How to overcome barriers to better health
“I just bought a new BPA-free tupperware set.”
This comment, coming from my friend Anna, caught me off guard.
Anna’s a highly competent law professional. She’s a critical thinker and she fights in the heavyweight division when it comes to cutting through BS.
But the Anna I knew was falling into some painful traps that seemed to be bypassing her inner hawk-like skeptic.
She’s wanted to lose around 15lbs for some time now and came to me to share how stuck she was feeling in this goal.
She brought up an avenue she was exploring: the new BPA-free tupperware set.
“Interesting. What inspired you to focus on that?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve been reading about how microplastics in food containers can mess up our hormones and cause weight gain,” she said.
I squinted.
To backtrack, this is right after she told me how she’d been struggling to be consistent at the gym, had been relying on takeout too often, and had been sacrificing boring old sleep for adrenaline-inducing doom scrolling.
So I asked:
“What about trying to get more consistent with your workouts, or prepping more homemade meals during the week?”
And Anna said:
“Yeah, but I’ve tried that a thousand times. If it were that simple, it would have worked already.”
We’ve all done this before.
Ignored or delayed those hard-but-worthwhile habit changes in favor of some ultra-specific, niche magic bullet that’s supposed to “change everything.”
Spent hours of research on the ultimate, most optimal workout instead of devoting those hours to just doing the basic workout you already know how to do.
