weigh the choices. like this...

We’ve had a lot of chatter about protein bars and protein shakes the last couple of weeks in the world of Eat Like a Bear, including in yesterday’s live video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVnii_hHacc

It reminds me of the “Atkins bar story” I told a few years back in the Deep Den (now housed in its video library) about my decision to buy a box of Atkins bars at the grocery store.

I was away from home in a hotel and driving to the grocery store when I got a craving for an Atkins bar. I knew the store would only have five packs, and I knew a five pack would total about 1,000 calories. I knew I’d probably eat the whole box in the next 24-hours.

There’s pretty much no 24-hour period where I am not going to gain at least a bit of weight on a box of Atkins bars.

So should I buy the box?

The story was one of my internal battle, weighing the craving against my knowledge that I would over-eat the bars. I describe my internal negotiations trying to convince myself that I could stop at one bar and save the rest for later.

There’s all sorts of detail in the story about that internal struggle we all have but the point is this:

The battle itself exhausted me.

By the time I was at the store facing my decision, I decided that the internal fight alone was not worth eating the bars themselves. I walked away from all of it and didn’t buy the bars.

We often don’t consider these sorts of costs as we look at food choices.

Weigh all the costs of the food. ALL OF THE COSTS.

If you have to fight with yourself to keep one Atkins bar from becoming two (or five), add that fight to the cost of the bar itself and see if it’s worth it.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

The negotiation and the choice is yours.

I used a similar lens looking at a protein smoothie this week, part of our discussion in that live video replay above. Here are my notes on the smoothie:

The moral: Sometimes it’s just EASIER to live free of certain items completely. You can perform little experiments in your life like I did above. (My whole meal approach came about through a similar process.)

May your days get easier. I appreciate you.

P.S. Grab the three-pack collection from the Bear Shop for some extra support: https://thebearshop.life/