Habits are forces of nature that can be changed. While your habits themselves are neither good nor bad, they exist to create a lifestyle that is either healthy or unhealthy. Let's be clear, our habits affect what we eat, if we smoke, what we do for fun, and how we spend our time.
While we might be predisposed to addiction, what we do habitually is the key. An evaluation of habits is important because you will be able to identify those adding to an unhealthy lifestyle. It is the lifestyle that often must be changed to achieve your weight loss goals.
A habit is essentially something we do without thinking about it. Every time we drink alcohol, our habit might be to light up a cigarette. Every time we go out with friends, we have two have three beers and two shots of Whiskey. We don't know why we do it, but we just do. It's a habit. A bad habit if you are serious about losing weight and gaining a healthy lifestyle.
Our habits essentially lead us to where we are going when we aren't thinking. And trust me, we do a lot of non-thinking during our day. Our habits become our auto-pilot and to lead healthy or unhealthy lives. Habits can help us lose weight or gain weight. We need to reprogram that auto-pilot the right way!
Our habits are the building blocks to our lifestyle. If we smoke, eat fatty foods, and have chosen sedentary things to do during out days, chances are, our lifestyle will be unhealthy. Do you know that a habit can be broken in 2 weeks?
The first thing we need to do is recognize that many thoughts throughout the day go unnoticed. So, we need to bring those thoughts and actions back towards our consciousness. We can easily do this by writing down what we eat and the activities we participate in throughout the day. Don't jot down everything - just the essentials: what we ate, what we snacked on, what we drank, and how many miles we walked today, etc. We can even include how many cigarettes we smoked. Bringing our actions into the forefront of consciousness is a simple and powerful force to change habits for the better.
Next, in order to break habits that lead to weight gain or unhealthy living, consider three habits that we have and we wish to break. For example, would we like to stop eating sweets with every cup of coffee? Or having a sugary soda with every meal and fill up on chips and salsa at each Monday Night Football party we go to.
Next, we need to find something new to replace the old habits. Instead of having something sweet with coffee, have a tiny piece of chocolate mint The idea is to substitute something small - a piece of minty chocolate could satisfy your craving of something sweet, instead of eating a huge piece of lemon meringue pie with ice cream.
Instead of having a soda with every meal, consider ice-tea or diet soda Diet soda isn't great for you either, but you're trying to down grade so you cut empty calories. Instead of crunching on chips and salsa, bring a platter of fruit or make it a habit to drink a whole liter of water during the game. The physical act of bringing something to your mouth will decrease your need to dip into calories.
Very small changes can completely change your trajectory and lead you on a healthier, happier, and much leaner lifestyle. It requires thinking on our part - to break old habits and start new healthier ones.
There is a system that will help you construct those good habits and you will see the new you appear in your mirror before you know it.
