I usually only eat out at restaurants once a week. But I’ve been on the road traveling to different girls hockey tournaments and events since Friday and have been eating out a lot. Today, I was in a day-long meeting, which meant that all the meals were all catered. It was your standard fare: fresh fruit, yogurt, bagels and pastries for breakfast, with sandwiches, and salad for lunch. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the amazing desert that came with lunch. It was a really yummy looking treat that was two large double-chocolate cookies with cream filling (think Oreo on steroids). I stared at those cookies for awhile, deciding whether or not I should eat one. What to do, what to do…
I made a choice based on my plan.
I knew that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I ate the cookie. And I knew that if I did decide to eat the sugar-filled treat, I would pay for it later. No one was going to judge me if I ate the cookie. Almost everyone else in the room had one and I am sure that I would have enjoyed it as much as they did.
Today, I made the choice not to eat the cookie. It wasn’t as though I felt like I had superior will power compared to everyone else in the room or that I was somehow better than them because I avoided the temptation of the cookie. Maybe if it had been another day, I would have chosen to eat the delectable treat.
But today was not that day. As part of my new peak performance plan for 2009, I have decided that I am only going to allow myself to have my favorite treat, chocolate, twice a week. I am saving those two special treats for my favorite kind of high-quality dark chocolate that I know l will savor and enjoy. I made this choice even though the humongous sugar-filled cookie sandwich looked amazing. I am sure I would have enjoyed it, but it wasn’t in my plan.
The interesting thing is that I will most likely have chocolate tonight after dinner. I know we are going to a nice restaurant and that they will undoubtedly have fancy chocolate deserts to enjoy. I knew this when I woke up this morning and had planned to indulge tonight.
One big reason that I was able to avoid temptation earlier today is that I had this plan. If I had just said to myself, “I am going to healthier in 2009”, I probably would have eaten the cookie. But since I had made a promise to myself two weeks ago to only have chocolate twice a week, and said to myself this morning that I will have chocolate after dinner tonight, all I had to was follow the plan.
Having a plan - whether it’s for nutrition, mental preparation or off-ice training, gives you control and allows you to plan your day and your decisions much more easier. Do you ever feel like the days where you aren’t armed with a game plan of what you want to achieve and accomplish are usually your least productive and most chaotic?
Keep your off-ice performance plan simple. Figure out you want to achieve in terms of your nutrition, mental performance and off-ice training goals for the rest of the season, and then stick to the plan.
What nutritional temptation will you have to fight in the next 12 weeks? What’s your plan of attack?
Work Hard. Dream BIG.
~ Coach Kim
PS - Who else is ready to discover the secrets of taking your on-ice game to the next level through nutrition, mental preparation and off-ice training? Get started today.
