This summer I took on the largest home assembly job I ever attempted when I built my kids play set. Multiple boxes, hundreds of boards, thousands of bolts, washers, and screws, and one set of instructions in bound volume. Building this play set appeared to be a monumental task and one that had me really questioning whether or not I made the right decision about assembling it myself. I was certainly uncomfortable on whether or not I could achieve this and, even though I had the perfect plan to follow in the instructions, I needed something more to help me execute it.
I started by taking inventory and identifying all of the items that needed to be used, then categorized them and put them together in groups in the backyard. Divided and categorized, the unmanageable mountain changed into a collection of very manageable hills. Throughout each step of the building process, I collected all of the components I needed for that step and moved them to the assembly area. I prepped them into position, and made them readily available for me to add to my play set assembly. This process not only enabled me to put the play set together efficiently, but it brought me security and confidence that I was not in over my head and that I would eventually be successful.
American Chefs have adopted a French saying called "mise in place" for the work they do with ingredients as they prepare them for the cooking process. Following the recipe (or plan), Chefs prep ingredients like meats by trimming and seasoning, they prep vegetables by chopping and slicing them into the correct shape and size, and they prep their spices by measuring them and putting them in temporary containers ready for use. When done correctly, a Chef has all of their ingredients completely ready to go with nothing left to do other than mix and cook.
Chefs go through a lot of steps to prepare for something as simple as executing a dish, yet when it comes to our desire to achieve monumental behavioral changes like overcoming emotional eating, we tend to start process with just a goal in mind. Having a goal will help us find a direction, but in order for us to take steps down the path, most of us realize that we are going to need some sort of plan. This plan can be as simple as logging our food with a journal, having calorie goals for each day or eliminating certain foods from our diet.
Putting together a plan is an important part of the process, but even if we have the best plan in place, we still need to do more to be successful. This is where we need to follow the principles of "mise in place."
Life Lesson: Do not allow yourself to be setup for failure.
It takes more than a plan to change your behavior. The poor eating habits we have developed are thriving in our environment. Much of what we have done to establish our environment is to develop a way to support our poor eating habits. So if we want to change our eating habits from bad to good, how can we do this without changing our environment?
This is especially true when it comes to food. How can we eat healthy in a house that does not contain healthy food? How can we break the habits of snacking all the time at work when we leave the temptation of food in our desk drawer? How can we expect ourselves to successfully change our behavior when we leave all sorts of challenges like these to overcome in our path? If we don't do anything different with our environment, we are setting ourselves up for failure.
We need to change our environment and get the right things "in place" to support our good habits so we can execute our plan. We also need to remove the temptations and replace them with the right choices. We can do this by filling the house with groceries that support eating right. We can plan meals and measure and prep our food for consumption. We can have things "in place" for ourselves ahead of the time of need, so we don't have to "wing it" when it comes time to execute.
If we take steps like these to put our "mise in place," we will create an environment that supports our new way of eating and make it very difficult to fall back into our old ways. This will help us execute our plan and ultimately help us find success.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Weight and Measures
My wife has one of those thermometers that you are supposed to use on your forehead to tell your body temperature. I can teach someone how to fix an aircraft engine, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to use this little one button device. The trick of it is in the technique of when and how you run it across your forehead and apparently it is an art form that I have not mastered yet. What that makes me laugh about this gadget and using it is that whenever she tries to take the kids temperature, she keeps using the thing over and over again until she get the temperature she is looking for. "98.1, 98.6, 100.1. See, I told you she had a fever!"
Today, I found myself using the same technique when I got on the scale. After a week of controlling what I ate and managing my calories, it would surely result in some loss of weight, right? Unfortunately, when I stepped on the scale this morning, my weight stayed relatively the same as it did when I got on a week ago. I couldn't believe it so I got off the scale, moved the scale, and changed by body position on it several times. I kept doing this because I was trying to get the answer I was looking for. I wanted to get the reward of losing a few pounds after all of the hard work I put into eating correctly for the past seven days. I was counting on it.
Unfortunately, today it was not meant to be. My weight is the same as last week no matter where I placed the scale or stood on it. So while I was standing on the scale today, wavering my body back and forth, it really got me thinking; "Was I using the appropriate measurement?" I just completed a week of eating less that 2,000 calories a day and because there was no loss of weight, I initially looked at the past week as a failure. How could I think such a thing? After all, were the efforts I made this week about losing weight or were they about controlling my emotional eating and developing better eating habits?
