Nutritionist and frequent
goop contributor
Shira Lenchewski has built a robust business in Los Angeles helping women blaze a trail to healthy eating, who don’t have time to shop for food, much less craft it into an Instagram-worthy dinner. She just gets it—that the best intentions don’t always align with the results we all crave, and that vowing to eat better doesn’t always match up with what the delivery guy drops by night after night. Below, she explains how to forge new pathways into the brain to change the way we think about food—and about our own ability to eat better.
Going Mind-to-Table
by Shira Lenchewski, R.D.
I’m going to come right out and say it: The way we’ve been thinking about New Year’s wellness resolutions is deeply flawed. Like clockwork, every January we vow to subsist on salad and protein, to steer clear of sugar and alcohol, and to exercise like maniacs.
But what we’re missing is the real groundwork to make lasting, sustainable changes; to execute new behaviors that become habits; and to keep honoring them after that tropical vacation or much-anticipated social event. I think about this a lot because I’m in the business of helping people make healthy changes for the right reasons. Changes that really stick because, over time, the behaviors take less effort to execute. Eventually, it feels pretty good to keep them up.
Researchers have examined the success rates of New Year’s resolutions and found that people tend to crush it in January, but start dropping off after that. By the next holiday season, we tend to be right back where we started…sometimes a step or two behind. We scold ourselves for lacking self-control, and then, as if the prior year was a fluke, we recommit to the same resolutions all over again.
How can so many of us be so tremendously motivated to lose weight but not follow through? (Hint: It’s not because we’re the worst.) I’d argue we’re actually stacking the odds against ourselves because you can’t change your weight or your lifestyle until you change your mindset.
Knowing What You Need to do Is Not Enough
I realized something career-altering early on in my practice: Most of my clients could immediately rattle off all the things they ought to be doing—
