Striving For Perfection Hard Working

Why You Shouldn’t Be Striving for Perfection

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Today I wanted to cover one of the many excuses that I’ve used over and over in my cycle of binge eating and dieting. Since I’ve begun tracking the thoughts revolving around my binge eating disorder, I’ve been able to pinpoint over a dozen of these sneaky little notions. These excuses are very convincing, making it easy to understand why the battle against my brain is always so rough. In this post, the excuse to binge eat is perfection, something everyone struggling with an eating disorder deals with at least once.

What is Perfection?

Perfection is something I always aim for. Whether it be work or play, I can always find something that can be improved upon. This can be deeply exhausting, especially when something never seems to be good enough. For me, weight loss has been the ultimate headache. I could never be perfect with my eating, sleeping, and exercising…not without completely wearing myself out.

Perfection can be many things. Starting a diet on a specific day of the week. Ending a series of poor food choices at exactly midnight the night before. Categorizing good and bad foods and completely cutting out anything considered bad.

Making one mistake is unacceptable when you have a perfectionist mindset, and the part of your brain looking to give up will see the perfect opportunity to use it against you. Soon, you’re back to eating poorly…until next Monday of course.

Why Perfection Sets You Up for Failure

With this all-or-nothing frame of mind, thinking a certain food or a simple slip-up will make you binge is actually setting yourself up for one. You end up feeling like a failure when a mistake happens and fall back to your eating disorder to ease the pain.

Then what do you do? Once you feel better you promise yourself next time will be perfect. If you do it right next time, then all will be made good again. Or so you think. Unfortunately, nobody’s perfect, and you’ll likely slip up again. Leading you into an endless cycle.

This is not the way to take on challenges. Taking smaller steps, and expecting mistakes along the way will make you more likely to succeed. Mistakes are a fact of life, and avoiding them entirely will never happen. It’s better to aim for progress, not perfection.

“Sometimes a "mistake" can end up being the best decision you ever make.” – Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass Click To Tweet

Self-Forgiveness

One thing that I want anyone reading this to understand is that it’s OK to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself when you make a mistake and keep moving forward. You are still making progress, so why reverse it for the sake of perfection? Being perfect is not a lifestyle change, it’s unsustainable and is setting you up for disappointment.

Self-Forgiveness will help you learn to carry on, and do wonders for your mental health. It will teach you self-love and make progress towards your goals much easier. In short, without self-compassion, you’ll lose trust in yourself and feel the need to restrict and punish yourself.

Nobody’s Perfect

When we aim for perfection, we feel the need to avoid all mistakes and failures. It’s common in people with eating disorders and can lead us to move backward in our progress, rather than taking smaller steps.

Learning to forgive ourselves for messing up and moving on can be difficult, but valuable in recovery and reaching goals. When we look to make progress, not perfection, we get closer to our goals in a more sustainable way. We take care of our mental health as well.

I still struggle with this excuse for binge eating, and with forgiving myself. If you can relate, please share your experiences with me in the comments below. I’d love to hear about them!

That’s it for now everyone. If you’ve found some value in this post, please share it to inspire others too! Thanks!

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Do You Have Trouble with Overeating?

Are you struggling with food and looking to rid your life of dieting for good? Thinsanity by Glenn Mackintosh is a book that teaches readers how to eat intuitively, set clear goals, and allow weight loss to happen naturally.

If you haven’t read Thinsanity, I highly recommend it! Learn how to stop letting food control you and lose weight for the last time. For more information on what the book teaches, you can check out a full review here.

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