How To Change Your Habits

We have been working for the past two months on this goal to get into shape and eat healthy. These are our weekly goals:

• Work out 5 days a week for 30 minutes and get dessert at the end of the week.
• Green smoothie every other day
• Eat 3 meals a day
• Drink 32 oz of water a day to keep hydrated

We have also chosen to try to live by these principles:

1. Eat when you are truly hungry.
2. Sometimes your body isn't craving food and you might just be bored. You should occupy yourself with other things like exercise, intellectual stimulation or service.
3. Don't determine satiety through visual cues. That means you do not have to eat everything on your plate to determine you are full. If you eat slower your body will have more time to tell your brain and stomach that you are full. I have heard that it takes 20 minutes for that process to happen.
4. Don't eat after 9 unless you actually need the calories. Don't do mindless late night eating.

I attended a seminar about how to change your habits and I felt like it gave some great insight into this very difficult process. How badly you want to change does not predict success and failure. Agency is a skill so learn it and exercise it. We read in 2 Nephi 2:24 that God created those who act and those who are acted upon. We are being acted upon all the time so learn how to take action and change it.

These are the 5 challenges we face and their solutions:

1. Love What You Hate: the problem is that bad habits feel good (so we justify them) and good habits feel bad. We play propaganda games in our head to manipulate ourselves. Sustainable change isn't about resisting evil but rather about choosing good. The solution is to change your feelings about your choices
2. Bad Habits Require Skill: the problem is that you have gotten good at these habits. The solution is to get new skills if you want to gain new habits. Trying to motivate people who don't have the abilities can cause deep depression. We say that they just have to hit rock bottom and then they can will it to get better.
3. Relationship Changes: The problem is that the people around us can negatively shape our choices and the solution is that changing those relationships can help you make the change in your habits. A good example was given where a woman was addicted to smoking and they tracked it back to her relationship with her husband. Whenever she got in an argument with him she would smoke. If she had better communication with her husband there would be less conflict, then less impulse, and no smoking. Lastly, if your best friend is overweight then you are 57 % more likely to look like him. Normal is decided by what you see around you.
4. Invert the Economy: the problem is that the cost of bad habits are way in the future and the benefits are right now. Incentives don't work on us very well. The solution is to bring the cost of the bad and benefits of the good closer together. This is explained well through the idea of a Florida Gator fan making a jar for the Gators and another jar for the enemy, Florida State. Every time he did his bad habit he put a quarter in the jar of Florida State. When he did the good habit or avoided his bad habit, he put a quarter in the Gators jar. After a certain amount of time passed or money was put in, he had to give the jar with the most money to the school's fundraising or scholarship fund.
5. Control Your Space- The problem is that our environment can negatively shape our habits. The solution is to use cues to remind you to change so that bad behavior becomes harder to do. For our situation of trying to eat healthier we have decided not to allow junk food in our home,and to eat off of smaller plates, or leave the food on the counter instead of bringing it to the table where we can easily scoop up more.