Changing Habits

What are your eating habits that you most want to change?

Knowing what they are is the first step to having success in reaching your goals.

For me, unconscious (emotional) eating was the biggest eating challenge.
Another big one: I would NOT eat for too long a stretch.

Hmmm...over eating and not eating. Seem like opposite problems don't they. I believe they are just the flip side of the same problem. Not listening to and not trusting my own body.

I spent so many years (ahem, decades) ignoring my body's messages that I truly didn't know when I was hungry. I still have issues with it. It may be something I deal with my entire life--don't know, will have to see if this is conquered or managed!

The learned behavior for me was to eat when I was told to, not when I was hungry. To eat what I was told to. To eat how much I was told to.

Some of this was practical--Mom made breakfast for the family and it is good to eat breakfast and you have to eat before going to school...so you ate, even if you weren't hungry, because you were breaking the fast.

Some of this was cultural--we all sat at the dinner table and had to clean our plates. I don't remember if we were told about the starving children in Africa or China or wherever, but we definitely we are "clean plate club" family.

On the other hand, I was the heavy one in the family, so I was constantly monitored about how much I was eating and I was told more than once that I had had enough.

Because I was not given control over my eating, but was always directed when, what and how much I could eat, I found that I learned to "turn off" my recognition of hunger. It was just easier that way.

I was always trying to lose weight, so it was natural that I feel hungry, right?

I was exercising a lot, so it was natural that I feel hungry, right?

I was overweight so I needed to not eat, even if I was hungry, right?

So my biggest habit change is listening to my body and believing it when it tells me I am hungry and I should eat.