Creating Healthy Habits: The Secret to Permanent Weight Loss

How Do You Create Healthy Habits?

Do you get to the end of the week and beat yourself up?

You started the week with such good intentions.

Getting to the gym. Making your lunch. Having lovely home cooked food.

But work is so stressful at the moment and you've been too tired to get to the gym. The kids have been playing up so you haven't had time to cook your dinners, let alone prepare your lunches. And to cap it all, you've had an argument with your husband, so bang went that bar of chocolate you've been hiding.

Now it's Friday and all you can think about is sitting down with a nice glass of wine.

So, you beat yourself up.

You know you want to lose weight and you know you have to change your lifestyle to get there. But it feels like the world is conspiring against you.

Don't be too hard on yourself.

You develop habits and behaviours as a way of protecting yourself. Protecting yourself against potential danger and discomfort. And these habits can be hard to break.

Being hard on yourself is not going to help. It won't change the situation. So, what will? What will help you break this cycle so you can reach your goals?

Well, let me tell you the secret.

Creating Healthy Habits: Notice What You Do Now

Let me give you a personal example...

I have bad posture. It's been bad for most of my life.

When I was told to stand up straight, put my shoulders back, not to slouch, as a teenager I wouldn't listen. But I've developed aches and pains I can't get rid of. So now I want to do something about it.

My first step is noticing what is bad about my posture.

It would be easy enough for me to walk around with a book balanced on my head to learn how to walk upright. But if my aches and pains are caused by an imbalance in the way I sit, walking upright won't help much.

It's the same with creating healthy habits for weight loss.

It's all very well saying you're going to exercise more and eat healthily, they in themselves aren't difficult to do. So why aren't you doing them now? What is holding you back? You know you have to do them to reach your goal, and you really want to reach your goal, so why aren't you doing them?

I'm not having a go at you here. I'm not calling you lazy or not dedicated enough, and neither should you. But what I do want you to do is to start noticing how you stop yourself doing these things.

What are you saying to yourself? How do you react? What feelings are going on in your body?

Are you telling yourself that healthy food is not nice, and that you really want pizza or chocolate or a burger? Are you making yourself do exercise that you don't enjoy at the end of a long hard day?

Whatever it is, however you're doing it, once you know you can start the change process. You can start to implement strategies to overcome these issues.

But until then you're shooting in the dark and hoping that you'll change.

The secret to changing anything, creating healthy habits, is to notice how you're not doing it now.

Creating Healthy Habits: One At A Time or All At Once

Once you know what you're doing you have to plan your change.

Do you go all out or do you take a gradual step by step approach?

That really depends on what works best for you.

I'm sure you've read lots of advice suggesting you should take one habit at a time. Small steps. And that is great if it works for you. But I have worked with quite a few people who just can't get in the right mindset unless they take an 'all-or-nothing' approach.

They need to tackle their eating, tackle their exercising at the same time. Get everything going. And they have had amazing success.

So don't think that someone else's way is the right way. If it doesn't work for you it doesn't matter who has worked for, or whether there's lots of evidence to back up the approach.

If it's not good for you, it's not right.

Go Start Creating Healthy Habits

So what are you waiting for?

Start noticing what is stopping you reaching your goals.

How are you not eating healthy, exercising?

What is your mind telling you?

Don't judge. Just notice.

Then and only then can you work on changing it.

That is the secret to creating healthy habits. The secret to changing your habits.  

If you need help, or you want to discuss this further, contact me.

© e-Slimmer 2021