Doing the first month of Trifecta Transformation is, I believe, one of the most important things we can do for our bodies. We focus on clean, balanced eating to reduce inflammation and allow our bodies to heal and rest. By detoxing correctly (forget the juice cleanses or any other detox that doesn’t involve eating WHOLE, CLEAN food), we are resetting our body to what I like to call “our factory settings”.

By cleaning out the toxins that are building up in our bodies, without us even knowing it, we are laying a foundation from which our bodies can then process food more efficiently, absorb nutrients more thoroughly and set ourselves up for long-term success when it comes to weight loss, balanced blood sugar, increased energy, reduced anxiety and more.

However, there is one other benefit this month-long process provides, that we often don’t talk about.

Clients always tell me that their biggest hesitation is that they don’t think they can “do without” for 4 weeks. It’s either cheese, wine, bread, soda, or coffee…whatever it is, many of us believe we are chained to the “thing” and doing without it for a month seems impossible.

Yet, we do it. Hundreds of people who have done the first month of our Trifecta Transformation realized they COULD give up cheese.  They COULD replace their coffee habit with something just as satisfying but much healthier.  In addition, saying no for a time brought about a feeling of satisfaction that declared, “I did it. I exhibited self-control successfully from the VERY THING I thought had control over me.”

It’s called the Discipline of Declining.

Here’s the thing. Yes, the month-long challenge will benefit you in MANY, MANY ways.  But one way we don’t totally realize this is that we learn the discipline of declining.  So often we are caught up in a battle of our will vs our flesh.  We KNOW we should do something, or shouldn’t do something but our FLESH often is in conflict with that knowledge and convinces us to let go of what we KNOW and do what we FEEL.

“Our inability to decline to say ‘no’-has become legendary.”

-Priscilla Shrirer, “Breathe”

Our flesh has been designed to be in conflict with our spirit. God gave us the ability to learn and enhance self-control because it’s important and it’s hard. Especially in this era of “one-click ordering” and “same-day delivery” we have not been trained to decline ourselves. Our own impulses push us towards excess. It leaves our will weak and our ability to rationalize a poor choice, strong. Our flimsy self-restraint allows us to justify why we continuously make certain choices even though we KNOW better.

The first month of the Trifecta Transformation is designed to give us the ability to learn how to free ourselves. How to learn to say no. How to build a discipline to decline.

One of the things MOST important to me about coaching nutrition is that people don’t feel deprived. That the food we eat is satisfying so we can sustain this lifestyle.  However, if we don’t exhibit restraint, discipline, and self-control the majority of the time, we will go back to our unhealthy ways and feel even worse than we did before we started.  Food can’t make us feel guilty and, at the same time, we can’t let food be our idol.  We can’t let our impulses force us into continuously bad choices that don’t serve our bodies.

When we can’t say no, when we can’t build our discipline to decline, we become addicted to the thing that we constantly say yes to.  At some point, addicts cross a line that keeps them from being able to say “no”. The first month of the Trifecta Transformation teaches us what “no” feels like, sounds like, and looks like…so that we can live a balanced lifestyle that gives us satisfaction without taking it to a place where it becomes destructive.

Because once something is allowed to creep past its’ appropriate place in your life, it becomes an idol. It becomes an obsession. It becomes something that controls you.

Learning to say no, learning to have the discipline to decline take practice and accountability. That is what the first month of the Trifecta Transformation did for me. That is what it will do for you. I KNOW how to say no and how to push past the hold that my flesh tries to have on me. I can do it because I did it for 4 Weeks. I know what it feels like now so I can do it again.  And when I do say YES to the pizza, the pasta, or the wine….I feel in control knowing I am not impulsively doing this, but strategically and intentionally.

I am free and free feels GREAT. 

Carrie