6 Steps to Stop Bad Eating Habits

Whether it's ending your addiction to snacking, excess sugar, or quitting smoking, it starts with knowing what you want, checking out the obstacles and then dealing with them in advance. Follow these six steps and you will more easily achieve your goals.


Keywords :
weight loss, well trained result, lose weight, diet


A customer writes: "Help me! I thought I finally fixed my weight problem, but sugar is killing me. I've had a terrible day. I won't even tell you what I ate today because it "is truly amazing. All I can say is that 90% of my food was sugar! I really, really need help to overcome these cravings. I am definitely addicted to sugar. If I can overcome this, there is no doubt that I will achieve my goal.”

If you see a little of yourself in this post, you are not alone. Many describe themselves as sugar addicts. They think that if it was just this one thing, then they could achieve their weight loss goals. If you think there's just one thing stopping you from losing weight, consider this: What if that one thing (a sugar addiction, for example) went away? Do you really believe, “If I could overcome this obstacle, there is no doubt that I would achieve my goal,” or is that an easy excuse to get stuck?

If I told you I could show you a way to stop craving sugar, would you want me to show you how?

Think about it for a moment. Close your eyes and really think about it. You've said that if only you didn't crave sugar you could lose weight, but is that really true for you? Ask yourself the following questions:

Would you eat differently, and if so, how?

Would you act differently, and if so, how?

What would change and what would stay the same?

What would you lose?

What would you gain?

Until you know what you want, know you can achieve it, and know what will change (i.e. how your life might be different), you won't cannot discover the obstacles that must first be taken into account. For example, maybe you want to not eat anything after 7 p.m., but your husband doesn't get home from work until 8 p.m. and he wants you to join him for dinner. It's an obstacle.

If you're in the habit of watching your favorite TV show with a bowl of ice cream, breaking that habit is another hurdle.

If you can't find a way to overcome your obstacles, perhaps through discussion and compromise with your husband, or through quitting your ice cream habit, there is bound to be a problem. Simply saying you won't do something again rarely works. Instead, figure out what might be stopping you from achieving your goals, find a way around it, and you'll be much more likely to achieve those goals once and for all.

The statement “if this one thing was fixed, everything else would fall into place” is an “if then” statement that confuses people. They want a good fairy to make everything better. If you firmly believe only one thing, like "eating sugar is my problem," you are doomed to failure, especially if you really like eating sugary foods.

Controlling your desires isn't an all-or-nothing matter. You need to leave room for occasional deviations. It's not the occasional excursion that causes weight problems, but the route we usually take.

In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), a good starting point is the exercise called “Establishing a Well-Formed Result”. “Well-formed” means it meets all the criteria for a well-thought-out end result.

NLP: How to Create a Well-Shaped Outcome and Get What You Want

Here are the steps to creating a well-formed result:

1) Say what you want (not what you don't want). “I want to weigh 80 kg”.

2) Determine if you can achieve it (do you believe it is possible?).

3) What resources do you have and what resources do you need (time, money, materials, clothing, equipment, supervision, etc.)

4) Check to see if anyone else is involved and what potential obstacles may arise regarding others. Think about all the people involved in your everyday life.

5) Imagine yourself as if you have achieved what you say you want and see if this image matches. Do you like what you see?

6) Develop an action plan to achieve your outcome.

Although just deciding what you really want may seem like a lot of effort, going through these steps early on helps you find potential obstacles that previously prevented you from moving forward. For example, if you decide to join a gym and start exercising every day, but you forget that you don't even own a car and you just lost your job, this exercise plan might not work at the moment. If you join a gym, you'll eventually stop going and think you've failed, when it's the plan that failed, not you. You haven't thought this through carefully.

A better plan in this case might be to do exercises at home, or within walking distance (or just walk for exercise). Later, when you have transportation, you can rethink the plan and maybe join a gym. There are always options.

It's best to look at what you want from all angles and then come up with a plan that you know can and should work. When you know what you want, you will also know that you can achieve it and you will start by taking the first step to make it a reality.

“Achieving a Well-Defined Outcome” is one of the sessions in the 8-week “Ending Emotional Eating” workshop. You can also find more information about this popular and well-known NLP process by searching for “NLP Well Formed Outcome” in your favorite search engine.