HOW TO CHANGE YOUR EATING HABITS AND LOSE WEIGHT PERMANENTLY!
Authored by Deborah Bromley

One of the most sensible and infuriating pieces of advice that experts give to would be slimmers is to make permanent changes in their eating habits in order to lose weight and keep it off. If you look at successful slimmers who tell their stories it is all too evident that major lifestyle changes have been made. There are the before and after pictures and the charts showing that habitual gorging on chocolate turned into sensible nibbling on fruit. Dieting diaries explain how slothful coach potatoes turned into exercise lovers. It all sounds so easy but in practice proves deceptively difficult. You know that you have to make similar changes, but why is it so hard? You think that all you have to do is just do it so you join that gym and chuck away all the chocolate in your cupboard, but that doesn’t do it either. Is there something you’re missing? You may be relieved to know that there are huge mental and emotional obstacles that stop people from changing their habits. To successfully make changes, firstly we need to examine exactly what habits are and then look at all those obstacles that stop us from getting where we want to be - slim and healthy.

Habits are behaviours that we all do habitually, so far, so good, but what exactly does that mean? We could translate habitually into without thinking about it or on a regular basis or even without even being aware of what you are doing. It is in this last explanation that an important clue lies. Habits are actually actions and behaviours that are carried out in unconscious awareness. You don’t have to engage your conscious mind to do them, they just seem to happen on their own. Now if you believe that everything you do in your life is firmly under the control of your conscious mind, then you are in for a shock. Most of what you do in your waking life is actually automatic and this is the foundation for habitual behaviour. If you think for a moment about blinking, you don’t have to decide to do it, it just happens. Breathing is automatic too and even walking is mostly, you just decide on the direction and your feet and legs do the rest all by themselves. I bet that if you made a list of twenty things you do in your day, most of them would be automatic.

Now the mind/body system is very clever and ingenious. Not only is your mind running all your bodily functions without you having to give it a single thought, it has also set up a system whereby it can take on what are termed “subconscious programmes” that run or operate your more mundane behaviours so that you can free your mind up to think about more interesting matters. In some ways it is a bit like a computer (and that is no accident). There are programmes that run and you can see them on the screen, but behind them is the operating system with all the programmes that you can’t see. Without the latter, the former simply wouldn’t exist, you’d just be looking at a blank screen. Your mind has hidden programmes running too. The one we are interested in might be called “habit install” and the other important programme “habit sustain”. As your mind goes about its daily thinking it is always looking for shortcuts or information about you to make the whole system function better. If your mind notices that you are doing something regularly it sort of thinks “Ooh! I notice my person has started reading a book at bedtime to get to sleep. That’s every night for three weeks now. I think I’ll install a subconscious programme to make her automatically reach for that book without thinking. There, that’s a job well done for me!” Or another example might be “I’ve noticed my person is having two biscuits everyday with her (habitual) morning coffee. I’ll make that a habit too for her, then she won’t have to worry about doing it, it will happen all by itself” And that is exactly how it seems to you as you go about your life wondering why it is so hard to do this diet properly. All those habits are getting in the way and you don’t even feel you’re in control of them. Your habit files are full up with all the actions and behaviours that make your life run effortlessly for you. Most of the time it’s a nice, easy way to live and it helps you to conserve your mental and physical resources so you can really concentrate on the difficult things in your life.

There is a fly in this particular ointment. What about reversing these habits, is there a programme running to do that? Well, yes, there is, but you are not going to like the sound of it. Simply stopping the unwanted behaviour or doing the opposite or an alternative behaviour can reverse habits. “But that’s a swindle, you cry! I still have to just do it!” That is true, but now that you have more understanding of your inner mind and its workings, the real bonus is that you can approach changing them in a way that is less painful.

The worst possible way to try and change is to change everything at once. Your mind/body system is knocked sideways by this and the outcome as far as you are concerned is deep emotional and mental discomfort. You have lost all of your behavioural bearings and feel unaccountably strange! No wonder you end up throwing in the towel and scuttling back to those comfortable old habits, the ones you don’t have to think about. If you approach habit change in a methodical and sensible way (dull, I know, but worth it in the end) you can make it seem easy and safe. Start by making a list of your top twenty habits that you know, deep down, you have to change if you want to lose weight and become slim and healthy. Now rank them in order with number one the easiest to change and number twenty your real toughie. Put them in order on your list on the left hand side of a sheet of paper and then on the right hand side write an alternative behaviour or action that you would like to substitute. Now if I tell you that it takes a few weeks for your mind to recognise a new habit and dump an old one then you get an idea of a timescale for your changes. You see, you want it to be permanent and effective, not your usual impatient dash to change everything overnight. That usually fails, you know that already. You might want to allow two weeks for each change or you may want to do two easy ones at once, but don’t rush, that is not the point. You can judge how well you are doing by how happy and secure you feel about your new habits and making sure you are not accidentally defaulting to your old ways. When you no longer think about your old habit, it is completely in the past, you are safe to move on to the next challenge on your list, all the time minimizing your pain and discomfort and maximizing your chances of success. After all, the way to make dieting and losing weight easy is to make it enjoyable, then we unconsciously want to do more of it. Simple, but true. It is still a serious job of work to be done, but by working at a comfortable pace with your own habit changes you lay down the secure foundations for life change that you can do without conscious effort. In fact your new healthy habits will become automatic and that, in itself, is truly miraculous.

Biscuit with early morning tea

Sugar on breakfast cereal

Mid morning Danish or choccie bar

Huge portions at dinner time

Takeaway curry/pizza on Fridays

Drinking alcohol every night

Buying kids sweets in bulk

Eating in front of the TV

Crisps at night with wine

Going to cake shop after work

Eating between meals

Drinking masses of coffee

Chocolate binges at PMT time

Getting really ravenous, then stuffing

Driving to work everyday

Slouching in front of TV every night

Allowing self to get overtired, then eating

Putting everyone else first

Shopping when hungry

Hopping on scales every day

Thinking about food all the time

No biscuit, just tea

Reduce to half a teaspoon

Replace with fruit

Cut down to half size over one week

Buy M&S or Sainsbury’s, salad instead

Drink on Fridays and Saturdays only

Only buy on the day, if they really want them
Eat at table with family

Nibble on crudities

Go straight home, walk a different way

Stop it altogether, learn to wait for next meal

Drink water or herb tea

Relax by bath, massage or resting

Plan in advance and don’t miss meals

Walk to work 3 x per week

Do 2 new interesting activities each week

Make time to rest and relax

Putting self and diet first for a change

Eat first, then shop

Once a week only

Spend rest time dreaming or imagining self with a new slim body, buying clothes, going on holiday etc