When it hits the fan…

Imagine this.

It’s Friday, you don’t have anything to do in the morning so you stay up late.

You’re watching a movie, it’s not great but you’re too lazy to get up, brush your teeth and go to bed.

So, you vegetate on the sofa watching the same film that’s been every night for the past two weeks.

During the commercials you get up, take a walk to the kitchen and raid the fridge, or ransack the cupboards for food.

It doesn’t matter what it is, you have made up your mind that you are going to eat (we can all self-destruct occasionally).

This is where a food diary is great. You keep a record of the food you ate, how much you ate when you ate and how you felt.

So now you can look back and ask the questions:

What triggered this lapse?

What caused it to go wrong?

And remember the tip on keeping a mirror in your kitchen? You might even look in the mirror (felt proud of yourself because you’re looking good) and still raided the kitchen for food.

Your food diary (and being brutally honest with yourself) is a great way to discover what your Achilles Heel is when it comes to eating.

For some, it’s coming home from a night of drinking with their friends.

For others, it’s been a bad week where food is comfort.

For some, it’s failing to prepare their meals to take to work. They wake up too tired to prepare their food and go to work promising themselves they’ll not eat anything or they telling themselves they’ll buy something healthy from the deli on the corner.

What happens is you either get too hungry (especially if you try to go without food) and visit the nearest vending machine. Or you do go to the deli where the cakes on the counter tempt and tease you - so you have one of them as well as your sandwich.

For some people, it’s just boredom that causes a lapse to take place.

Your success depends on conquering these old habits. That you control your habits instead of them controlling you.

While an iron-will and reminding yourself how you’ll regret this tomorrow will sometimes fail.

So, you should learn to identify the causes and nip them in the bud before they take place.

If you can’t eat one cookie and insist on eating the entire pack, then stop buying them. Don’t even have one.

If you eat late at night then it’s time to go to bed earlier! Or maybe brush your teeth so they’re clean and fresh so you don’t eat because you don’t want to clean them again.

Use your food diary to identify when and why you’re eating goes wrong. Then work at putting preventive measures in place.

It’s like the smoker who only smokes when they drink. And they drink a lot!

How do quit smoking? Do I need to tell you?!

And yes it does take discipline and determination.

This brings additional benefits because it will make you feel good about yourself, it will improve your confidence, and put you back in charge of yourself.

With a little discipline and pig-headed determination, you can pretty much accomplish anything (not just Clean Eating).

#newwavetherapy