Competing Desires: What Do You Want MORE?

In my work that guides clients to THEIR version of Food & Body Freedom (versus restrictive yo-yo dieting), I often encounter the paradox of “Competing Desires”.

On the one hand, you want to live in your ideal body. You want to feel good, look good, age well and stay that way. You not only want results, you want lifelong transformation that gets easier and easier as you go.

On the other hand, you want to live carefree. You don’t want to have to always worry about what’s going in your mouth. You don’t want to obsess about diet and exercise. You don’t want to feel deprived. You want to have fun like everyone else. Life is short! You deserve pleasure and ease in all aspects of life.

There are some who naturally balance both – they know and trust themselves AND their bodies as they join both hands and live happily ever after. 🙂

But most will end up favoring one or the other extremes of the spectrum and that’s where the struggle lies.

You feel like you either need to be hyper-focused, trapped in a rigid regimen of food rules OR….

It’s the YOLO mindset (aka You Only Live Once”and decide that you’re living your best life, eating and drinking with not a care in the world (until your clothes don’t fit or you see an unflattering picture of yourself tagged on Facebook – UGH!).

In other words, you have “Competing Desires”.

Here’s what I’ve come to know: Either extreme of the spectrum results in poor outcomes.

The “EFF-it” camp ends up gaining or re-gaining weight, develops symptoms or serious health issues.

The rigid camp may feel too restricted and expends too much energy trying to achieve or maintain her results and ends up veering over to the extreme freedom side of the spectrum (eventually).

The million dollar question is “Can I have my cake and eat it too?”. Can I create an approach (physically, mentally and emotionally) that FEELS aligned – that feels GOOD for ME?

The answer is YES, IF you’re willing to examine and realign your competing desires as you practice new patterns until they become natural (aka new habits or patterns).

Here’s how this might look:

Let’s say you have a desire to lose weight or excess body fat (A.)… AND you have a desire to enjoy all the pleasures in life freely without denying yourself or feeling deprived. (B.)

The first question to ask yourself is:

Q: Which do I desire more?

(Answer from a wholehearted place – not a comparison place or a place of lack.)

Let’s say the excess weight has left you not feeling good. You don’t feel FREE in your body-mind and you may even be worried about your health, etc.

In this example, your heart-felt answer is A. You desire the body that feels best for you MORE than you desire B.

You still desire B. But your desire for A. is stronger. This is critical information.

In competition terms, this means A. “wins”, but this doesn’t mean B. is the zero-sum loser and that you’ll never enjoy life again.

That’s the extreme “All-or-nothing” mentality that keeps you stuck and miserable on either end. That’s because there are loads of false beliefs and stories you’ve adopted that attempt to convince you it’s either THIS or THAT…and there’s no in between.

You may also have “extreme programming” that created a belief that in order to lose weight/body fat you have to do all the strict things perfectly. Track every morsel. Cut out a bunch of deliciousness. Work out 5 days a week. Discipline. Consistency. Perfection.

Your brain then expands the negative story by equating this change as doom. You’ll never enjoy your friends or pizza or a drink on the patio. Your family and friends won’t want to be around you…You won’t have time to enjoy life because you’ll be meal prepping and working out all the time. You name it, your brain will come up ALL the reasons why this new version of you will suck and how it won’t work anyway so why bother.

If you hold those beliefs, there is zero chance you’ll be able to stick with anything long term. Which means that you’ll either half-ass it or blow it off all together…

…OR you’ll give it your best shot, lose some weight – but will eventually make your way back to all the freedoms you miss and all the emotional eating or drinking patterns you used to cope with challenging emotions — and you’ll regain the weight like a yo-yo.

So the focus need to shift from the extreme “all or nothing” mindset to a creative, solution based mindset that’s based on a more flexible structure that allows you to be more in a flow yet still remain connected to the primary desires.

In this example, the place to start is by asking this next key question:

Q: How do I lose the weight and maintain the body composition I desire in ways that allow me to experience ENOUGH freedom, pleasure, fun and connection?

This is where you get creative while also being very honest with yourself.

You can have your cake and eat it too, but not the entire cake.

You need to find that moderate space where you give MORE energy and preference to whatever it is you desire MORE while continuing to find ways to satisfy your other competing desires. Some things usually DO have to give a little bit, but your power lies in your ability to get creative as you shift out of false stories and beliefs and “all or nothing” extremes.

Let me know how you do with this!

Here’s a little cheat sheet to refer to as you work through this: