Alex Bladek is a nutrition and mindset coach as well as a mentor. She owns The Fuel Method and is passionate about helping women break free from their past experiences and step into the next level of confidence and empowerment on their journey.
In this post, she shares her approach to enabling women to become the best version of themselves. Alex helps a lot of her clients work through mindset and as she puts it, “It’s [our mind] a muscle that we have to work, just like working out in the gym.”
Let’s start at the beginning. Alex always wanted to describe herself as a healthy person that was consistent with her workouts and nourishing her body with “good” food. But at the time, it was either black or white, there was no in-between.
And as she was trying so hard to hold on to that healthy and fit status, she pushes off her social life. No going out with friends, feeling like a burden to her family during the holidays, all that jazz. Luckily, that nightmare has an end. At some point, she has this awakening and asks herself: “What am I doing?” This is not fun; it is feeling like so much effort. At this point, she is exhausted.
When Alex realizes that she is not meant to feel this way, she has to step back and think about the things that are enjoyable in both areas – in both her lifestyle and being free and social, too. She starts to think about bridging the gap. Releasing her perfectionistic side is a big part of the process.
This is also very common in the plant-based community, especially for people who are first going plant-based. They can experience this constant effort and force of trying to be perfect. And it almost becomes isolating because you’re kind of giving up on your social life. You’re giving up on going out to eat because of what’s going to be in the food. It can feel really restrictive.
For a lot of people, the first part of controlling their life is to restrain their impulses. Over time, however, Alex realizes that the mindset work behind all of this, the control, the restraint, and the restriction, is never meant to be associated with your lifestyle.
A lifestyle should not feel controlled, restrained, or feel like you can’t be the person you want to be. And that comes down to getting clear on why you want to be doing what you’re doing in the first place. When you get clear on what your goal is and why you want it, then you start to be able to dig a little bit deeper.
Let’s take weight loss as a common example. Why did you want to lose weight? Confidence perhaps? Why do you want that? And from that point on you just keep digging deeper and deeper into the why, and then it starts to come out. And once you have the why, the next question is: Why do I want that? And why do I want that?
Then that effort doesn’t feel so forceful because you feel so much more aligned and connected to why you actually want it. Because on the surface, the goal can feel so far away. And when you’re not connected to the journey of getting there, that’s really where the why can help you pull yourself through that.
Think of this lifestyle you aspire to as being in it for life. And you choose to be in this for the quality of your life. You value your health and you want to live this healthy lifestyle. You also value spending time with your friends and family. But when you zoom out and stop looking at it in the sense of days and weeks but look at it in terms of years in your life, you can see and release more of the control and the restraint that you’re holding onto so tightly.
Most of us have grown up really immersed in diet culture where things are all about willpower, control and restricting ourselves. Instead, Alex explains how to regain that trust within yourself to live a healthy, happy life.
A helpful tool that Alex likes to use is thinking about her future self. Who do you want to be? When you think about your future self, start to take action as if you’re already that person. Once you map that out, once you envision them, you paint the picture.
The goal is that you have a super strong connection between who you are right now and who you want to be. You want the healthy lifestyle and you want the social life but what if you feel like they don’t mix?
When you step back and think about how would your future self handle that, that’s when you start to make that connection between where you are right now and then who you want to become.
The next piece is taking the pressure off of having to do this right now. Your future self is a vision of yourself and you will get there eventually. But the future is never here – each day we start making more and more choices that are aligned with that vision, but it will continue to change and evolve as you continue to change and evolve.
Small changes add up to big results over time. And it may seem far off in the distance, but taking those few steps now is just going to get you one step closer to the person that you envision becoming in the future. This is why Alex has three tools that help you reach your goals and become the best version of yourself – without restriction, guilt or shame!
Let your future self make the decisions. Set your home up for success, like pre-chopping the vegetables or meal prepping. That allows you to start connecting to your future persona.
We get so focused on the one wrong thing that we forget about everything that is going well. So, when you start catching yourself doing the things that you want to be doing right and get more aligned with your future self, then celebrate them! This way you take one step toward where you want to be and feel good about it.
You need to train yourself to just take a breath. It’s simple but effective. The goal with the breath is to cool the impulse down that might be occurring in the moment. Taking a breath allows you to flip the switch on your impulse and reconnect to your future self. You realize that your future self wouldn’t be doing this right now.
Now you’re all set up for your next journey. But remember that progress takes time. Change doesn’t happen overnight. So, if you are interested in Alex’s method, try answering the following questions honestly.
Start to implement the three tools for success and, most importantly, have fun and always remember how far you’ve come, too. Just go for it and see what happens.
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Find Alex on Instagram @thefuelmethod
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