Diversify Your Joy

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A huge part of my pre-weight loss story was simply this: I LOVED FOOD!

I mean I LOVED IT!!!

I based my whole life around food.

It was my entertainment, my comfort, my distraction, my love, and how I connected and bonded with my people.

I never thought of food as fuel that was there to sustain my body and keep me alive.

I thought of food as joy.

So of course, when I started trying to make changes to my eating habits and experimenting with which foods felt best in my body, it felt like all the joy had been taken out of my life.

Think about your own life.

What things in your life bring you joy?

When I was an emotional eater, food was at the top of my Joy list.

So much of my joy came from eating foods and baking foods and eating the foods that I baked.

I focused all my energy on food, what dessert we were going to have, what special something I was going to make for dinner and how amazing it would taste, then after dinner I ‘d be thinking about what I would have for a late night snack.

When I would travel, I’d be focused on where we were going to eat and what treats we were going to get.

I couldn’t spend time with family and not eat,

Or attend a church activity without dessert,

Or watch a show at night without a little something.

If I went to the movies I’d be thinking about what treats I’d be eating.

My focus was food food food.

If food is number one on your list, like it was for me, you’ll understand why reducing the amount of food you eat is challenging because you’re associating it with reducing the amount of joy in your life.

What you want to do, and what helped me get past this, was to increase the joy you get from other areas in your life that are not food related.

Instead of 90% of your joy coming from food and 10% coming from the other areas of your life, flip it.

Once this is balanced out, it will be so much easier for you to work on the food piece of weight loss because it won’t feel like you’re cutting off your only source of joy and enjoyment.

To lose weight and keep it off, the thing you need MORE of is JOY in your LIFE (that does not involve food).

Yes, you want to enjoy our food. Eating should be a joyful experience.

The problem comes when food is your dominant source of joy.

If you’re eating to try to find the joy in your life, it is nearly impossible to lose weight and keep it off.

Diversifying your joy is the key.

So, start brainstorming and doing non-food related things that provide you with the same amount of Joy as food.

What you’ll find is that “food joy” doesn’t even compare to “life joy”.

This is because you’re trying to use food to get you a result it can’t possibly create.

Like I always say:

If hunger isn’t the problem, food isn’t the answer.

Once you start creating joy that doesn’t involve food, you’ll realize that food joy is just a cheap substitute with lots of crappy consequences.

Now get busy and go diversify your joy!