How to Make Healthy Habits Stick

Welcoming a new year often comes with hopes and dreams of change. You might see new year new you! all over social media, you might be hearing a lot of chatter about new year’s resolutions, you might even be creating your own. When it comes to change and creating new habits in life that are pretty different than your current habits, it takes a lot more than dreaming about the changes we want.

You see, creating a new habit is hard. There are countless books written on this topic, all so full of great information trying to hack our human nature that so strongly pulls us to return to our set point of being. While there are many great tactics out there to create new habits and make them stick, the one thread that seems to run through them all is practicing the new desired habit long enough so that you no longer have to think about it anymore. The process up to that point can be dicey, but it is possible.

Generally our brains are fairly lazy. Once it doesn’t have to work so hard to resist the changes we are trying to make, it finally accepts the new habit and then stops resisting it. Eventually the new habit occurs unresisted, without having to think about it. When you are trying to create any change in your life, the inevitable force you are up against is just yourself and the old habit you are trying to replace. You have to constantly work towards convincing yourself that the new habit is worth keeping around through practice and consistency.

When it comes to healing from a life of chronic dieting and emotional eating, it can be tough to create a new habit of relating to food in a non-emotional way. The truth is that diets don’t work but creating new healthy habits, one small incremental step at a time does. If you want to transform your relationship with food, your body and yourself, it’s best to start small, acknowledge and accept that it will take time, effort, concentration, focus, backsliding and picking yourself back up and planning and…you get it, it just takes a lot.

It’s helpful to start the process of change and healing your relationship with food with giving up the belief that a diet or any “lifestyle” or wellness program will cure everything. It is helpful to then get really clear on why you want what you want. Having a plan, a dedicated focus and the willingness to commit to yourself and recommit to yourself over and over again will bring you closer to making this desired change.

I think one reason change and creating new habits is so hard is because we’ve been seduced by the idea that it should be easy. This idea sells a lot of diets, program and systems. So much media attention is placed on 3 simple tricks to…, or the 1 hack you need to…, or how to lose X pounds fast while still eating whatever you want. These are all sensational, get our attention and when it doesn’t provide the promised result we just get caught up into the next shiny headline.

If you can let go of the belief that it will be easy, simple and fast and then trust yourself to show up for what you want, it may not be fast and easy but it will be possible. There might be some fun hacks, and it might be interesting to learn what makes us tick, but there is nothing like starting where you are with what you have and making a choice that today is the day—every single day.

To begin, know what you want, what vision you have for yourself, make sure you are super clear on WHY you want this. It’s helpful when your why is enough to motivate you during those times when your motivation wanes. Then determine the habit you’d like to create that will help move you closer to where you’d like to be and why you want to be there.

Now consider the action steps it will take to implement this habit. For example, if you’d like to begin eating more vegetables, the action steps might be, 1. Buy a leafy green or other vegetable that you like, 2. Have a recipe ready to prepare this vegetable, 3. Plan what day you will cook/prepare this recipe, 4. Follow through on your plan, 5. Reflect on how you feel. 6. Repeat!

The process of reflecting on how you feel will help you navigate how it’s really going and what you might need to shift or change. This is how habits become sustainable, when they are doable within your current life schedule, desirable-you truly want it-and when they are not rigid. If it isn’t doable, desirable and if you feel like you have to be perfect you are setting yourself up for failure.

Once this new habit is FIRMLY in place (you no longer have to think about it anymore and you are eating vegetables every single day without resistance) choose the next habit you’d like to implement. This process is simple and yet definitely not easy. There are going to be days you don’t want to eat your veggies. There will be days you have to throw a vegetable away because you never got around to preparing it or eating it. There will be days you don’t have time… These will feel like failures and it feels terrible to fail so then we figure it’s easier to just stop and give up then it is to try again and possibly fail again. This is backsliding. Backsliding is an inevitable part of the process of change.

When backsliding occurs, please don’t get discouraged. Return to reflecting on your goals, what you want and understand why it’s not working. Find the belief in what you want to be possible so you can keep trudging forward with your plan. Return to WHY you want this and let that help to support you and motivate you to keep trying. Then one magical day you’ll just be eating your vegetables without having to think about it (or do the exercise or meditation or cleaning or stop eating when satisfied or…whatever your goal may be) and you will feel the benefits of your hard work, determination and the willingness to believe in yourself.

There is no simple trick, only the determination to put in the work and make it happen, even when—especially when—you don’t want to. Staying the course even when you backslide, even when it’s hard, will help you learn and grow and create the change you desire. One day it becomes not so hard, and you feel the shift and that’s when you know you can savor the changes you’ve made and even begin to look to what’s next. Consider taking yourself through this process and prepare yourself for the challenges and the delights that lie ahead.