There is no question that I am overweight. It is important for me to have weight loss goals so that I can get out of the morbidly obese category on the BMI chart. To lose weight, I know that I have to eat right and exercise. So it is natural to think that my eating habits are directly tied into these weight loss goals because losing weight is normally a by-product of eating correctly. But that is just it. Losing weight is a by-product of eating correctly, not the measurement we use to determine if we are achieving our goals.
In marching band, our students have several simultaneous responsibilities that must perform in their normal routine. One is the distance they must travel from set to set and one is the tempo they must maintain in their feet. When the tempos get faster, then tendency is for their steps to get bigger. But the tempo in their feet and the distance that they travel in their sets are two different things. So we ask them: "What is the relationship between the tempo you are marching and the distance you are covering in the set?" The answer is: NOTHING!
Life Lesson: Sometimes the relationship between two things you are trying to accomplish at the same time is nothing.
Controlling my emotional eating and losing weight are both goals of mine, but these goals are not related to each other. I have to keep these goals separate and I have to focus on each of them independently if I want to achieve success in both.
Losing weight is a by-product of better eating habits. This is something I need to take advantage of when it comes to my weight loss goals. Having better eating habits alone is not going to help me achieve my weight loss goals, just like losing weight is not the measurement that is going to help me achieve my goals of controlling my emotional eating.
Today was a great victory for me in my journey to overcome my emotional eating habits. I successfully maintained a near 2000 calorie a day diet for a week and had very rare occasions where I ate something unconsciously or out of nervous habit. Big steps in the right direction despite the fact that I did not lose a single pound.
Of course, now I need to also bring into focus the fact that I do have weight loss goals and I need to take additional steps to bring me closer to achieving those goals. This is likely by bringing regular exercise into the fold.
So, I have two goals; one that is focused on controlling my emotional eating and one that is focused on losing weight. From this point forward, I must remember to use the right measurements for each of my goals so I can independently monitor their progress correctly and successfully accomplish them both.
Today, I found myself using the same technique when I got on the scale. After a week of controlling what I ate and managing my calories, it would surely result in some loss of weight, right? Unfortunately, when I stepped on the scale this morning, my weight stayed relatively the same as it did when I got on a week ago. I couldn't believe it so I got off the scale, moved the scale, and changed by body position on it several times. I kept doing this because I was trying to get the answer I was looking for. I wanted to get the reward of losing a few pounds after all of the hard work I put into eating correctly for the past seven days. I was counting on it.
Unfortunately, today it was not meant to be. My weight is the same as last week no matter where I placed the scale or stood on it. So while I was standing on the scale today, wavering my body back and forth, it really got me thinking; "Was I using the appropriate measurement?" I just completed a week of eating less that 2,000 calories a day and because there was no loss of weight, I initially looked at the past week as a failure. How could I think such a thing? After all, were the efforts I made this week about losing weight or were they about controlling my emotional eating and developing better eating habits?
There is no question that I am overweight. It is important for me to have weight loss goals so that I can get out of the morbidly obese category on the BMI chart. To lose weight, I know that I have to eat right and exercise. So it is natural to think that my eating habits are directly tied into these weight loss goals because losing weight is normally a by-product of eating correctly. But that is just it. Losing weight is a by-product of eating correctly, not the measurement we use to determine if we are achieving our goals.
In marching band, our students have several simultaneous responsibilities that must perform in their normal routine. One is the distance they must travel from set to set and one is the tempo they must maintain in their feet. When the tempos get faster, then tendency is for their steps to get bigger. But the tempo in their feet and the distance that they travel in their sets are two different things. So we ask them: "What is the relationship between the tempo you are marching and the distance you are covering in the set?" The answer is: NOTHING!
Life Lesson: Sometimes the relationship between two things you are trying to accomplish at the same time is nothing.
Controlling my emotional eating and losing weight are both goals of mine, but these goals are not related to each other. I have to keep these goals separate and I have to focus on each of them independently if I want to achieve success in both.
