You've gotta love a good habit!

22nd January 2017

Be a better you, for you.  Don't just exist - live!

I'm still getting the date wrong and writing 2016, how long will that habit take to break!  Just shows how easy they are to make and how difficult to break, I only had the 2016 on for just under a year (if I kept doing it wrong last year too!).  Imagine how tough it is to break a habit you've had for years, can you?  Or do you need to think along the lines of replacing them with other ones rather than stopping the original ones, a bit like me replacing writing 2016 with writing 2017, if only the others were so simple to break.

You've got to commit to your goal to start with, it's the most important first step in breaking a bit habit, you have to have the desire to change your life and be committed to doing just that.

Then of course you can't change or break a habit you don't even realise you have!   Start being aware of your behaviour, how you act, why you behave that way - why do you turn to that bar of chocolate when you drop and smash your iphone screen?  That kind of thing!

I think we can all agree it's easier to replace a bad habit than getting rid of it completely, that's probably because we get something beneficial to ourselves from those bad habits, if only for the moment we're doing it, the after effects might suck, the weight gain from the chocolate binging session for example. 

These bad habits are doing something for us, we're getting something from them so we need to find another way of getting that relief or pleasure or whatever it is we're getting from somewhere else and without the negative after effects.

What could you do instead?  Could you get rid of the triggers, for example if when you sit in front of the tv at night you like a bag of crisps, could you get rid of the crisp, I'd have killed for a bag of Walkers cheese and onion crisps  last night but I had none, the moment has passed now and I lived without them.  Could you have alternatives in place, I could've had some lighter cheese & onion crisps in 'just in case'.  It might be smaller bars of chocolate instead of a huge slab so you get a bit. 

To help with trying to completely change the way you eat, if your 'diet' is that bad to start with, it really helps to surround yourself with people who live the way you want to, that's where going to a Weight Watcher meeting helps, getting ideas from other people who have gone through the same journey, gold members who have lost their weight, kept it off and changed their life. 

Believe you can!  That's most important, visualise yourself how you want to be, healthy, happy and looking exactly how you want to look - are you smiling, laughing, how good do you look and feel?

You're not trying to be someone else, you're becoming a better version of yourself and looking at others for positive traits and habits you'd like to replicate, so at this moment in time you may be carrying excess weight BUT if you replace some habits, create some new ones, by the summer you could be feeling and looking completely different! 

It's okay to fail now and again too, one habit I'm trying to create at the moment is eating fruit, I want to automatically eat at least one piece of fruit a day, I've failed with that the last couple of days, I don't think I managed one yesterday, I did on Friday though, I'm improving.  I realised if they are on the side in the kitchen and I can see them, then I'm more likely to pick on up, if they're in the fridge and/or cupboard and I can't see them, I forget. 

Work on one thing at a time, I'm going to continue with my fruit habit, I automatically pour a pint of water each morning now, that was a habit I created last year, drinking a pint of water before I go down and put a kettle on in the morning, I do occasionally go make that cuppa first, especially if mom wakes up at the same time, or if I wake up later and really fancy one because it's cold, like I did this morning, the water is still on my desk and will be drink.  Maybe I need the fruit bowl on my desk, then I'd see it first thing!  Sorted, now that's a good idea.

What habit are you going to work on?  Focus on the next seven days, just one week.  What one thing are you going to make sure you do for the week ahead, let's keep it real shall we? 

Let's get healthy and happy by changing one habit at a time...

My mission today is to get me a bowl of fruit ordered to put on my desk, I can do this.  What are you going to do BeYOUtiful?