Tuesday tip: Calorie balance and Bank balance 💵
View your calorie balance like your bank balance and budget accordingly. I often use this analogy with my clients and some people don’t like the comparison because it over simplifies a complicated thing like why we eat/make food choices/ emotional eating etc. But that’s exactly why this analogy works – because how we spend money is just as complex and illogical (sometimes) as why we eat.
We spend money to impress people, to fulfil social norms we don’t actually care about, because it was on sale (even if we didn’t want it) etc. We refuse to look at our credit card statements because we don’t want to acknowledge debt; a bit like refusing to weigh yourself to see how much weight you’ve gained. We think about money differently depending on where it came from. You might go and blow the £100 you won on the lottery but you are far less likely to do that if you worked overtime for it. Yet it is the same £100 (this is known as mental accounting).
We experience loss aversion: we prefer to avoid losing money than to gain the same amount. Much like how when you lose 1kg ‘its nothing’ but when you gain 1kg
‘it’s loads!’
We over spend and over eat to make ourselves feel better or when we are bored/lonely/emotional/ stressed. We assume we will be happy when we earn X much like we assume that we will be happy when we weigh X.
My point is that many factors influence how we eat just like many factors influence how we spend money. We certainly aren’t logical in either but we would likely do better if we were. This is why it is so interesting to question your decisions.Understanding your own cognitive biases helps you make better and more logical decisions. So try viewing that calorie budget the same way you view your financial budget and see how you get on.
Happy Tuesday 🤗
xx
Every Step Fitness 