Losing weight is a by-product of better eating habits. This is something I need to take advantage of when it comes to my weight loss goals. Having better eating habits alone is not going to help me achieve my weight loss goals, just like losing weight is not the measurement that is going to help me achieve my goals of controlling my emotional eating.
Today was a great victory for me in my journey to overcome my emotional eating habits. I successfully maintained a near 2000 calorie a day diet for a week and had very rare occasions where I ate something unconsciously or out of nervous habit. Big steps in the right direction despite the fact that I did not lose a single pound.
Of course, now I need to also bring into focus the fact that I do have weight loss goals and I need to take additional steps to bring me closer to achieving those goals. This is likely by bringing regular exercise into the fold.
So, I have two goals; one that is focused on controlling my emotional eating and one that is focused on losing weight. From this point forward, I must remember to use the right measurements for each of my goals so I can independently monitor their progress correctly and successfully accomplish them both.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Decisions, Decisions
It completely surprises me how many times you have to make a decision about food on a daily basis. When I started to concentrate on my eating habits, it reminded of me of someone who gets a new puppy. You notice more dog food commercials on TV, you finally see the dog food billboards that were always there, and you notice more dogs walking the street.
Now that I am making food the issue, I have taken much more notice to the fact that food is all around me and the influences to eating food are found at every turn. When we think of eating, many of us tend to believe that we only have to make a good choice about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We want to believe that making just a couple of good choices a day is all we need to be successful. Unfortunately, in our society making food choices is not restricted to three times a day. This is because food is always available and there is always an influence working to get us to eat it.
The truth is that we have to make decisions about food all the time. Sure we have to decide what to eat for our meals, and making good choices there carries you a long way towards success, but every time you pass by eligible food to eat you have to make a decision. It is important to realize this because when you do, you find that you are making several more choices about food on a daily basis. Making good choices during these critical times can go a long way to support your healthy eating habits. Making bad choices during these times can jeopardize your long term goals.
Food is everywhere and it is readily available. Food is in your vending machines at work, it's on your co-workers desk, and many times it is in a dish or a drawer at your own desk. When you drive from one place to another, you drive by countless food services. Fast food restaurants, grocery stores, mini-marts where you used to just get gas are all sources of food. Food is in your home, on the counter, in the cupboard, in the fridge, and sometimes just lying around the house waiting to be eaten.
Food comes up in your daily discussions all the time. Conversations range from "what did you eat last night" to "where do you want to to go for lunch." The topics for talking about food are endless.
Our social events are structured around food. Business meetings take place at restaurants, parties and other events are hinged on food, the holidays are all about food. Eating food is so prevalent in our society, that it has several channels on cable television where it has evolved from a matter of sustenance to an art form, a competitive arena, and a cultural phenomenon.
Recognizing that you must make food choices regularly is really important to be successful long term. When we ask our marching band kids to perform their show, we talk to them about how they have to process each part of the program right before they execute it. This involves hundreds of decisions crammed into an eight minute window. When they take the time to properly process each segment as it comes ahead of time, they are prepared and it will translate into a successful performance.
Life Lesson #7: Process what you need to do right before you execute it.
If we process our decision about whether or not we want to eat the food before we eat it, we are likely going to make better choices on what we eat and why we eat it. As an emotional eater, I know that many times I eat without even thinking about it and this usually leads to disaster. A key to Paul McKenna's message about losing weight is about eating consciously. I couldn't agree more. The first step in doing this, however, is realizing how many times these decisions need to be made.
There are lots of decisions we have to make about food every day and the goal here is to make more good decisions than bad. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that they will all be good. That is a record no one can measure up to. Realistically, we have to realize that out of all the decisions we make about food regularly, a few are going to be bad ones. When we make the bad decision, it’s important to forgive yourself and try again.
Major league baseball players make millions of dollars failing three out or four times. We are bound to have some failures too. So we shouldn't panic and think that our plan for eating food is an epic failure after one mistake. It's not a signal that we have to abandon it and try something completely different. It just means that we need to continue to recognize how many times we are making a decision about food and do our best to do the right thing next time. After all, we will have plenty of more chances to make the right decision in the future.
Now that I am making food the issue, I have taken much more notice to the fact that food is all around me and the influences to eating food are found at every turn. When we think of eating, many of us tend to believe that we only have to make a good choice about breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We want to believe that making just a couple of good choices a day is all we need to be successful. Unfortunately, in our society making food choices is not restricted to three times a day. This is because food is always available and there is always an influence working to get us to eat it.
