Have you ever wondered why it’s hard to change the way you eat, even though you want to eat differently? It can be easy to think it’s down to a lack of willpower and motivation, but that’s not the case. The real reason is because our food choices are not solely based on the nutrient content of the food. Although we know that one of the roles of food is to nourish our physical body, we also eat for enjoyment, socially, emotionally and out of habit, affordability and convenience.
What this means is that there may be many benefits to the way you currently eat. Let’s take coffee as an example. You may want to stop coffee because it’s impacting your sleep and making you feel wired. However, if you also experience benefits to drinking coffee, then it’s not as simple as just giving it up. The benefits of coffee might be that you enjoy the taste so it provides a sense of comfort, you share coffee with your friends so it’s a social event, it gives you a slight boost when you’re tired, it’s habitual so you don’t have to think about it, it’s affordable and more convenient than looking for herbal tea when you’re out. We can see the potential benefits stacking up can’t we!
Seeing why we consume certain foods and drinks helps us to understand that our food choices have many different aspects. When we have this understanding we can work with both the benefits of a food and any detrimental aspects in a compassionate way. We can see it’s no longer about a lack of willpower and then a downward cycle of guilt and shame for not ‘being better’. Instead you can see that your existing habits make sense and we can build on the benefits of change and how to do it in a gradual and sustainable way.
So with our coffee example, a sustainable change might be to reduce the amount of coffee you drink by one cup per day. It may also include trying decaf coffee, so that the taste can still be enjoyed and this is an easy change that builds onto an existing habit. Over time, as you develop more self-awareness and self-monitoring there can be more internal motivational to change. This might mean that coffee becomes just an occasional social drink when meeting friends, and you may develop a taste for herbal and rooibos tea as well. This gradual approach, that comes from self-awareness, means that the change naturally unfolds in a sustainable way, rather than being imposed on the body in an all-or-nothing approach.
Tools for building awareness of your food habits
If you’re keen to learn more about this approach, the following practices are a great way to become more aware of why you eat certain foods. When you have this awareness you can begin to decode your eat habits and make changes based on your own insights:
1. Keep a food diary
Food diaries are an excellent way to bring your awareness to your eating patterns. Try keeping a food diary for 7 days and write down everything that you eat, the time of day and why you ate that food. Include all the reasons why you ate for example, hunger, time of day, convenience, enjoyment, social and emotional. Try not to judge any entries, simply see it as a record to help you become more aware of your tendencies. At the end of the 7 days identify one pattern that you want to change and commit to making one small change.
2. Make a pros and cons chart
Writing a pros and cons chart is a way for us to see all the different reasons why we might find it hard to change the way we eat. Choose one aspect of your diet that you want to change. Then in one column write all the pros of changing your diet and in the other column write all the cons of changing your diet. The cons might be a lack of time, not knowing how to cook differently, not feeling supported by friends and family, feeling overwhelmed with change, and so on. With this understanding identify what resources you need to help make the change. This might mean, identifying time in your diary to cook, learning new recipes or asking for support from others. With these in place changing your diet can start to take place in a way that honours your own unique circumstances and at your own pace.
Let me know how you get on with these tools and if you’d like to learn more about personalised nutrition with empowered eating please do contact me to arrange a free discovery call.