4 tricks to healthier habits.
Optimal health does NOT come from feeling motivated all the time; your health is a product of your habits. What are some things you do every day? Every week? Every month? These are your habits or your routines. When we think about a habit or a routine, we can usually predict where it will take us if we continue to repeat it long enough. A regular workout routine will likely lead to better health, whereas a smoking habit will likely lead to an unhealthy place. Sometimes trying to change a habit or get into a new routine can feel like an uphill battle. That’s because we build momentum in whatever direction we’re going in. So how do we switch gears when we become aware of a habit that is not serving us?
I grew up in a huge Italian family in which food was the answer to everything! Celebrating? Eat lots of food! Entertaining guests? Make sure the entire table is covered with food! ? Bored? Let’s go out to eat! Grieving? Eat all of your feelings. AND every Sunday, my grandmother made a 3 course meal for our entire extended family AND everyone went home with leftovers (seriously, my grandmother is superwoman). I feel extremely blessed to have a family that loved each other very much, spent lots of time together and were amazing cooks. The one and only downside to my life revolving around food was that NOBODY knew what portion control was. Needless to say, after years of turning to food, no matter what occasion or emotion, I found that I didn’t exactly have lots of healthy habits around eating.
On my journey of building a healthier relationship with food, I have found four things that helped me tremendously in building healthier habits:
Small incremental changes over time are better than a huge change all at once.
Growing up, I always carried a little extra weight. When I got into my super self conscious teenage years, I would try crash diets, like Slimfast, Jenny Craig, and the South Beach Diet. And in my early 20s, I would do juice cleanses, days of fasting, and raw food diets. The same thing always happened- I would lose a few pounds in the first week or two, get bored with the diet, and then gain the weight right back. Crash diets don’t work in the long run. What does is observing your habits around eating and what you’re eating (portion sizes, times of meals, content of meals, and emotional eating habits) and then decide what habits need to stay and which need to go. Instead of deciding to never ever eat carbs again, you might start with cutting the portion size of the carbs you do enjoy and then the important part- BE CONSISTENT! Try out that smaller portion size for 2 weeks and take note of any changes you might have seen. If you’re seeing some progress toward the direction you want to move in, keep going. If not, make another tiny, SUSTAINABLE change. Overtime, continue building gradually.
Will Smith has a quote that I absolutely LOVE: “You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built. You don’t start there. You say ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid,’ and you do that every day, and soon you have a wall.”
2.It is more efficient to build and maintain healthy habits, than to rely on motivation all the time.
Let’s face it, we’re not always going to have motivation. As humans, we are creatures of habit. Think about progress as a fire. Motivation is like pouring some gasoline on a fire- no doubt about it that we’ll get a bigger fire, but the kind that’s going to look grand and burn out quickly. Think about healthy habits as the big logs that keep a fire burning long and build up heat over time. In the long run, if we are relying solely on the gasoline, we’re going to spend a lot of time constantly getting up to add more. If we rely more on those bigger logs (which might take longer to catch a flame initially), in the end, we get to sit back and enjoy the heat that has built over time. It will require some patience, but building and maintaining healthy habits have a much bigger return on investment than relying on inconsistent bursts of motivation.
3. Guilt gets you nowhere.
So you’re building a new habit and you’re doing well and then life happens and you “mess up.” You hit a bump in the road and get off track for a second. There will be instances when we might not be able to resist seconds, or when we overindulge at a gathering or on the holidays, or we really just need that endorphin boost from some sweets. Okay, what’s done is done...now what? Feel guilty for the rest of the week and try to compensate by working out extra hard or skipping a meal? Complain about how terrible you feel? But what is that doing for you? Complaining and feeling guilty and trying to compensate in other ways is going to keep you on that hamster wheel. Accept your mess up, know that you’re human and you’re allowed to have off days, and move on. The faster you get back to practicing your NEW habits and routines, the quicker you’ll pick up that momentum again.
4. Slow down and enjoy!
And I mean that in every sense. When we slow down how fast we eat, when we sit down and take away the distractions and technology, we might find that we are really able to enjoy our food. When we slow down, we are able to sense the texture, temperature, smells, and flavors of our food. Personally, when I make food that I know is going to taste good, I look forward to my meal. And when I look forward to what I’m eating, sticking to a plan doesn’t feel restrictive. It feels enjoyable! Even more important, ask your brain to slow down. I know it can be easy to wish that we could just get from point A to point Z RIGHT NOW! But that’s not how it works. We will always have to take the steps to get from where we are to where we want to be. Time is going to pass anyway, so you might as well enjoy each step of the way. Enjoy exploring what works and what doesn’t, enjoy tiny wins, enjoy figuring out how to get past hurdles, enjoy creating new habits, and mostly, enjoy building your relationship with food and with yourself.
We all want to get we are going fast but there really is no shortcuts in life. Consistency is always the magic sauce. Would you like to find out more about some of the routines I have put in place to build consistency?