The truth is that we have to make decisions about food all the time. Sure we have to decide what to eat for our meals, and making good choices there carries you a long way towards success, but every time you pass by eligible food to eat you have to make a decision. It is important to realize this because when you do, you find that you are making several more choices about food on a daily basis. Making good choices during these critical times can go a long way to support your healthy eating habits. Making bad choices during these times can jeopardize your long term goals.
Food is everywhere and it is readily available. Food is in your vending machines at work, it's on your co-workers desk, and many times it is in a dish or a drawer at your own desk. When you drive from one place to another, you drive by countless food services. Fast food restaurants, grocery stores, mini-marts where you used to just get gas are all sources of food. Food is in your home, on the counter, in the cupboard, in the fridge, and sometimes just lying around the house waiting to be eaten.
Food comes up in your daily discussions all the time. Conversations range from "what did you eat last night" to "where do you want to to go for lunch." The topics for talking about food are endless.
Our social events are structured around food. Business meetings take place at restaurants, parties and other events are hinged on food, the holidays are all about food. Eating food is so prevalent in our society, that it has several channels on cable television where it has evolved from a matter of sustenance to an art form, a competitive arena, and a cultural phenomenon.
Recognizing that you must make food choices regularly is really important to be successful long term. When we ask our marching band kids to perform their show, we talk to them about how they have to process each part of the program right before they execute it. This involves hundreds of decisions crammed into an eight minute window. When they take the time to properly process each segment as it comes ahead of time, they are prepared and it will translate into a successful performance.
Life Lesson #7: Process what you need to do right before you execute it.
If we process our decision about whether or not we want to eat the food before we eat it, we are likely going to make better choices on what we eat and why we eat it. As an emotional eater, I know that many times I eat without even thinking about it and this usually leads to disaster. A key to Paul McKenna's message about losing weight is about eating consciously. I couldn't agree more. The first step in doing this, however, is realizing how many times these decisions need to be made.
There are lots of decisions we have to make about food every day and the goal here is to make more good decisions than bad. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that they will all be good. That is a record no one can measure up to. Realistically, we have to realize that out of all the decisions we make about food regularly, a few are going to be bad ones. When we make the bad decision, it’s important to forgive yourself and try again.
Major league baseball players make millions of dollars failing three out or four times. We are bound to have some failures too. So we shouldn't panic and think that our plan for eating food is an epic failure after one mistake. It's not a signal that we have to abandon it and try something completely different. It just means that we need to continue to recognize how many times we are making a decision about food and do our best to do the right thing next time. After all, we will have plenty of more chances to make the right decision in the future.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
A Phoenix Also Rises
The brink.
I have stood in this place before. It is a fine line where I walk between retaining control of how I look feel and completely letting go of myself and letting my bad habits run rampant until I fall down into some dark hole of despair.
I return to this point many times after finally taking a moment to put everything else to the side and concentrate on me. In my self-reflection I stare at the man in the mirror and wonder how in the world I could have let this happen. Its amazing what you can hide from yourself when you don't look in the mirror everyday. Intentionally, of course.
In this moment of self-reflection, I finally take a good look in the mirror and I do not like what I see at all. The situation is as bad as it has ever been when it comes to my weight and the time for action is now.
My weight is my arch rival. It is my nemesis. I have tried to combat gaining weight so many times before. I have tried healthy and unhealthy ways to do it out of hope and out of desperation. Regardless of what I try, the effort lasts for a short while and I return back to the poor habits that have gotten me here in the first place.
As I continue to circle back to this point, the failures start to pile on top of one another and what once was a plateau of 220 becomes 250, then 280, then 310.
This cycle cannot continue for much longer. If I let it go on, the view will get darker at every plateau. The uncertainly of my future will continue to cloud itself, and the confidence I have in myself to eventually win this battle continues to wain with every step I take on the scale.
Its important for me to remember that my future depends on today and the actions I take will help determine what that future will be. Today, I have decided I will try to end the cycle again. If a Phoenix can rise from the ashes, then surely I can stand up against the issue of emotional eating and start my fight again. I have to for myself and my family.
