Holiday Advice!

Today I include the following web address (cut and paste) to a short (10 minute) YouTube video by Tony Robbins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4faufiXA7Bw&feature=related

One of the quotes in this video is "People are rewarded in public for what they have practiced for years in private."  He says that no matter what the goal, the successful people, the people who achieve their goals, didn't achieve it all at once but had a series of rituals that they put in place which they practiced every day in order to achieve that goal in bite size chunks.  This is so true!

One of my "rituals" which I call "habits" is: ALWAYS having a Medifast Meal for breakfast and only ONE small cup of coffee with cream with that breakfast. If I have a second cup of coffee, it is black. The second habit I have is that I immediately follow breakfast and coffee by filling up my 36 oz water bottle with water and 1 strawberry lemonade calorie-burn flavor infuser, and I DRINK it.

My third morning habit which in the last few months I had gotten OUT of the habit of doing (but reinstituted yesterday) is getting my shoes on and getting out the door for a minimum 3 mile run immediately AFTER my first water.

"Seemingly small, Incremental improvements practiced daily over time produce stunning results." - Robin Sharma

This morning as I was watching the video I realized that we even have habits during the holidays!  One of my habits around the holidays when I was morbidly obese (even though I was "always" on a "diet") was to begin eating OFF my plan up to even a WEEK before the actual holiday!  Whether it be Christmas, Thanksgiving, my Birthday, Valentines Day, whatever, I would consciously eat stuff I wasn't "supposed" to eat so as to relieve the "pressure" of deprivation I was "feeling" leading up to the Holiday.  That way, by the time the Holiday came, I could eat whatever I wanted on that day and not "feel" like a failure....because I was already off plan for the week...do you see the twisted reasoning here?  I threw myself under the bus in ADVANCE so that I could NOT FEEL BAD on the DAY of the actual Holiday!  Meanwhile, I was actually FEELING horrible already because that is what sugar and lots of excess simple carbs DOES to me, it causes all sorts of low-grade inflammation in me and DEFINITELY was not taking me in the direction I SAID I wanted to go, which was TOWARDS HEALTH.

My habit NOW is to remain ON my eating plan both BEFORE the Holiday and even ON the Holiday, because I am really nurturing my long-term goals AND taking care of my health by remaining on plan!

I did a little research on the National Weight Control Registry on people who have lost 33% or more of their original body weight and maintained for a period greater than 3 years and this is what I found.  There are 3 common behaviors of such people. 

1)  They exercise up to 1 hour at least 5 days a week
2)  They monitor their weight frequently
3)  They are "monotonous" eaters, meaning that they don't deviate WHAT and HOW they eat between weekdays, weekends, or even holidays!

So I am constantly reinforcing my "habits" of eating in this way.  My threshold for what "constitutes" a reason to "eat of plan" has gone WAY up from my previous concepts when I was morbidly obese.  I don't consider "Thanksgiving" a "reason" to go off my eating plan.  I don't consider "Hey, it's the WEEKEND!" a "reason to go off my eating plan.  I can still consider these things special occasions, but I don't "reward" myself with "off-plan food" in my observance of these special occasions.

So, what rituals or habits are YOU developing in your journey to health?  Will you begin to change what you DO THIS Thanksgiving?  Are you willing to change your habits of eating "off plan" on the "Holidays?" 

To BE different we must DO differently.  "I've never EATEN on-plan on a Holiday" may be a good indicator that it is time to CHANGE.  Time to DO differently.  So you can BE different and achieve optimal health!

Rinse and Repeat!