Hands up if you’ve ever stress eaten an entire bag of cookies, chips, ice-cream?  Raise it high if you’ve vowed on a Monday morning to turn your diet around only to have “things get away” on you.   Life brings with it hard challenges. One way you can boost your resilience to what life throws at you is to eat simple, wholesome, easy to prepare meals.  Avoid going on a diet or engaging in restrictive behaviours when under duress. Instead, focus on fueling yourself with healthy foods.  Most importantly be kind to yourself about what you eat and the choices you make.

Foods that will help you build resilience are whole foods, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, nuts, all minimally processed fare.

You don’t need a nutrition reset, detox or 30 day cleanse.  Instead, focus on identifying the triggers that are messing with your nutrition goals.  White-knuckling it through a cleanse will not overturn the patterns that got you to where you are today.  Sure, it will put the brakes on things but the goal is to identify the cause of what has led us to where we and then learn new behaviours to manage things.  If one eats a sleeve of Oreos every time one is upset in lieu of finding a way to deal with the underlying issue he or she may be stuck with turning to the Oreos. Not the best long term management solution. The key is to identify and develop alternative coping strategies to get through hard times.

One practical strategy to boost your resilience to what life throws is to focus on developing a gratitude practice.  Try Take2Minutes   a free, text-based program that reminds you daily to focus on 3 things that went well that day.  You get a text reminder and simply reply to it at a set time.  There is no app to remember to open or pen and paper to find.   You may choose to set your reminder for times that are hard nutritionally, i.e., late at night eating. The gratitude text reminder will shift your focus.  Try it!

We can build our resilience to life’s challenges by eating well in the face of adversity.   Unfortunately, hard times can make it a real struggle to muster the energy to care for ourselves, but it is the most important thing we can do.

Here are some tips.  Keep it simple.  It can be as easy as a rotisserie chicken, a box of salad and some sweet potatoes; other options, an avocado, eggs for dinner with spinach and potatoes, all foods that can be easily purchased and quickly whipped up.  Keep it simple. Keep it real.  Keep it strong.

Wednesday WOD

Warm up

Shoulder pass throughs

Figure four stretch

L overs

Around the worlds

Mountain climbers

Then

Snatch Drops

Tech

Snatch Balance

Squat Snatch

Wod

Snatch Balance

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Squat Snatch

1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Cool down