It will not be an easy task. I have fought this battle before and I have fought it for so long, each time ending in a loss. What makes me think that the outcome this time is going to be different?
The truth is that I don't think it will different. But I owe it to myself and those who are close to me to take a stand and try to do what is right. To break this cycle of bad eating habits for good.
Perhaps during this process my hope can turn to faith, and my faith can turn to belief, and my belief can turn to success. So today, I start with hope that all of it will come true.
Let it begin.
I have stood in this place before. It is a fine line where I walk between retaining control of how I look feel and completely letting go of myself and letting my bad habits run rampant until I fall down into some dark hole of despair.
I return to this point many times after finally taking a moment to put everything else to the side and concentrate on me. In my self-reflection I stare at the man in the mirror and wonder how in the world I could have let this happen. Its amazing what you can hide from yourself when you don't look in the mirror everyday. Intentionally, of course.
In this moment of self-reflection, I finally take a good look in the mirror and I do not like what I see at all. The situation is as bad as it has ever been when it comes to my weight and the time for action is now.
My weight is my arch rival. It is my nemesis. I have tried to combat gaining weight so many times before. I have tried healthy and unhealthy ways to do it out of hope and out of desperation. Regardless of what I try, the effort lasts for a short while and I return back to the poor habits that have gotten me here in the first place.
As I continue to circle back to this point, the failures start to pile on top of one another and what once was a plateau of 220 becomes 250, then 280, then 310.
This cycle cannot continue for much longer. If I let it go on, the view will get darker at every plateau. The uncertainly of my future will continue to cloud itself, and the confidence I have in myself to eventually win this battle continues to wain with every step I take on the scale.
Its important for me to remember that my future depends on today and the actions I take will help determine what that future will be. Today, I have decided I will try to end the cycle again. If a Phoenix can rise from the ashes, then surely I can stand up against the issue of emotional eating and start my fight again. I have to for myself and my family.
It will not be an easy task. I have fought this battle before and I have fought it for so long, each time ending in a loss. What makes me think that the outcome this time is going to be different?
The truth is that I don't think it will different. But I owe it to myself and those who are close to me to take a stand and try to do what is right. To break this cycle of bad eating habits for good.
Perhaps during this process my hope can turn to faith, and my faith can turn to belief, and my belief can turn to success. So today, I start with hope that all of it will come true.
Let it begin.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Correcting Bad Habits Require Chiropractic Treatment
I knew that a day like this would come. I have felt my healthy eating habits starting to slip for a couple of days now. I started grabbing a snack here or eating a little extra there. I took what was once a very calculated process for consuming food, and reverted it back to a mindless act of consuming whatever was in sight.
There are usually several factors that contribute to me slipping back into my old habits. The one that I think led to this particular failure was my lack of routine, a danger normally faced when the weekend comes. Without a routine in my day, I don't have a good handle on the environment around me. I especially don't have a good sense of what time it is, something that is critical for me when measuring my food intake.
On a work day, my time is naturally broken up into smaller, more measurable chunks; drive in, morning at work, lunch, afternoon at work, drive home, time with kids awake, time with kids asleep, and my time for bed. They break up the day pretty nicely, and it gives me a good framework I can refer to when determining how much I should eat and when I should eat it.
On the weekend all of those references disappear, and I totally lose track of time. It causes me to fail to monitor what I should be eating and when. I always feel hungry throughout the day, but I use those time blocks to tell me when I should eat and when I should ignore my hunger pains. With the time reference of my routine gone, I lose control of the situation and let my programming take over. That spells disaster.
Today was a bad day for me because I ate way more than I should. While yesterday I felt a little guilty because I had a large meal where I probably ate too much (even though I didn't eat it all and that is a victory in itself), today was far worse. The whole family was sick and I was so wrapped up in trying manage the situation that the entire day was shot. Throughout the day, I caught myself eating more than I should, snacking when I didn't need to, and eating junk that I have not allowed myself to eat for nearly two weeks. Looking back, it was very disappointing.
It just goes to show how much control a programmed behavior has over you. Just when you start to walk away, you take a quick look back, and it pulls you right back in again. Reflecting on the past week, I realize that it took quite a bit of work to ignore these behaviors. I had to force by body to do what I wanted it to do, while ignoring what my program wanted me to do. The battle is epic, and you realize that it is going to take a tremendous amount of energy to overcome these habits and bring about change. It is no wonder that so many of us fail.
