Habits of Disease vs. Habits of Health

So if I had a nickel for every "I just don't know WHY I do that (insert undesirable behavior here), and I have to figure it out to get PAST it!" I would be a rich girl.

The truth that I have discovered is....you don't have to figure it all out in advance of changing the behavior you want to change.

What you DO need to do is have a strategy, and implement the strategy regardless of how you FEEL about it.

I think it is safe to say that many of us here are/were emotional eaters.  Why, then, do we think that emotional DIETING will get us anywhere? 

Many times in life, coping mechanisms are developed over periods of trauma or stress in our lives, and those coping mechanisms become habits and remain ingrained in us long after the particular trauma or stress which necessitated a coping mechanism be developed disappears.

For example:  Childhood trauma, stress, shame, etc.

Some of us have become emotional eaters and can trace it back to a single event, or a series of events or a timeframe in our past where food seemed our only friend, our only source of solace. 

And we continue that habit long after those circumstances have gone.

So we wonder "WHY do I KEEP DOING THIS?"  And it seems so confusing because we think that we are healthy and balanced individuals.  And many of us are, but our eating for comfort is now a HABIT and is pretty much triggered by any stress or DIScomfort that pops up in our lives.

OK, so it's a Habit.  Now what?

Change it. 

How?

Well I tell you first how NOT to change a bad habit.  You DON'T go about changing a bad habit by continuing to focus on, give strength to, or feed that habit.

Many of us are so concerned with figuring out the route it took us to get where we currently are that we fail to look at the road ahead, to the place we want to go.  We then get lost in our heads and all of a sudden we are paralyzed in to inaction TODAY.

My suggestion instead is to STOP looking at where you've been, and why you ended up here.  It is probably a mystery.  And your bad behavior is probably just a bad habit now, like smoking, that you just need to kick.

Instead, look at where you want to GO.  Think about the life you are seeking to create, the person you would be if you could be authentically you with no fat suit holding you back.  Do a little dreaming.  Write down a description of what that life will look like.

And then do the Medifast 5&1 today.  Today only.  Get through 1 day, and go to sleep.  Tomorrow, rinse and repeat.

Take one skill of being on plan and master it today.  Do you tell yourself you have "trouble" getting in all your water?  Well you continually make it so, you continually  make that your reality when you continue to tell yourself that garbage-recording that plays in your head every morning, which then causes you to not get in all your water.

Instead, master the skill of drinking 90 ounces of water today.  Next week, master the skill of weighing your protein.  Meticulously.  Master it.  The week after, master the skill of counting your healthy fats with a teaspoon.  Get it down pat.  The next week master the skill of parking a little farther away from the office.  Replace your habits of disease with Habits of Health.  And you WILL be headed in the direction you want to go, and focused on your future and not your past.