Happy New Year!!

Intuitive Eating Principle 9: Movement - Feel the Difference

The ninth principle of Intuitive Eating is: Movement—Feel the Difference. This is another non-food based intuitive eating principle. This principle offers a powerful way to feel connected to and truly alive in the body you have today.

Feeling healthy, strong, empowered and content with your body is a primary component of this principle. We all know that movement/exercise is important for our physical and mental health, so why can it be so difficult to create and stick to a consistent movement routine? One main reason is that we can often get hung up on what kind of exercise is “best” versus what we actually enjoy. If exercise feels like just another chore it will be difficult to remain excited about it. When you find what movement you actually enjoy and look forward to, you can feel the difference in both your mindset and your body.

There is no one “best” or right way to move your body. When you find movement that you enjoy and actually find pleasure in, you are far more likely to make it a habit. Many people think that running, high intensity interval training, Crossfit or getting a Peloton will make all of the difference and will magically create the desire to exercise. However, if you don’t enjoy it, you most likely will not follow through with doing it consistently. Consistency is really how movement benefits our mental and physical wellbeing and allows you to feel the difference.

If movement/exercise becomes a means only to support a desire for weight loss, it can get tangled up in the diet mentality. (You can review principle one: Reject the Diet Mentality here.) When it feels like exercise is solely related to attempting to control the size and shape of your body, then that movement can feel like a chore, or worse punishment, and can create feelings of being a failure. This will ONLY equate to giving up because those feelings of failure, resistance and discomfort are the very feelings most people attempt to avoid.

When you break it down and consider what you enjoy doing to move your body, if you can find something that brings you a sense of accomplishment, makes your body feel good and lifts your mood, it is a win-win-win! When you focus on how the movement you choose makes you feel, this creates an opportunity to choose movement that brings you pleasure and can become something you crave. Another benefit of focusing on how the movement makes you feel is that desired feeling state can support you through any resistance.

Focusing on how movement makes you feel will create feelings of alignment with how you want to feel. When you can connect with how you want to feel and movement/exercise creates those positive internal connections, you are far more likely to follow through and remain consistent. When movement creates feelings of being strong, accomplished, healthy and relaxed, you will be more consistent because these are feelings most of us want to feel more frequently.

The true key here is finding movement that you truly enjoy and look forward to doing. If you love to be outside, find movement that you can do outdoors in nature such as walking, biking, playing a team sport, jogging, hiking… If you prefer to be indoors you might enjoy yoga, dance classes, barre classes or any other group fitness classes at the gym. You can always catch a YouTube video of any kind for any movement you like to do. If you love a variety and mixing it up you can craft a routine based on several forms of movement that bring you pleasure.

No matter what form of movement you choose, be sure not to entangle it with calorie burn, punishing yourself for eating something you judged as “bad” or in any way to control your body in some form. While your body may change as you become stronger with consistent movement, that can be a side bonus that just happens by the way. If changing and controlling your body is your sole purpose, most likely it will trigger anxiety, stress and frustration—and this is simply not sustainable. Find movement you enjoy and allow yourself to do it for the sheer pleasure of moving your body and feeling good in mind, body and spirit.

Now to feel the difference. When you begin to create your movement routine and put it into practice consistently, keep notes on how you feel prior to and following the movement that you engage in consistently. Reflect on how the movement you choose to do makes you feel. Any time that you are experiencing resistance, consult your notes and connect with the feelings you experience following the movement that you do. If you experience resistance, ask yourself if you could commit to doing 10 minutes of some form of movement. Allow the positive feelings that you know you can create for yourself through movement to motivate you to commit to those 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes are up, you can stop, or if you’re feeling really good, you might just find that you want to keep going! Getting started is generally the hardest part. Keeping up with your reflection log related to how movement makes you feel gives you a layer of support to create consistency.

The first step is consider what you love to do. The second step is to get started. There is no right way to get started and you can always change your mind and find something new so try not to get hung up until you find the “perfect” exercise. When you begin moving your body in a way that you enjoy consistently you will feel the difference and create a healthy relationship with your body and with yourself. What movement can you commit to doing today?

How to Integrate Intuitive Eating Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

Principle 7 of Intuitive Eating is: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness. This is a big one—and one of the most challenging as emotions and food often get entangled. It can be much more challenging to discern emotional eating from say a hunger or full cue as you are working with the principles of intuitive eating. Emotional eating can also become tangled up in specific thought pattern or a belief (or lie) about a diet as you are working to reject diet mentality.

Coping with your emotions with kindness allows an opportunity for food to be just food. It’s another simple but not so easy concept as you are working towards not using food as a coping skill to manage your internal emotional experiences that create discomfort and challenges. This process of coping with emotions with kindness is about understanding, listening to, receiving the messages from and responding to your emotions in a nonjudgmental and compassionate way.  This process really allows you to delve deeply into the root of emotional eating.

