| Friend,
Let me tell you how most people fail when they go on a diet.
It starts when they decide, "I'm going to do it--I'm going to lose this weight, I'm going to get back in shape, and I'm going to go cold turkey on this diet program!"
And they do... for a few days to a week, maybe more, maybe less.
Then they realize just how hard it is to go cold turkey off all the stuff they're used to eating. It's not that they don't have willpower, it's just that willpower is a finite resource.
Why Diets Fail
You only have so much willpower to use everyday. Decision fatigue is a real thing, and the more decisions you have to make in a day, and the more stressful your day is, the more likely you are to go off your diet at the end of the day... or just whenever you have a really tough day.
Remember how I told you about that period when I was gimped up and unable to train hard for hours a day like I had for most of my life? And remember how I told you that I adopted other, unhealthy coping mechanisms to replace exercise? Well, I can still tell you what my "bad day" meal was. I'd go to Sonic and order the following: - A Chicken Club Toaster Sandwich, 500 calories
- A large order of Tater Tots, 580 calories
- And an Orange Cream Slush, 380 calories
That's nearly 1,500 calories in one meal, and all of it full of sugar and fat. And then I might go home that night and have three or four beers before bed. Yeah, self-medication with food and alcohol is a great way to gain fat master status, fast.
But here's the thing--only a few years prior, I watched what I ate like a hawk. I mostly ate lean meats (chicken, usually), veggies, fruit, and I avoided sugary drinks and desserts, except for one meal on the weekend when I would "cheat."
What changed in that time to make me go from being a "health food nut" to a junk food junkie?
Habits Trump Willpower
In a word? HABITS. My habits changed, not all at once, but gradually over time.
When I had to quit training because I was convalescing after surgery, I still had all the same stresses in my life that I had before. After weeks of relative inactivity, I was so eager to get back into training and release all that pent up energy that I jumped back in too soon and overdid it, injuring myself in the process.
By the third time I'd gone through this cycle, I was already adopting other, less healthy coping mechanisms to deal with my stress. It started with drinking alcohol after work, then with eating junk food in the afternoon, and then with snacking on desserts at night.
Before I knew it, I'd gained 60 pounds. I went from a slim six feet and 200 to 260 in a few years. And it was ALL due to habits.
How Habits Form
We humans are creatures of habit, and once we develop a pattern that works for us, we tend to stick with it. But how do habits form?
All habits have three components: - A physical component - "I do this because of this sensation."
- A psychological component - "I rationalize this because I believe ____."
- And an emotional component - "I continue this because it makes me feel _____."
Think about how you start eating unhealthy food, and how that becomes a habit. - The physical component is that you eat chocolate chip cookies because they taste delicious.
- The psychological component is that you rationalize eating chocolate chip cookies because you tell yourself you deserve a reward.
- And the emotional component is your mom used to bake you chocolate chip cookies as a treat when you did something "good."
Here's how this works in your brain, from a biochemical standpoint: - Soon after you eat that first cookie, you get a sugar rush. The taste and the elevated blood sugar levels in your body signal your brain to release dopamine, the reward neurochemical. (This stimulates the same centers in your brain that are stimulated by drug addicts or alcoholics when they use.) You eat the cookie and man, it feels good!
- The sugar in those cookies also contributes to the release of serotonin, the relaxation chemical. Ah, more good feelings!
- Also, any associations you have with that food and fond memories from your past are also triggered through sensory recall. Suddenly, by eating that cookie you are brought back to a time when you felt safe, loved, or when you felt the approval of an important person in your life. This triggers a release of oxytocin in your brain, sometimes called the "love neurochemical," which provides you a feeling of safety and warmth.
Now, is it any wonder that you develop unhealthy eating habits, and that they can be so difficult to break? When you try to go cold turkey on a new diet, you're not just changing a behavioral pattern, you're also attempting to evoke neurochemical changes in your brain that took months or years to develop!
That's why, in order to be successful in losing weight, you have to retrain your brain.
How To Retrain Your Brain
So, if you want to adopt healthier habits, you have to train your brain to seek different rewards. And, you have to trick your brain into accepting the rewards it already seeks in lesser amounts.
Read that last paragraph again, because it's important.
Now, let me give you a few practical examples: - We already examined why eating chocolate cookies feels so good. And, a desire for those feelings of reward, relaxation, and comfort can easily lead to unhealthy patterns of eating. However, when you feel stressed and you need a release, you can instead choose to go for a run. Do this often enough, and the endorphin high you get from running will replace the high you get from eating junk, and your brain will instead crave the run instead of the junk food.
- Likewise, in instances where you have an ingrained pattern of behavior it may be difficult to change them all at once. So, instead you can change the degree by which you respond to that behavior, to lesson the negative impact. Maybe you start buying cookies in snack packs, and only eat one pack instead of a dozen. Or maybe you start baking cookies that are organic and lower in calorie content and higher in fiber, so they are more filling and less fattening.
In other words, you replace unhealthy rewards with healthy (or healthier) rewards. And by doing this a little at a time, over an extended period you'll replace all those bad habits with good ones... or at least better ones.
A Practical Approach to Weight Loss
This was supposed to be just one email message, but it's turning out to be a series unto itself. And the last thing I'm going to cover is an actual set of steps, a practical process, for losing weight.
To start, I'm going to ask you to do something simple today. I always tell my martial arts business coaching clients, "What gets measured, gets improved." So, I want you to start tracking what you eat.
There are a few very good reasons to do this which I'll discuss tomorrow, but for today I just want you to start keeping track of everything you eat.
Your assignment: - Go download an app like My Fitness Pal or CHRON-O-meter and use it to keep track of everything you eat for the next few days. Don't pay attention to the calorie totals or anything else; just track what you eat without worrying about the numbers... yet.
That's it for today's message. Tomorrow I'll (finally) start going into the actual steps you can take to lose weight and keep it off.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
Quick-start Guide to My Books and Resources: - Looking for a list of books and resources I've written? Click here! - Looking for low-cost business coaching to grow your dojo? Click here…
P.S. - Quick tip... CHRON-O-meter is easier to use, but My Fitness Pal has a bigger database of foods. Doesn't matter which you use, all that matters is that you use it.
Also, be aware that sometimes the food database info is wrong. Earlier today I entered my dinner from last night, and I noticed I was 1,500 calories over my target yesterday. I looked through my food diary and saw that the entry for the beef fajitas I ate said my portion equaled 1,700 calories.
Turns out that I selected an entry that included fajitas with all the fixings in the calorie total, and not just the meat itself. Once I fixed that entry, I was just about on target for the day. So, if it looks like your calorie totals are screwy, double-check how you entered your foods.
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