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UllrsIshtar -> RE: Where does this go to? HELP!! (7/22/2013 1:15:33 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Gauge
You can change any behavior when you are willing to make the choice and stick by the choice. When people tell me they want to quit smoking and they are "cutting down gradually" I have a hearty laugh at them and tell them they are doomed to failure. You either quit or you don't. Simple.
In the case where their food budget is as tight as it is, wasting food may well not be an option but you need time to understand and prepare for the change anyway, so finish the food you have and the next trip to the grocery store start on your new diet and don't look back. This is a lifestyle change and keeping crap in your diet so you think you will transition to healthier choices eventually just is a formula for failure. Stop the bad behavior, start the new improved behavior.
This isn't a matter of simple 'quit eating bad food' it's a matter of 'learning how to eat good food'.
What a lot of people who are used to eating healthy underestimate, is that people who don't eat healthy don't know how to eat healthy, because of a lack of habits.
It's not a simple as merely having the willpower, it's a matter of learning new habits.
If you've been eating junk for 20 years, and you go to your grocery store once a week to get healthy stuff, what are you supposed to get? How much fruit, veggies and meat do you need for a week? How do you estimate the level of satisfaction a meal is going to give you, and the amount of seconds your body is going to want on the greens? Do you need to account for 2 cups of lettuce, or 4?
The worst thing you can do when switching diets is make your body go hungry, it will just make you more prone to 'cheating' by ordering yet more junk... the thing is, learning to cook, eat, and shop for healthy foods when you've been used for 20 years to use pop something from the freezer into the microwave takes time. It can take so much time that it makes your weekly hour long grocery trip suddenly take 4 hours, just because you suddenly need to read every label, and need to relearn all the basics from the start. Cooking and preparing food can take even longer. For somebody who hasn't truly cooked in a long time, just relearning the basics like how to not burn grilled chicken breasts can take a couple of tries.
If it was as easy as 'instead of this list of food, buy this list of food' and 'eat this instead of this' I would agree with you that it was matter of willpower, but it's that simple. Somebody who's been eating microwave dinners for 20 years, needs to learn by trial and error which healthy foods speak to them, and which don't. Switching to a list of food you hate isn't a long term solution, you need to relearn to like the food that's good for you.
That you do one meal at a time. If you switch from your comfort zone food to suddenly adding 10-20 hours a week in food prep, shopping and meal times on food you feel you don't like and doesn't fill you, you aren't going to last, not because you don't have the willpower to stick to it, but because human beings aren't designed to spend that much time actively engaging in an activity they despise doing, on something you SHOULD be enjoying.
Taking it one meal at a time, and one change at a time guarantees that the change can be implemented at a pace that's both realistic and sustainable.
Smokers quit smoking by cutting cigarettes out of their lives. People don't quit junk food by quitting food... they quit junk food by adding healthy foods in.
Doing that requires learning HOW to do that, by trial and error, which takes time.
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