False Choice

The term ‘false choice’ is used to describe a situation where we believe that we only have two options to get the answer.

Examples of this include…

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

If you want to protect the environment, you must want the economy to crash.

If you support Utd, you must hate City.

If you are proud of your nation, you must be xenophobic towards all other countries.

You like horror movies? So you don’t like comedies?

Marmite. You either love it or hate it.

All of the above gives us very little option. It is an either/or dilemma. Which is not very helpful.

And it is not very helpful when it comes to fitness goals. We often restrict ourselves to two categories. Our pigeon holes are…

A. I don’t go to the gym therefore it doesn’t matter what I eat so much because I haven’t got any time to make fitness goals.

B. I often workout therefore I restrict my diet to look and feel my best in order to reach my goals.

These two extremities are unhelpful when it comes to planning your health, wellbeing, nutrition and quality of life. It doesn’t have to be down to choosing between two options.

As much as lots of people begin their exercise routines in September and start a particular diet in time for looking their best for Christmas parties, there are more people that decide on leaving it until January when they will make it a New Year’s Resolution. Yet both options often lead to disappointment.

The September starter will find that they have hit the gym hard, restricted their calories too much and still run out of time to reach their (usually) unachievable goal.

The January starter finds it even harder. They procrastinated back in September for a reason and it’s because they don’t like exercise or they have never been shown any exercise or food that they like to sustain it. So they decide to leave it until after the summer. Then decide to wait until January where they can make a New Year’s Resolution. The cycle continues.

So what if I told you that there were multiple choices? Options that were all shades of grey and not just a black or white view. A consistent, sensible lifestyle approach that didn’t leave you with anxiety about your body and your health.

You don’t need a program that you would expect to see from an Olympian. You don’t need to spend hours each week in the gym. In fact, for most fitness goals you don’t even need a gym. And you never have to quit your favourite snacks.

When you enter a false choice scenario, it is easy to reach a dead end. The all or nothing method can leave us unfulfilled, demoralised and either ends up in quitting or never getting started.

The chicken and the egg question is a prime example of a puzzle that only becomes a puzzle because of how the question is posed. Whilst both options are correct, the only way of explaining the conclusion to this is by exploring the grey areas. This is because the original question is poorly delivered.

We ask ourselves poorly delivered questions all the time. Would I prefer the chocolate cake or the spinach smoothie tonight? If this was my only choice, then the chocolate cake would win every time. But again, if you were to explore the possibilities you would find that a small portion of chocolate cake would be great and you can have the smoothie too!

Should you begin an exercise routine for weight loss or not? Once again, this question is poor. If you find yourself motivated in that specific moment, you might answer yes. Tomorrow, you might feel differently.

To get your answers, first you need to discover why you should exercise more and why choosing nutritional meals is important to you.

My answer is easy. I don’t want my kids to have to bury me when they’re just young men and if I do live to be a ripe old age I want to be as independent as possible. I want a certain quality of life. So yes, I do want to exercise and I do want to choose healthier options.

However, I don’t want this to dictate my life. I enjoy not moving too. I enjoy laying on the sofa watching four episodes of Better Call Saul back to back with a glass of wine. But I can rest easy knowing that I walked the kids to school instead of driving, or I took the stairs instead of the elevator, or I went to the gym or… whatever I did, I moved. I had an active day and I made sure that I had nutritional meals.

I’m not training to run a marathon or for a bodybuilding competition. The only event I’m training for is in the event of old age I can get in and out of a chair, that I can play football with my grandkids, that I can get to the toilet in time. That doesn’t require me to hammer the gym for two hours a day.

Your false choices will kill your goals if you let them. If you look closer, you have many options to choose from. You just need to start answering them honestly.