At this point, I typically give up trying to do something different and revert back to my old ways of eating food. But this time, when it feels like I am about to slip back into my old habits, I remind myself of the process required to create habitual change.
Life Lesson #6: Correcting a bad habit requires chiropractic treatment
This life lesson may be a bit obscure, but I use the reference with students all the time when we talk about trying to correct a poor habit they have in their marching technique. When you go to a Chiropractor to deal with something in your body that is out of place, the typical process is to diagnose the problem, prescribe a physical treatment, apply the treatment, then setup an appointment to immediately return to reapply the treatment. At first, Chiropractors normally want you to come daily or every other day for the same treatment. But after a few days, they start to spread the interval between treatments out for longer stretches as time.
The idea behind this method is that when you have a joint has been out of place for a long period of time, when put back in place, the joint has the tendency to immediately return to being out of place again. As you put it back in place over and over again, the time that it takes to fall back out of place increases. With repetition, it will take longer and longer for the joint to fall out. After several treatments, the length of time it takes the joint to fall out of place increases to the point where the body finally accepts the right place as the correct one.
Take you hands and clasp them together. Everyone has a natural way in which they clasp their hands, mine is left over right. Now switch (for me right over left). Feels unnatural, doesn't it? Now squeeze your hands together. In fact, squeeze them hard several times. As you keep squeezing (say up to 10 times), your hands will start to feel a little more natural when clasped in the opposite position. Now that it is starting to feel more comfortable, go back to clasping your hands your natural way. Feels funny, doesn't it? Almost as if it was now the wrong way? Squeezing the hands represents us applying the treatment to something that doesn't feel normal to our body, trying to get it to accept the new way as correct.
In my case with eating, I am only at the beginning of the process, so I have to reapply my treatments every day to keep me from reverting to the way I used to eat. While difficult now, I know that over time, the amount of treatments I have to make will be less and less and the time I will need to do them will grow longer and longer. Eventually, my behavior will change, and I will finally be to the point where the new way of eating will feel natural.
Unfortunately, I lost the battle today and my eating habits have slipped out of place again. I have to forgive and re-apply my treatment. 11 days is actually very good and I should be pleased with that. Hopefully it will be more than 11 days before my next slip. If it isn't, I will have to accept that and continue to reapply my treatment until my body know that the correct way of eating is the natural one.
There are usually several factors that contribute to me slipping back into my old habits. The one that I think led to this particular failure was my lack of routine, a danger normally faced when the weekend comes. Without a routine in my day, I don't have a good handle on the environment around me. I especially don't have a good sense of what time it is, something that is critical for me when measuring my food intake.
On a work day, my time is naturally broken up into smaller, more measurable chunks; drive in, morning at work, lunch, afternoon at work, drive home, time with kids awake, time with kids asleep, and my time for bed. They break up the day pretty nicely, and it gives me a good framework I can refer to when determining how much I should eat and when I should eat it.
On the weekend all of those references disappear, and I totally lose track of time. It causes me to fail to monitor what I should be eating and when. I always feel hungry throughout the day, but I use those time blocks to tell me when I should eat and when I should ignore my hunger pains. With the time reference of my routine gone, I lose control of the situation and let my programming take over. That spells disaster.
Today was a bad day for me because I ate way more than I should. While yesterday I felt a little guilty because I had a large meal where I probably ate too much (even though I didn't eat it all and that is a victory in itself), today was far worse. The whole family was sick and I was so wrapped up in trying manage the situation that the entire day was shot. Throughout the day, I caught myself eating more than I should, snacking when I didn't need to, and eating junk that I have not allowed myself to eat for nearly two weeks. Looking back, it was very disappointing.
It just goes to show how much control a programmed behavior has over you. Just when you start to walk away, you take a quick look back, and it pulls you right back in again. Reflecting on the past week, I realize that it took quite a bit of work to ignore these behaviors. I had to force by body to do what I wanted it to do, while ignoring what my program wanted me to do. The battle is epic, and you realize that it is going to take a tremendous amount of energy to overcome these habits and bring about change. It is no wonder that so many of us fail.
