Sunday, February 27, 2005

Don't expect it to come naturally

When you are working on making a change, it is called "work" because that is what it is. I believe that if you expect good eating habits suddenly to come naturally to you, you are doomed to fail.

What this pretty much means is that you must train yourself to be extremely aware of everything going on around you. You must notice every time you are about to put something on your plate, or in your mouth. You must consciously think of that food and decide if it is a good decision, or not.

And boy is this hard work! Sometimes you will succeed in sticking to what you know to be right, and sometimes you won't. But at the end of the day, when you look back and see you "succeeded" at lunch but "failed" at dinner, realize what a big success the success was!

Here is an example of what could go through your head at a given meal:
"Ooh, I love this food! And boy am I starving!"
"But why am I eating? What do I want for myself? Big picture please!"
"I really, really, really want to be happy. I want to feel good physically, emotionally and spiritually. And that would mean that it isn't worth it for me to eat too much right now because I will not feel good on any of those levels."
"But I really want lots of that food. Anyway, I need it because I'm starving and I don't know when the next time is I'll have time to eat."
"Just because I'm starving, that doesn't mean I should leave the meal stuffed. I should just try from now on not to get to my meals starving. And as for the next time I will be eating, eating too much now is very bad for me, no matter if I'll be able to eat again in 3 hours or 6 hours."

Sometimes you will absolutely not have strength to have that conversation in your head. But when you do, just do it! :)

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