“This is the last time”, you think to yourself, as you’re about to embark on another diet. You’ve been on several diets before. You lose weight, and then you regain it (sometimes more than you start with). You swear to yourself up and down that this next diet (which, by your count is diet #137) is going to be your last one.
You want everything that comes with losing weight:
- Being able to fit into smaller clothes.
- Being able to wear certain clothes that you either haven’t worn in years, or wouldn’t dare wear in your current shape.
- Liking the way you look in pictures and in the mirror.
- Higher energy levels, to get more done in your day, and maybe even perform better at work.
- Volunteer more.
- Play with your kids/grandkids more.
But your weight is standing in the way of achieving that. This time, however, you’ve found the diet. Your friend(s) lost all kinds of weight on it, and this time it will be different.
Though in the back of your mind, you know that it’s just going to be like every other diet… but with a different name.
That’s because of the psychology around dieting. Just think about the language of dieting. We say that we’re going “on” a diet. Does that imply that at some point we’ll go “off” the diet? Presumably when we reach our ideal weight? We’ll just return to the way of eating we had before the diet, but the weight will magically stay the same as it was on the diet?
You’ve heard the cliché that it’s not a diet, but a lifestyle change. That’s nice and all, but how do we make it practical?
The big mindset shift that I preach during my online group coaching program, called End Emotional Eating (speaking of which, I’m running a second cohort of this program starting on August 4. If you’d like to be notified when registrations for this program open up, and get in at the best possible price, just go here) is to think of healthy eating not as dieting, but as skill practice.
Think of any skill that you’ve learned in the past. Whether it’s driving, playing an instrument, playing a sport, the skills necessary to do your job, or anything else.
There were certain elements that you put together step-by-step to make you successful at that skill. What if you applied that same methodology to healthy eating?
Let’s take a look at how you’ve mastered different skills:
You Broke it Down
If you were first learning how to play the piano, you didn’t just take a single lesson, and suddenly you’re a virtuoso. Rather, you probably learned certain notes, scales, and more, over many lessons. You isolated one small skill to practice in that lesson. Then, after 1-10 lessons, when you mastered that small skill, you picked a new skill to practice. And you kept repeating this process until you became proficient at playing the piano.
What if you applied this same process to healthy eating? What if rather than one day completely overhauling your diet, you just practiced one tiny little “skill”? What if you just “practiced” eating a healthy breakfast, without doing anything about your lunch and dinner at first?
If your current breakfast is coffee and a muffin 7 days a week, and you switched to say oatmeal, maybe you’d successfully only eat that twice in the first week. But that’s OK, because that’s two more times than the week before. Maybe the next week, you “practiced” eating a healthy breakfast 3 out of 7 days. The following week, you “practiced” eating a healthy breakfast 4 out of 7 days, and so on, until you’re eating what you consider to be a healthy breakfast 6-7 days a week.
And only after you’ve “mastered” the “skill” of eating a healthy breakfast, do you move on to “practicing” lunch.
Ironically, by focusing on only one skill at a time, you make faster progress in the long term (but slower progress in the short term… like having a lot of “false starts” with diets).
You Challenged the Skill
Continuing our analogy of healthy eating as skill practice, let’s use tennis as an example. Once you’ve mastered the basic forehand, you start challenging that forehand. You start to execute the forehand when it comes from different angles, at different speeds, with different lighting conditions, etc.
And when you do start challenging a basic skill, it gets worse at first, but better if you persist long enough.
Same with healthy eating. Let’s say you have the intention of eating a healthy breakfast 7 days a week, but the first week, you only succeed in doing it twice. What prevented you from doing it 7 days? Maybe your kids took extra long to get ready for school. Maybe your alarm clock didn’t go off, and you slept in. Maybe something else happened. Your “skill” of eating a healthy breakfast was challenged. If you think how to get over this challenge, eventually, you’ll get better at meeting that challenge.
Sometimes, that challenge is logistical. Sometimes, that challenge is emotional. Sometimes, the challenge is behavioral (i.e. “I never eat breakfast”). Whatever the challenge is, you have to analyze the reason that’s blocking your progress, and come up with ideas or ways to overcome that challenge.
Case in point, one of the students in my End Emotional Eating program, Miriam, had a big challenge with nighttime snacking. We analyzed what’s preventing her from getting better at the “skill” of avoiding nighttime snacking, and we learned that she doesn’t eat enough protein and fibre earlier in the day. So we got her eating more protein and fibre at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
This way, she didn’t have to use willpower to avoid nighttime snacking. She just didn’t want to snack.
You Keep Track of Your Progress
When you’re learning a new skill, you keep track of your progress. When you’re in university, studying to become whatever you currently are, you get tests, and you get marks on those tests. That’s how you measure progress. That’s how you know you’re getting better, and that’s how you stay motivated.
Why not also use that strategy to help you with healthy eating? But rather than tracking calories per se, why not track behaviors? There are 6 different things my students track during the End Emotional Eating program (not all at the same time). One of the things they thought was most useful to track was their hunger level before mealtimes.
After doing this a few times, they might notice that their hunger level is low before a meal. That is to say that they’re not hungry. Then why are they eating? Emotional reasons.
The more they track, the more aware they became of when they’re actually hungry, and when they’re not.
After a few weeks of this, they start eating when they’re truly hungry. Not just when it’s “time to eat”, and not just because “everyone else is eating.”
You want to know the irony of this? Without actually telling anyone what to eat or not eat, people lose weight. Because now, they’re eating when they’re truly hungry. Case in point, one of my clients, Laura, lost 6 pounds, and nearly 2 inches off her waist in 2 weeks, simply because she had become more aware of physical hunger levels (as opposed to emotional hunger), and ate when she was hungry.
You Had an Accountability Partner
When you were learning a new skill, you had some kind of accountability partner. If it’s a sport, you had a coach and possibly teammates. If it’s an instrument, you had an instructor. If it’s a course in school, you had a teacher/professor. There was someone to whom you were accountable. This way, if you fell off track, they’d pick you back up. Or, if you were doing something wrong, they’d correct you.
It kept going like that, until you became really good at the skill that you set out to learn.
Try applying that as well to healthy eating. Have an accountability partner. Whether it’s your spouse, a friend, or someone else. That’s one key feature of my online group coaching program, End Emotional Eating. Those who want it, get an accountability partner who is going through the program as well. They’re having the same successes, and going through the same challenges. And that’s why that program has such a high success rate.
As mentioned earlier, the second cohort of the program is starting on August 4. If you’d like to be the first to know when registrations open, and get the best possible price as well, just sign up here, and I’ll let you know (and no, by signing up, you’re not obligated to participate in the program. You’ll just be notified when registrations open. In the end, it’s your decision whether or not to register).
