Become

Not having an endpoint can make it hard to understand this process; there’s no destination except that you learn how to aptly eat for hunger and fullness and balance your intake in order to maintain a healthy body and healthy weight. 

BECOME is the practice of sensing hunger, balancing protein and carbohydrate and choosing the options that are most helpful to you and the circumstance. It is an active process, not necessarily an end goal you achieve. You are increasingly working to BECOME the YOU you’ve always wanted to be.

To become means to change and develop into a person who eats in a healthy and balanced way, both physically and mentally. Live your life, create your surroundings, do your thing, engage in your work, participate in whatever it is that you are doing at the present moment — all the things that make up your days. Just BE and let the hunger signal come to you. Let it interrupt whatever it is you are doing. 

“This principle is putting into practice the first two components, BURN and BALANCE. It is practicing. You are building a skill that over time becomes easier and easier. To maintain a skill, you must continue to practice. Practice is an ongoing process that really never ends; there’s no “arrival.” It reflects a change in lifestyle.“

For some people, the HARDEST work of this process is finding the life they love, the activities they enjoy. In doing this work, they realize that they were eating when they weren’t hungry because they actually weren’t engaged in things they enjoyed. It is sometimes easy to want to take a break from something you don’t like. It’s easy to use the excuse of eating to take that break. When you are engaged in something you enjoy, you’re more likely to be interrupted by your hunger. 

Of course you can’t only do things you love all the time. There are things that have to be done in life — paying taxes comes to mind. But if most of your time and most of your days are filled with things you don’t enjoy, and you’re eating because of it, it will be harder to sit through those things without eating as a way of taking a break.

Practice is allowing your body to function naturally. It is learning the trust fall with your body signals and your ability to experience them and respond to them. It is you being you and letting your body do it’s own thing. I know this might be different from anything you’ve ever heard. 

You’ve mostly heard that to be an appropriate weight and be healthy you have to take charge and follow a plan. When you operate in that space, you are acknowledging that food has all the power and that you need to control it. It is really YOU that has all the power; you just need to recognize it and put food back in its place. 

To practice or BECOME is also taking ONE-TWO PUNCH to a point where it works for you. That is the point that feels most comfortable for the longest period of time. Do you feel better eating “cleanly” with lots of vegetables, fruits and grains in their natural form with minimal processing? Do you notice a difference eating organic meats? For ethical or personal reasons do you choose to be vegan or vegetarian? You can take ONE-TWO PUNCH in any direction, while keeping in mind that sometimes you have a “less healthy” treat because the situation warrants it. A warranted situation might simply be because you want it. 

You don’t need me to tell you what foods are healthier than others. I’ve searched and searched to find the original author of this quote. If you’re reading this book and you think it’s you, contact me! I absolutely love it and it aptly applies here: “Some days you eat salads and go to the gym; some days you eat cupcakes and refuse to put on pants. It’s called balance.” I do think this process allows us to have it all.