Many of us learned very early in our lives to believe and feel that our emotions are invalid, inconvenient, dramatic or unnecessary based on how they you were treated when expressing your emotions as a child. If you heard, “you’re too sensitive” “you’re so dramatic” “I don’t have time for this (temper tantrum, crying spell and so on…” “I’ll give you something to cry about” “crybaby” or “turn on the tears and see if you get your way” just to name a few, then you were taught a negative message about feeling and expressing your emotions. This becomes the root of emotional eating (or any other negative coping pattern).

These statements are unfortunately quite common, and all are quite damaging, especially when heard repeatedly. It begins to feel futile or unsafe to express your feelings and then eventually you either up the expressions in an attempt to be heard or stop and cut yourself off from you emotions all together.

The point here is definitely not to place blame, that just creates a sense of being a victim and creates a feeling of helplessness. The point here is to allow yourself to understand where you picked up the belief that your emotions were not valid, inconvenient etc... The point is to develop awareness as to where your relationship to your emotions became uncomfortable or all together denied. When you avoid or deny yourself the experience of feeling your feelings, you learn to stuff, numb, suppress and repress your emotions rather than express them in a healthy manner. You deserve to feel all of your feelings and all of your feelings are valid. Period. However, what you do with them and how you respond to your emotions can make a huge impact on the quality of your life.

If you feel completely at a loss when it comes to naming, understanding, identifying and exposing your emotions, that is ok! You can do an internet search for a feelings wheel and download and print it out to begin to become more familiar with emotions in general. This process can feel daunting at first because if you learned to repress your feelings from a young age you most likely have been working hard to keep them deeply suppressed, locked away deep inside never to be seen again. However, feelings don’t just go away, they are all still there and ready for you to open yourself to understanding, accepting and managing them in healthy way. I recommend you use the following process to begin the process of becoming more comfortable with your feelings/emotions simply as a concept. Then you can begin to explore your own in relation to your life more in depth. 

To start, go through the feelings wheel and list each feeling in a journal, one by one, starting at the center of the wheel. Write down after the feeling name a time you remember feeling that way or something that might create that feeling inside you. Then write down where you feel that feeling in your body (it’s ok if this isn’t clear right away, just try). Write down the opposite feeling state (e.g. angry—peaceful, happy—sad) for each feeling. After completing this exercise with all of the feelings on the wheel, use this journal daily as a place to release your feelings.

Our feelings/emotions show up as a message about how we are experiencing our lives. They are incredibly valuable information. It’s super important to use the concept of nonjudgment with your emotions/feelings. When you categorize your feelings as good or bad you are more likely to attempt to avoid the “bad” feelings. However, if you are nonjudgmental in your view of your emotions they can be more accessible to understand.

Your feelings may be experienced as comfortable or uncomfortable. It’s human nature to want to avoid feeling uncomfortable. As you become more familiar with feeling states, it will be helpful to begin to get more comfortable with the discomfort of your emotions. This is where your feelings journal will be helpful. You can use the following exercise to more clearly understand and then release your feelings. Try using the process each day to reflect on an emotional experience you had (or are having) and write down:

• Name the emotion you are experiencing/experienced.

• Where do/did you feel this in your body?

• How uncomfortable is/was this feeling on a scale of 0-10? (0 being no distress present and 10 being as uncomfortable as possible)

• What messages did you receive about this feeling growing up (or in your current life)?

• What is the message this emotion has for you now, what does it want you to know?

• What does this feeling/emotion need?

• Can you give the emotion what it needs, why or why not?

• Is there something you can do to cope with this feeling in a healthy way?

• Can you let this feeling go/release it?

• What is the opposite feeling state?

• Is it possible to do something now to cultivate this opposite feeling state in this moment?

• How uncomfortable is your original feeling now on a scale of 0-10?

After going through this daily as an exercise in self-awareness and self-reflection, begin to apply it to when you are having a specific food craving. Notice if you are able to release the feelings in a healthy way, trusting that this becomes more comfortable and possible with practice.

Emotional awareness is a process and learning to identify and cope with your feelings can have a tremendously positive impact on your life, your relationships, and your relationship with food. As you open yourself to the inner workings of your emotional world, you begin to free and liberate yourself from any fear and shame you experienced in terms of expressing your feelings in your past.

Know that this is just the beginning. If you feel there is too much to uncover, it’s difficult to get in touch with your feelings or they have been too suppressed for too long, know that you can seek support, you do not have to go through this hard work alone. Find a therapist, a coach or a trusted mentor and receive the support you need. This work is tremendously powerful and you deserve to feel, appreciate, understand and experience all of your feelings.