Cognitive, emotive, and behavioral tips to control your eating anytime.
Try to lose weight and your human nature goes against you. But you also have a lot going for you. You can successfully cope with unhealthy eating urges. Use these three cognitive, emotive, and behavioral tips to control urges in high risk times and stick to healthy eating.
Stop the Pink Elephant
Knowing what is right to do and then doing the opposite, is common. You see this conflict play out in both procrastination and eating unhealthily. Both activities have common features. One is to do what is easiest in the short term. On a procrastination thinking path, you believe you will take corrective actions later to avoid negative fallout. How well has that worked for you? You also stay stuck in the middle with sorry results.
You want to keep your eating in check. You want the food. The conflict goes something like this. Should I or shouldn't I eat that piece of cake in the refrigerator? This sets the stage for the pink elephant conflict. The conflict can elevate your tension, making eating an appealing resolution. Can you avoid the tension and the eating?
If you try to stop thinking of a pink elephant, you are likely to keep thinking of it. The same is true of the cake. The harder you try to stop thinking of the cake, the tougher it is to forget. You may resolve the conflict by telling yourself you can just take an itsy bitsy slice. After that slice, there is another. The elephant disappears when the whole piece goes down your gullet.
You want to lose weight and still eat the cake. That's kidding yourself.
How you resolve the conflict will be told in the tale of the measuring tape and the scale. One way to win the tale of the tape is to shift from active to passive volition.
Active volition is a white knuckle approach. You grit your teeth to force the elephant out of awareness. Well, that won't work well. Here is a different way. Passive volition is to let the pink elephant be. If you think of the elephant, you think of it. So what! With this softer approach, you may find your mind sliding to other thoughts. The conflict is resolved. The cake stays in the refrigerator.
Now, why do you have the cake in the refrigerator in the first place? See tip 1 in Six Tips for Success to avoid this type conflict: https://my.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-and-sensibility/201102/no-diet-tip-2-six-steps-success
Get off Automatic Pilot
Check out this "Betcha you can't eat just one." commercial from 1993: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRzcjw9l6xo
Do you see the concept of the pink elephant in the commercial? You'll also get another message. Do you get a suggestion from a subliminal commercial message? Eat one potato chip and you can't stop eating more. This is the automatic pilot effect.
Consuming food is what we do. You also can discover, learn, and change how you go about doing what you do. That gives you an edge in controlling eating. Still, when your primitive eating urges gear up, your drives and emotions to consume resist restraint. That is part of the automatic pilot effect. Can you scare yourself out of this effect?
You probably already know that being overweight will wear on your body. You risk early coronary heart disease, diabetes, and other illness. That knowledge hasn't changed the rising tide of weight gain. Why? You may think you're the exception. But thinking doesn't make this so. You may tell yourself you'll eat healthily later. This dallying with dieting is procrastinating. See the following to stop it: https://my.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-and-sensibility/201102/dallying-dieting.
Stopping the automatic pilot effect typically takes preplanning and restraint. But when you concentrate on feasting, restraint is not automatic. How do you control your urges and eat moderately?
To exercise restraint put reason between impulse and uncontrolled consumption. Rehearse a restraining script. When you face a high risk situation, tell yourself how much you will eat. Give yourself three reasons why restraint is best. For example, you want to support your no-diet plan and lose weight. Talk yourself through the paces. Think of positive outcomes. Can you do anything better to halt the automatic pilot effect? If so, do it.
Use the Quality Quantity Card Trick
The quality and quantity card trick fits the no-diet plan. For information on this plan, see http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-and-sensibility/201101/no-diet-weight-loss
Here is the gist of the no-diet plan. You eat healthy food (quality) in moderation (quantity) to keep your weight at a desired level. This is a radically different approach than following diets that stress temporary but unrealistic changes in eating habits. Revolving door diets are discouraging and unhealthy. Let's exit that door.
Make a credit card size card to put in your wallet. On one side of the card, list three to five categories of foods you consider healthy (the quality dimension). On the other side, list the quantity of each that keeps your no-diet plan in check. In high risk eating situations, take the card from your wallet. Read it. Apply it.
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