Beginning Steps: Starting Your Weight Loss Program

As mentioned in the previous post, the best weight loss program is one that helps to create and maintain healthy habits for life. Sounds easy, but it's not. Our minds are complex machines with highly, refined tools that enable us to operate safely and efficiently in our chaotic world.

Unfortunately, those very tools that allow us to drive a car, ride a bike, or move through our morning routines without thinking, are driving our obsessive, compulsive behaviours around food. But there is a solution.

Behaviour change starts with the understanding that our behaviours are subconsciously, mastered programs that lie beneath the surface of our selves. By now, if you've read my previous posts, you get what I'm talking about. Our chemical addictions and subconscious, emotional drives are making us fat, unhappy, and feeling out of control.

Can we change?

The good news is that all behaviours can be changed. That includes our impulsive drives to eat too much bad food (high in salt, fat, and sugar).

The first step to changing any behaviour is to become aware. We have to know and understand what triggers cause us to react; what behaviours are present when we act; and, what emotions are at hand when we indulge. All we have to do is stop and think. Here's how to begin.

Taking Charge: Overruling the bad guy

When we fail at talking ourselves out of the cheesecake, or side order of fries, were acting (or reacting) with our subconscious minds. Remember, the decision to indulge isn't really a decision at all. It's a deeply ingrained, automatic behaviour that was created over time, with lots of memory and repetition. It's a habit. It's beyond our control.

So, in order to change, we need to take control. We need to step into consciousness. When we're conscious, the subconscious mind can't operate. What a great opportunity to work on creating new habits. Because, really, that's all we're trying to do: replace old habits with new habits. We do this by waking up. By becoming aware of our thoughts and actions. And, we begin to consciously contradict what we're about to do, or, sometimes, what we've already done.

Waking from a dream

Our subconscious minds rule ninety-five percent of our days. Frightening, so let's change it.

Say you're at a social event, or the cottage for the weekend, somewhere where there's lots of food (usually bad) and drink available. It's difficult to resist. Our drive to overindulge comes from our subconscious. But this is the real world. This is how you have to live. Temptation is all around, and it's going nowhere fast.

So, instead of politely pretending that you don't want to dive face-first into that bowl of ice cream, you need to take control. You need to consciously replace the old wants and desires with a new perspective. In order to coexist with the triggers and stimuli that temp us into overindulgence, we need to learn how to master new behaviours around food. It's not easy, but it can be done. And, it's the only way to stop the dieting and compulsive eating cycle for good.

Permanent weight loss means in with the new and out with the old

Changing behaviours is simply creating new habits while fizzling out the old ones. Say you have a routine (or habit) of picking up a disgustingly, calorie-dense snack, loaded with fat, salt, and sugar every time you stop at your favourite coffee shop. You can't go in and just buy a coffee. You know you shouldn't get a snack. You're not hungry, because you just had lunch an hour ago, but you simply can't resist.

The first step in changing that automatic behaviour (or habit) is to become aware that you're doing it. As soon as you walk into the coffee shop and say, "Hmmm, every time I come here, I come out with a snack that I know I shouldn't have and deeply regret it later. . ." you're changing your brain. You're halting the automatic behaviour, even for a second, and creating new connections in your brain.

Let's go deeper

Thinking about your feelings of disgust and regret and consciously knowing how you'll feel about your purchase all contribute to the act of awareness. This is good. This is the beginning of change. Even if you absolutely can't stand the temptation and buy a donut, you've momentarily short-circuited the neurological process of the bad habit.

Furthermore, each time you go into the coffee shop with those conscious thoughts about the emotions, actions, and consequences of your temptation, and you leave with just a coffee, you're neurologically strengthening your new behaviour and weakening the old one. So, guess what might happen over time. . . ?

My challenge to you. . . O.K. I dare you!

Try this for a week, and then another week, and before you know it, you'll have mastered a new behaviour. If you give in to temptation, that's O.K. You're human, and this is hard. The same chemicals and brain centres that are responsible for drug addiction are active here. We need to start thinking of this as the addiction that it is and treating it as such. 

With constant effort and repetition of new behaviours, though, you will prevail. I'll continue this discussion in the next few posts, but, for now, I urge you to begin your journey by challenging yourself this week. Take one bad behaviour (one at a time), and practice replacing it with a new behaviour of your choice.

It helps to turn the old behaviour into the enemy. For example, every time you go to eat foods laden with sugar, fat, and salt (highly processed, unhealthy foods) tell yourself how disgusting they are, and that you can't possibly put them into your body. Tell yourself that your body is precious, the only one you've got, and it deserves better.

Eventually, with time, effort, and consistency, your new behaviour will become habit and you'll react to it subconsciously, just like the old one. Oh, and by the way, the old behaviour is now quashed, not gone, mind you, but quashed!

Good luck with your challenge. Please comment or email me at info@janetjstone.ca if you have any questions about any of this. I'm happy to help.

Cheers, Janet