At this point, I typically give up trying to do something different and revert back to my old ways of eating food. But this time, when it feels like I am about to slip back into my old habits, I remind myself of the process required to create habitual change.
Life Lesson #6: Correcting a bad habit requires chiropractic treatment
This life lesson may be a bit obscure, but I use the reference with students all the time when we talk about trying to correct a poor habit they have in their marching technique. When you go to a Chiropractor to deal with something in your body that is out of place, the typical process is to diagnose the problem, prescribe a physical treatment, apply the treatment, then setup an appointment to immediately return to reapply the treatment. At first, Chiropractors normally want you to come daily or every other day for the same treatment. But after a few days, they start to spread the interval between treatments out for longer stretches as time.
The idea behind this method is that when you have a joint has been out of place for a long period of time, when put back in place, the joint has the tendency to immediately return to being out of place again. As you put it back in place over and over again, the time that it takes to fall back out of place increases. With repetition, it will take longer and longer for the joint to fall out. After several treatments, the length of time it takes the joint to fall out of place increases to the point where the body finally accepts the right place as the correct one.
Take you hands and clasp them together. Everyone has a natural way in which they clasp their hands, mine is left over right. Now switch (for me right over left). Feels unnatural, doesn't it? Now squeeze your hands together. In fact, squeeze them hard several times. As you keep squeezing (say up to 10 times), your hands will start to feel a little more natural when clasped in the opposite position. Now that it is starting to feel more comfortable, go back to clasping your hands your natural way. Feels funny, doesn't it? Almost as if it was now the wrong way? Squeezing the hands represents us applying the treatment to something that doesn't feel normal to our body, trying to get it to accept the new way as correct.
In my case with eating, I am only at the beginning of the process, so I have to reapply my treatments every day to keep me from reverting to the way I used to eat. While difficult now, I know that over time, the amount of treatments I have to make will be less and less and the time I will need to do them will grow longer and longer. Eventually, my behavior will change, and I will finally be to the point where the new way of eating will feel natural.
Unfortunately, I lost the battle today and my eating habits have slipped out of place again. I have to forgive and re-apply my treatment. 11 days is actually very good and I should be pleased with that. Hopefully it will be more than 11 days before my next slip. If it isn't, I will have to accept that and continue to reapply my treatment until my body know that the correct way of eating is the natural one.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
I Am Not Alone
When I started this journal process, I was hesitant to share it with my friends and family. I was so embarrassed about the way I eat and how I look, I thought sharing this with others would make me look bad or make them change the way they look at me. I also felt that this was a really personal issue (one I am not particularly proud of) and that sharing would really expose my vulnerability.
But then I remember the movie "Crocodile Dundee" I saw years ago where he says that "when people like us have problems, we tell Wally. Wally tells the whole town, the problem gets out, sooner or later, no problem."
I took a different approach and focused on being proud of this process and proud of myself for doing it. In fact, I became quite excited about sharing this with others. Writing a journal and blogging was totally new for me and it went from being something I wanted to hide from everyone to something I wanted the whole world to see.
Sharing this journal with everyone has been very enabling and has created a support mechanism that I am already counting on. A friend that I teach with tonight was asking if I was keeping up with my journal. He mentioned that doing something like this would almost force me to keep it going because I wouldn't want to disappoint all of the people who were reading it. This was all a part of my "evil plan." To generate expectation in those around me, so I will always feel compelled to measure up to it. I used my own competitive behavior to work for me, not against it like it tends to do.
Its been a busy week and I have had little time the past few days to keep up with this, but the encouragement I have received by many of my friends, who asked whether or not I wrote anything today, compelled me to make the time.
Life Lesson #5: There will be times when you need to carry the load and there will be times when you need someone to carry the load for you.
Pride is a strong emotion that can be very empowering or can keep you from achieving many things. For me, pride tends to be very paralyzing because in my times of greatest need, I force myself to bear the entire burden. Sometimes with success, many times without.
Keeping up with the marathon of behavioral change can, at times, be a great burden. There will be days when I am just not strong enough to bare it. Normally, I would retract and focus on manging it all by myself. But, when you are running down that road and you have the crowd cheering you on, your pride turns from an obstacle to an energy source. Having people interested in whether or not I added a post today has been a tremendous lift for when the burden may be too much to bare.
