Day 8
I have to apologize for the first few posts this month. After writing yesterday’s post I realized that isn’t the way to write. You don’t really want to hear my food/workout diary. You might want an occasional product review but a list no. So, this is me saying “I’m Sorry.” From now on I’m going to strive to make my posts relevant, helpful and insightful in helping you progress and achieve.
So for today I’m going to address the topic of habits and how we can break them and make them. Today I visited my parents which is not uncommon because they live about 1 mile away. While I was up there I noticed something about myself. I have a bad habit, among many. When I enter the house I almost always go straight to the cupboard or the fridge. Usually I look for a granola bar or something like that. But to tell the truth sometimes I look for anything. And I always find anything. Today after searching and not finding my first choice (a granola bar) I found and accepted ginger snaps. I don’t recommend that choice. Not because they don’t taste good, they did, but because I wasn’t hungry and I was eating for the sake of taste and boredom. 
Addiction is a difficult thing to get a handle on, and food addiction is a particularly difficult problem because we can’t just stop eating like someone stops smoking. I’m not saying quitting smoking isn’t hard, but you don’t have to smoke to stay alive. This makes food addiction a particularly tricky problem. But addiction is addiction and a lot of the techniques used to overcome other addictions will work for food addiction or addiction to a sedentary lifestyle or whatever you are trying to change.
Almost everyone will quote you the first step in addiction recovery. You have to recognize or admit that you have a problem. That’s not just the start to recovery but a technique for breaking the cycle of addiction. Most addictions are sub-conscious in nature meaning we do them without think about it and we don’t recognize we are doing it or have done it until it too late. Sometimes it’s like being in a trance like state. 
What we need to do is identify or analyze the situation when we have relapsed or not taken action whichever the case may be, and see the triggers that were present. Sometimes we are bored, or tired or angry, or stressed. Whatever the case is, you need to be aware, and beware. When you find yourself in those situations, as I did today at my parents, you need to audibly state what you are feeling. For example had I caught it today I would have said, “I feel like eating right now because it’s familiar to me in this setting.” Now when we do this it no longer is a sub-conscious problem. We literally move it from the sub-conscious to the conscious and there we can fit it by giving ourselves choices. You may look crazy but state your choices out loud along with the consequences. For example, “I can eat those gingers snaps, or I can walk away. If I eat them I may eat too many and I will hate myself for doing it. If I walk away and choose something else to eat, if I really am hungry, then I will be able to celebrate a small success over my addiction.” When we state feelings and consequences out loud it’s not as hard to make better choices, and if you can say that to a trusted friend it will help that much more.
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