I’ve been getting a bunch of emails from you guys asking how to stay committed to eating right and how having good habits helps with the process.
Everyone wants to make a change in their life. It could be, fat loss, muscle toning, maybe even your Dr. told you, you had to make some serious changes or you might die! So why is it so hard to stay committed when we all intuitively know what we need to do? Eat healthy and exercise. It’s hard because we all have conditioned habits, but what are habits? A habit is any behavior that is consistently reinforced through a habitual pattern. So before something turns into a habit it is first a pattern that leads you into a habit.
Over eating is about as rigid a habit as possible. In order to create a new pattern of being vital and healthy you must replace the habit, but before you replace the habit you must break the old habit and pattern. You can’t put in something new when there is already something in the slot. For example if you have a habit of going to McDonalds over your lunch break and having a Big Mac and Fries everyday, it’s gonna be really hard to just quit, really it’s hard to go cold Turkey on anything. Mainly because you don’t stop a habit you replace a habit. If you stop a habit and try to just hold off on will power alone it wont work, at least not permanently you might be able to use sheer will power for a while but eventually the old habit will come back unless you start building a new habit.
So I am going to use my crystal ball and assume your biggest limiting habit if you are like 90% of Americans is over eating. So we must replace the habit of overeating with a more empowering habit. And this is not all about losing lbs it’s really about living your life to the fullest. So in order to create a new pattern of being vital, feeling alive and having exercise be a part of your life where you love it and not where you just force yourself to do it. You have to make it about being alive, feeling great, living your life to the full. So we must find an empowering alternative. But first we need to break the pattern. It’s like having a computer code and scrambling the order, if you scramble the order of the code it won’t lead you to the same habit. In this case we are not talking about code but our thoughts, all habitual thoughts lead to actions and enough actions lead to a pattern and a pattern leads to a habit.
So here is what I want you to do whenever you find yourself overeating, focus on the pain eating all that food will give you when you are done. It might feel good in the moment but what you need to focus on is later on when you are trying to squeeze into those skinny jeans, or the shame you feel going to the pool with your friends and being so self conscious about the way you look in your swim suit that you decide not to even get in the pool to save yourself the humiliation. Now that is just an example everyone is different so what you have to do is make it unique to you and really make it real. I mean you have got to associate enough pain to over eating that it interrupts your limiting habit of pigging out.
For instance a great one I use on a lot of my VIP training clients is going to the mall with them and buying a really nice pair of jeans or shirt that they can’t fit into until they drop a few lbs or inches. The more expensive the clothes the better. If you drop some coins you can really get some leverage on yourself to make a change. So now every time they are about to hit the golden arches I have them visualize and really feel how they will feel not being able to fit into their new outfit, which creates a lot of pain for them. In fact so much pain that they decide fitting into the new clothes and looking amazing might be a little bit higher on their priorities than the momentary bliss a Double Cheeseburger and fries will bring them! And really it’s not about Cheeseburgers and jeans, it’s really about how these things make you feel. When you over eat a lot of times you will feel relaxed, more comfortable, or less stressed or momentary bliss. When you look in the mirror and love the way you look you feel Vital, Alive, Excited, proud and empowered, you feel great about yourself. And really that’s what life is all about.
So before you get to the drive through line, we have to first change the thought pattern that leads us to the Golden Arches. And then we have to find a replacement habit. So here is what I want you all to do, figure out when you are overeating, what you will do instead. Here are a few things you could do instead: exercise, take a walk, spend time with your friends and family, call a friend that knows what you are going through that can keep you strong, read a book about fitness ( it’s really hard to read a book like the belly fat cure and then go hit up Burger King) these are just a few examples to get you started. So what I want you to do is
#1 Decide what you do want and be specific ,
#2 Get leverage on yourself to make the change and interrupt your limiting habit with a little pain
#3 Replace the limiting Habit with an empowering habit that will give you pleasure.
So please make a commitment to really doing this. I promise you, you will be disappointed if you don’t, But if you do then I promise you will not be disappointed if you do! Until next Time
Your Friend
Joe Brammer