Ep #196: B- Mentality

Hi! Are you always trying to be an A+ student? Are you always trying to make sure everything is done perfectly? Do you ever think that if it’s not perfect then it’s not good enough?

Then this episode is for you!

Today I’m talking about B- mentality and what that is, is basically the opposite of perfectionism.

B- mentality is allowing yourself to not be perfect. It’s being okay with good enough.

Instead of needing to be an A+ and not accepting anything less than an A+, you’re okay with a B-. You accept the B- work.

I’ve noticed that so many people who binge eat get stuck in the perfectionist mindset not only with eating but, with other things in their life too.

Their eating has to be perfect, their body has to be perfect, they need to be perfect, their work needs to be perfect, or the things in their life need to be perfect.

Now, wanting things to be perfect is not necessarily a problem. It’s okay to want things to be perfect. It’s okay to strive for perfection.

But what matters here is how you respond when you don’t achieve perfection. And no matter how hard you try, there will be times when you don’t achieve perfection, simply because you’re an imperfect human and so are the people around you that you’re working with and living life with.

So if your response is to give up if it’s not perfect, then working on having a B- mentality might be very beneficial for you.

This is because when it’s either perfect or fail, perfect or not good enough, all or nothing, there is going to be so much progress that is not made.

Instead of moving forward after doing whatever you did that wasn’t perfect, you stop. You quit for that moment.

This happens a lot for people who are overly restrictive with how they eat.

As soon as they eat off their plan, or as soon as they eat a food that they consider to be “bad,” they quit on the rest of the day. Then they eat even more “bad” foods and don’t bother following the rest of their plan for the day.

Once it’s no longer perfect, they just give up and stop eating how they truly want to be eating.

It happens with binges too.

People binge on Friday and then quit trying to not binge for the rest of the weekend. They wait until Monday to start trying again and what that means is that on Saturday and Sunday, they’re not putting in any effort to make progress toward stopping binge eating. They’re not even trying to allow urges or work on removing diet mentality from their minds. They’re stalling their progress for two more days because Friday wasn’t perfect. The start of their weekend wasn’t perfect so therefore, they think the whole weekend was a fail.

You can see how being in that A+ perfectionist mentality stalls your progress and stops you from making progress you could be making.

Now let’s imagine that instead of only being okay with A+, you’re okay with B-.

You eat off your plan, you don’t give up on your plan because of it, and you just accept what you ate and get back to your plan. You accept your B- for the day.

You binge on Friday and you accept it, then you do some reflection to understand why it happened, and you work on doing better starting right then and there. You accept your B- for the weekend.

A binge doesn’t have to be an F, a complete failure. Did you feel other urges that day that you didn’t give in to prior to that urge you did give in to? You get a B- for the day. Did you have other days that week when you didn’t binge? You get a B- for the week.

Now, I want to be clear here that I’m not saying you should be grading yourself on your days or weeks, that might not be useful and this, what I’m talking about here, is just a way of explaining and describing not being perfect and doing good enough. What I’m getting at is that the binge doesn’t mean you’re not doing well, have completely failed, are not making progress, or are not doing anything right. You don’t have to make a binge be a complete failure.

It doesn’t have to be A+ or F, all or nothing, perfect or fail.

Think about weight loss, since I’m sure many of you are familiar with how weight loss goes. Say your goal is to eat in a way that results in 1 pound lost a week.

Then one week, you eat in a way that results in .5 pounds. You could say that that’s a fail because you didn’t hit one pound or you could say it’s good enough.

You can call it an F, be disappointed, and that could possibly drive you to give up for the day and just eat without regard to yourself, your body, or your goals, which is probably going to move you farther from your goal or at least not move you forward, or, you could call it a B-, be okay with the .5 pound progress you made toward your ultimate goal, and carry on with how you want to be eating.

There is so much B- work that you’re doing when it comes to stopping binge eating that is exactly what will get you to your ultimate goal of stopping. Give yourself credit for it and accept it as being good enough to move you forward.

B- is good enough. And you might not want to think it is but, it is!

Bringing it school, where this letter system obviously originates, B’s get degrees.

People graduate with B’s and become super successful with B’s.

Doing something with the result of getting a B is better than not doing it at all.

B- work is better than no work and no work is what you’ll do if you’re only accepting of A+ and you don’t get it.

When a mistake or a set back happens, you can learn from it and move on instead of making it mean it’s not worth doing if it’s not perfect and you’ll just give up on it today and start over tomorrow and be perfect tomorrow.

Be B- today.

Keep going now and get that B-.

And, let’s be real, it’s also way less stressful and you’ll be less obsessive if you allow yourself to get B’s.

You’re not so worried about every little thing. You can relax a little bit. You’re still going to do your best but you’re not meticulously going over every single detail and evaluating with the utmost scrutiny and then throwing in the towel if everything isn’t up to A+ standards.

This is your eating we’re talking about here. It’s not going to be perfect 100% of the time, and that’s okay.

And when you’re working on stopping binge eating, your eating definitely isn’t going to be perfect 100% of the time.

You’re going to binge, you’re going to overeat, and that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

You’re learning and growing with every binge, every overeat. It’s just like getting a B- on a quiz and you learn from it to get a better grade on the final exam.

You’re making progress with B- work. You’re learning and building skills with it. Allow yourself to do good enough.

When you let go of perfectionism and see that less than perfect is okay and will still get you where you want to go, you will be able to be so much more relaxed while still putting in effort and making progress.

And I’ll tell you, a B- mentality will probably get you to your ultimate goal more quickly than if you only relied on being perfect and once you get to that goal, if you’ve allowed B- work on the way there, your binge-free life will be so much easier to maintain.

So choose to be a B- student when it comes to your eating.

Relax, allow mistakes, allow setbacks, don’t quit when you’re not perfect, and put in the effort no matter what happens.

Alright, you go be B- and be okay with it because it is good enough.

Bye bye.