Morning for me starts with a (big) bowl of porridge.
With demerara sugar.
And full-fat Greek yoghurt.
And apple.
And it got me to thinking about what I eat in general during a day – about the snacks (yes, chocolate, beer and crisps frequently do come into it) – and whether I’ve actually got a poor diet with all of these forbidden foods coming into it.
But why would I think that way, having just had porridge (with the full-fat yoghurt and sugar)?
Well, the focus is all on the negative and the associations that we make with that.
So one negative tends to make us feel that everything is bad. I should really cut out the crisps and the chocolate, and the beer, and fat and sugar…you could go on!
We do this in our daily and business lives too. One negative spells disaster, leaving the 8 or more sucesses during the day meaning absolutely nothing.
Put like that, it seems bonkers, but in the moment, reason is discarded.
I’ve had this reinforced through some resilience coaching from Dr Lizzy Bernthal that the positive wins do make a difference, and they then make those “negatives” appear to be more like an opportunity for something to be better in future – after all, we can’t go back in time (yet).
However, this sparked a further debate about processed foods, and we were deliberating which type of sugar is least processed. There are some that I’ve never heard of, but honey is well-placed, while white sugar is heavily processed and corn syrup is a real high-processed product. Demerara is quite raw, so I’m using relatively lightly processed stuff, so I can feel a little smug, although I could use locally-produced honey.
Meanwhile, having done the research and debate, I’d finished the porridge, so I’ve had to make do with a stock image.
My moral learnings from these breakfast musings are:
Eating something less healthy at times needn’t ruin the diet, in the same way that an occasional negative result or outcome needn’t wreck your whole day or week.
There are some types of sugar which are more beneficial than others (and keep bees gainfully employed).
Oh, and Cats are partial to residue of porridge and full-fat Greek yoghurt