Today is day one of my healthy habits. I’m starting small, in attempts to prevent myself giving up too soon.
So, the plan….
I’m trying to cut out / cut down on the rubbish I eat. I’m bad for takeaway dinners and I have a huge sweet tooth. I especially struggle in the evening with snacking on chocolate and sweets. That’s going to be a very difficult habit to break.
Although I won’t be doing intermittent fasting, at least not at the moment, I do plan on using a fasting app. Bear with me here, there is method to this madness! I don’t really care how long I fast for, but using the app and setting a start time for fasting helps me think twice if I go to eat something else. That simple pause to think about resetting the app means I consider whether I really need to eat something else, or whether I’m doing it for a different reason. I use this Intermittent Fasting Tracker, but any could be used for this.
What reasons cause me to eat when I don’t need to?
- Habit
- Boredom
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Comfort
How will I stop myself from eating when it is related to a specific cause?
Starting from the top, I plan to use distraction when I notice myself eating due to habit or boredom.
I go into autopilot and reach for something sweet after dinner every night – this is definitely a habit I want to break! I’m also guilty of mindless TV viewing. What I mean by this is having something on TV that I’m not really interested in or that I’ve seen many times before. When I do this I’m just bored and either end up doom scrolling at the same time, or eating. Often both!
I hope that distracting myself from these will also help with my general wellness and allow me to do something productive. I hope to replace these with:
- Reading
- Studying
- Learning to play the flute
- Exercising
- Walking
The emotional reasons for eating are a little trickier. This could be stress, as I do have a job that causes me a lot of stress! However, I am a generally emotional person and always have been. I have anxiety and depression. I don’t consider that I’ve suffered from ‘active’ depression for a few years, but I do feel that it’s always in the background and something I constantly need to manage. How will I deal with the emotional eating? I’m not totally sure. I do see a psychologist for a few reasons, so that’s a good support. I do hope that removing some of the reasons for overeating and eating things I shouldn’t, as well as the improvements of reading more, learning the flute etc. will cause general improvements to my health and wellbeing. And I’m certainly open to any suggestions for anyone reading this who can suggest ways to manage emotional eating.
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