Mindful habits to change how you eat, simple and easy

Not that long ago, a scientific study was widely reported by a variety of popular news media outlets.

It showed that fewer than 1% of obese people manage to attain a normal weight.

It also showed that most people who lose weight—even a modest amount, like 5% of their total mass—gain it right back.

We need a new way of thinking about weight and food.

The brain is blocking weight loss, for lots of different reasons and until we come to grips with the fact that our most entrenched ideas about the obesity epidemic are unhelpful and even downright wrong, we’re going to stay stuck in this same rut.

Fat, sick, and miserable.

There is a different way. And it involves you stepping up and saying ‘No More.’ It means you being fully committed to a new way of thinking and eating. It means giving up the way you’re eating right now.

What? What are you giving up? ALL SUGAR and FLOUR!

Yep! ALL of it. ALL SUGAR and FLOUR.

Can you do it? I have. I’m on Day 5. Which may not sound like that much, but I had a big binge over the summer and was eating chocolate for breakfast, cake for lunch and M&Ms for dinner. With occasional indian takeouts and pizza to break up the sugar monotony.

Day 5 still might not sound like much but believe me getting here feels like a miracle.

Day 1 I was having thoughts about going to the shop just for a haul of cake and sweets and didn’t. Day 2 was the same and I didn’t. Day 3 and 4; the weekend and there were a few thoughts about sweets and cake and I was at the shop and I didn’t buy any. No pizza, no takeout, no sugar, no flour. Had I craved a muffin or a cake yes, did I get and/or eat any? Nope!

That’s why I’m sharing this with you now because if I can make a change and whilst its early days, (Day 5 remember?) I am actually really confident that this time, I have cracked my obsessive eating. Why?

Because I’m treating sugar and flour like drugs and have gone totally cold turkey. I’m not feeding the craving, I’m not spiking my blood sugar, I’ve cut out the drug and I’m practicing what I preach by changing my thinking.

And secondly, I only eat at mealtimes, breakfast, lunch and dinner. No snacking, no grazing. none. Not at all.

Look, almost two thirds of adults in the UK and USA are overweight or obese and current trends show that unless something drastic changes, over half of us will be obese by 2030. There’s all this eating going on and if we keep joining in with it, we’re digging ourselves an early grave and feeling miserable while we eat our way into that grave.

If you want to feel good in your body, then you can’t eat like everyone else around you. If you want to live happy, slim and free, you must stop eating like everyone else.

Want to be free? Free from food obsession; thinking about what you’re going to eat, what you want to eat, what you should and shouldn’t eat, how awful you feel after you’ve eaten whatever it was you were obsessing over. Free from the guilt and shame of not feeling good in your body, of hating how you look, feeling miserable because the clothes you are buying and the clothes you are wearing aren’t the clothes you want to buy and wear.

You can’t eat like that if you want a better, healthier life for yourself.

No matter what everyone else is eating, you can’t eat like that any longer.

One day at a time. That’s all you can look to. I know I said you can’t eat like that any longer but say that to yourself and all you want to do is eat that stuff. So, you only look to eating right today.

How do you do that? Start by protecting and supporting your mind so you get your thinking on the right track.

There are going to be times when you want to eat that stuff, there are going to be times when other people are eating and you won’t be joining in. There are going to be those times when you would normally turn to food and binge to stop feeling your feelings, there are going to be those days when you pass the vending machine you used to always buy your mid afternoon pick-me-up made of that stuff you no longer eat.

What do you do? You learn some techniques that support your new choices and guide your mind away from those thoughts. Because thoughts turn into behaviours and you want your thoughts to support the behaviours you are choosing now, not the old patterns.

When you think, ‘it’d be nice to eat this,’ or ‘only a little bit won’t matter,’and ‘everyone else is eating, it would be rude not to.’And whatever else comes into your mind. Remember if you don’t switch off that train of thought, you’ll keep thinking it over and over and then you’ll eat it and eat more of it and fall totally off the wagon. Our behaviours, the actions we take, are always preceded by a thought.

Instead develop some mental muscle around this, blocking your mind off from these type of thoughts by using this simple tool to overwhelm the craving thoughts and keep you on track. The tool: a mantra. That’s it. A simple mantra but because I know how the mind works, I know that a powerful mantra can change how I think and it will work for you too.

First, use this one between meals when you are feeling like wandering to the fridge or cupboard for a snack: ‘Don’t eat, no matter what. No matter what, just don’t eat.’ This is to stop you eating outside of mealtimes to stop the grazing and snacking. Just keep repeating it over and over and over.

Secondly, when people around you are eating food type products that are not on your plan, ie, sugar and flour stuff, simply say this; ‘That’s not my food. Today, that’s not food.’ You might say, ‘They’re eating that, that’s not my food.’ And repeat it over and over and over.

And Lastly, and I use this one a lot, ‘That’s not food, that’s poison to me.’

Turn your mind against that stuff. Be tough, use the mantras.

Don’t fantasize about eating how you used. Keep your mind on the job in hard. Eating right.

Eventually, if you keep up this way of eating, eating only natural, healthy, real food, you won’t want to ever eat that toxic poison again.

Remember, it’s natural for you to have a food thought, and its up to you to step up, take responsibility and believing you can reach your right sized body say; ‘That’s not my food.’