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Taking charge of your eating habits
Monday, 15 May 2006
Many people have trouble controlling their eating habits. You can see it in the rapidly expanding waistlines of the world's population. But what we decide to take into our bodies is something we can take charge of.
This is an extension of my earlier article, How to get control of your body, so you should read that first. Okay, here are the strategies for taking charge of your eating habits:
Realize that your body can be taught good eating habits
Continuing on the theme of your body having the personality of a child, while your conscious mind has the personality of an adult, I want you to realize that your body can be trained to have good eating habits.
Eating is a pleasurable experience, but it's also often an automatic response. From a very early age, our body develops habits to do with food that often extend into adulthood. Many of these habits are passed on from our parents and come from their attitudes towards food consumption. Many may also come from ourselves.
Like all habits, the weight of our eating habits can be very difficult to overcome. They are not however, impossible to beat, as millions have proven by managing to do so. Changing eating habits can be like giving up smoking, the early stages are really hard, but once you become used to the changed routine, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.
There are two very important areas that anyone who has trouble controlling their eating habits must concentrate on. They are outlined below.
The types of food that you like to eat
Children are quick to decide what foods they like and what foods they don't. You can often see them screwing up their faces and saying "Bleugh, I hate that". They make their food preferences part of their identity.
Often, they grow to become adults with the same attitudes they developed as children. These ideas become so internalized, and so much part of who someone is, that what I'm about to say is probably going to be confronting for some people. Nevertheless, if you're serious about changing your eating habits, this is something that you need to accept.
The list of foods that you do and don't like isn't fixed.
You have allowed yourself to develop the destructive habit of thinking that way, but it's simply not true. You must struggle to shatter this part of your identity if you're to move forward.
There were many foods that I didn't used to like that I now do. Examples include - cheese, tomatoes, avocados, oysters, fish, and salad. I simply tried these foods again with an open mind, and found that I actually quite enjoyed eating them. What I'd allowed myself to believe about my feelings towards them turned out to be false.
The list of foods that are healthy has been widely publicized, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you what you should be eating. What I am going to tell you is that you need to learn to enjoy consuming those foods. Overcome your lifetime of saying "I hate eating X, it makes me sick".
Here's a good way of doing this. Take some kind of healthy food that you think you don't like and force yourself to eat it. Rather than allowing your ingrained reaction of screwing up your face, tightening your throat and thinking "yuck" to take over, tell yourself that you're enjoying it. Think about the fresh flavor and how good and clean and healthy it tastes. Be determined to take pleasure in the experience.
Do this a few times over a week or two, and you'll likely soon find that you're starting to enjoy eating what you thought you hated. Depending on how deeply ingrained your eating habits are, it may take less or more time than this, but eventually it will happen.
The times and amount of food you eat
One day, a few years back, I decided to take a short-break at 11am to go and buy myself a chocolate bar. This was more to kill a bit of time than because I was particularly hungry. In fact, I usually didn't get hungry between breakfast and lunchtime.
The next day, I did the same thing, and the day after the same again. After a few weeks of this, my body had come to expect a chocolate bar at 11am. At about 10.30, my stomach would start to grumble, my mouth would start to water, and I'd feel really hungry.
I'd trained my body to expect that at 11am, it would be receiving a chocolate bar.
I decided to break the habit. It was difficult to do but I eventually managed it. Now I'm never hungry at that time.
Your body likes to follow an eating routine. Once you've established one, it will demand that you keep it up. If you have a big fatty breakfast, a packet of potato chips at 11am, a hot meal for lunch at 1pm, an afternoon snack at 3pm, and dinner at 7pm, your body will come to expect to receive those things at that time.
Once such a routine is set, it can be very hard to break, but break it you must. The good news is that your body can get used to almost any routine. You just have to give it a chance to. It takes a bit of willpower, but the results are worth it.
The easiest way to tackle this is a bit at a time. Rather than a short-term crash-diet, which is almost certain to fail, take a longer-term shaping of your routine. Improve it a bit at a time, but make sure that you stick with the program.
Here's a good example program to draw up for yourself, moving onto the next step once you've internalized the previous one. Of course, you should change this to fit your own circumstances:
- If you have a mid-morning snack, stop doing it.
- If you have a mid-afternoon snack, stop doing that.
- If you snack in front of the TV at night, stop doing that.
- If you have a big lunch, reduce the amount you eat at that time of the day.
- If you have a big breakfast, reduce the amount.
- If you have a big dinner, reduce the amount.
A complete program like the one above will usually take about six months to internalize into your body's routine. It's a long-term commitment, similar to giving up smoking, but the results can be fantastic.
Train your body to have better eating habits, and you'll reap the benefits.
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