The day can start out perfect but as it progresses you inevitably “mess up.” Messing up leads to a mental spiral and abandonment of your goal. Days like this repeat. Sound familiar? This makes it extremely difficult to stick to anything.

All-or-nothing thinking, or “black and white” thinking, is a distorted pattern that involves extremes and using words like “always” or “never.” There is very little to no room for flexibility and often impulsive. It can interfere with your ability to come up with solutions in the moment. It is often the root cause of abandoning your goal.

Here’s a couple of cheesy analogies: If you miss your exit on the highway would you keep going in the wrong direction? Of course not! You would reroute. If you had a flat tire, would you slash the other three? Also, no.

In the context of nutrition and lifestyle habits, this pattern of thinking is common when you set hard rules around your life. A few examples may include, “if I don’t go to the gym for an hour it doesn’t count,” or, “I have to cut out sugar completely in order to follow this diet.”

Reality is that life happens. Even when you have things planned out thoroughly, it often does not end up that way. Every plan needs flexibility- planned or unplanned. It’s an essential life skill, especially when you have lots to juggle such as family, work, school, social life, etc. If you are struggling with this mindset, it takes work to overcome it.

The first step is to drop perfectionism. Acceptance that things won’t happen as expected is normal. Even if you set the smartest of SMART goals, know that missing the mark on some aspect is OK. The key here is how you react and respond. Instead of letting negative self-talk take over and beating yourself up, accept what happened and move on. Part of that ability to accept what happened could mean spending some time reflecting on what happened if it’s a teachable moment. This time, do it while removing any sense of judgement and emotion (good/bad) out of this reflection. Stay genuinely curious about the situation. What happened and why? What can I try next time? The more you practice this, the easier it can be. The faster you are able to adapt and move on, the faster you can get back on track.

Second, is to allow flexibility into your routine or habits. The sustainability of whatever you set out to do matters. If you set hard rules for yourself you are setting up the pendulum to swing from one extreme to the other (i.e., restricting food to binging). You may convince yourself that having zero sugar is what you must do for your health and can stick to that for a short time, but eventually you stop and are back to square one. Next time, pause and assess how realistic that actually is. If I’m invited to a party with cake, am I going to say no without feeling deprived? If my family wants to create memories baking cookies for a holiday, am I going to regret missing out on that? I can’t ever have my favorite dessert again? (The horror!). Within reason, giving yourself permission to decide what situations are worth giving in a little in order to make things feel more sustainable.

With support and practice, you are capable of moving away from the all-or-nothing mindset and feel more confident in accomplishing your health goals. Even this process takes grace and requires flexibility to try again.

-Natalie Day, MS, RDN, LD