But then I remember the movie "Crocodile Dundee" I saw years ago where he says that "when people like us have problems, we tell Wally. Wally tells the whole town, the problem gets out, sooner or later, no problem."
I took a different approach and focused on being proud of this process and proud of myself for doing it. In fact, I became quite excited about sharing this with others. Writing a journal and blogging was totally new for me and it went from being something I wanted to hide from everyone to something I wanted the whole world to see.
Sharing this journal with everyone has been very enabling and has created a support mechanism that I am already counting on. A friend that I teach with tonight was asking if I was keeping up with my journal. He mentioned that doing something like this would almost force me to keep it going because I wouldn't want to disappoint all of the people who were reading it. This was all a part of my "evil plan." To generate expectation in those around me, so I will always feel compelled to measure up to it. I used my own competitive behavior to work for me, not against it like it tends to do.
Its been a busy week and I have had little time the past few days to keep up with this, but the encouragement I have received by many of my friends, who asked whether or not I wrote anything today, compelled me to make the time.
Life Lesson #5: There will be times when you need to carry the load and there will be times when you need someone to carry the load for you.
Pride is a strong emotion that can be very empowering or can keep you from achieving many things. For me, pride tends to be very paralyzing because in my times of greatest need, I force myself to bear the entire burden. Sometimes with success, many times without.
Keeping up with the marathon of behavioral change can, at times, be a great burden. There will be days when I am just not strong enough to bare it. Normally, I would retract and focus on manging it all by myself. But, when you are running down that road and you have the crowd cheering you on, your pride turns from an obstacle to an energy source. Having people interested in whether or not I added a post today has been a tremendous lift for when the burden may be too much to bare.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Focus on Your Goals and Accolades will Follow
For me this week has been a really great experience, taking a stand against my poor eating habits and trying to change my behavior. I found it amazing how making decisions about eating effects my daily life. When I look at the past 7 days, I am a bit surprised by how many times I was engaged into this process. I think about how many times the traps my old programming tried to take me away from my plan. I think about the cognitive efforts that I had to go through to endure and prevail them. But, the most startling piece of it for me was the number of times a decision was made in regards to food.
These decisions encompassed more than just the three meals a day. It was dealing with all of the cravings, the numbers of time I passed by food that was readily available, how many times I watched others eat food, being offered food, serving someone else food, seeing food commercials, hearing food commercials, driving by food restaurants, driving by the grocery store. I even went to my home improvement store over the weekend and there at the check-out counter was food to purchase and eat.
We make decisions about food many, many times a day. There is no question that my decisions this past week swung from being predominantly bad for me to being predominately good.
Life Lesson #4: Focus on the goals that you set for yourself and the accolades of success will follow.
We tell the marching band students all the time to concentrate on doing their personal best. That no matter where they are in the learning process, when they focus on their own personal achievement, great things will happen for the whole organization. There are so many levels of success available within the activity that the students can find opportunities to reach, exceed, and set new goals for themselves all along the way. As a result, their competitive success becomes a by-product.
For me this week was focused on my goal of managing my eating behavior and starting the process of reprogramming the way I approach food. This week was successful and as a result, my by-product of the effort was losing 5 pounds.
I am looking forward to moving ahead.
These decisions encompassed more than just the three meals a day. It was dealing with all of the cravings, the numbers of time I passed by food that was readily available, how many times I watched others eat food, being offered food, serving someone else food, seeing food commercials, hearing food commercials, driving by food restaurants, driving by the grocery store. I even went to my home improvement store over the weekend and there at the check-out counter was food to purchase and eat.
We make decisions about food many, many times a day. There is no question that my decisions this past week swung from being predominantly bad for me to being predominately good.
Life Lesson #4: Focus on the goals that you set for yourself and the accolades of success will follow.
We tell the marching band students all the time to concentrate on doing their personal best. That no matter where they are in the learning process, when they focus on their own personal achievement, great things will happen for the whole organization. There are so many levels of success available within the activity that the students can find opportunities to reach, exceed, and set new goals for themselves all along the way. As a result, their competitive success becomes a by-product.
For me this week was focused on my goal of managing my eating behavior and starting the process of reprogramming the way I approach food. This week was successful and as a result, my by-product of the effort was losing 5 pounds.
I am looking forward to moving ahead.
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