it’s not set in stone. This week the tipping point might be work; last month it might have been sleeping.
Given that it is easier to fix one thing rather than a whole load of stuff, get curious about what the one thing is that makes a real difference in your life. Really be in the enquiry here. If you could wave a magic wand in that area, what is the area you’d change?
When I’m working with clients, two things tend to come up with alarming frequency: planning and sleep. I get this on a personal level because I sometimes find myself straying into that dangerous territory. It can happen to anyone.
On a logical level, why would you let this slip? If you make either of these an actual project you would see a real shift in the way you experience your life. I suspect that part of the reason why we don’t is that it’s not a hard thing to plan out what you’re eating and nor does it really take much in real terms to make sleep a focus. You wouldn’t have to make a monetary investment either, so really you could tackle this at any time it took your fancy. And because you could do it at any time, it kind of floats around without a start point, yes?
Now it's time to consider what your tipping point is...
I’m going to invite you today to think about the one thing you can fix – your tipping point – that will cause big changes through the rest of your life. What's yours?