We accumulate eating habits like we accumulate junk
Have you ever stopped to notice the eating habits you’ve picked up somewhere along the way, that no longer do anything for you?
Like the odds and ends in a drawer or a cupboard that you haven’t got around to clearing out, which clutter up the space and make it hard to even see the things you really value.
Which can mean that they actually detract from your overall sense of wellbeing.
Enter Marie Kondo
In the realm of our physical space, tidying icon Marie Kondo has shone light and wisdom into our mess and disorganisation. With her world-famous methods, she helps us clear the chaos. Sensitively starting with the easiest clutter, she guides us through discarding what we no longer need.
Central to her approach is the question, “does this spark joy?”
I love this. Your decisions about what to keep come from the heart.
Appetite Retraining can help you spring clean your eating habits
Appetite Retraining can be used to take a similar approach to your own current eating habits – working out what still serves you and what doesn’t. Then keeping what sparks joy and binning the rest.
What sparks joy in food will be unique to you. It won’t necessarily be constant over time. What you drooled over a decade ago may have little appeal now.
Whilst our tastes change over time along with our circumstances and lifestyles, we may have got into a rut around eating.
Do you still love it?
If you’re not sure where to start, keep a diary for a couple of days where you notice any foods that you eat that actually aren’t enjoyable. Part of the task is being able to notice when something disappoints.
It’s all too easy to miss the dullness of an eating experience – it registers so little pleasure, but neither is it downright unpleasant. I can vividly remember really bad meals – the terrible baguette I had in a well-known high street chain, the tasteless sandwich for lunch in another.
The awfulness of those foods mean you’re having a peak negative experience, and if you’ve read Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” you’ll know that peak experiences (good and bad) are the ones we remember.
Disappointing foods
But there’s something about everyday disappointing eating that doesn’t register so clearly. A ‘meh’ experience here, and an underwhelmed feeling there. A snack that promised so much and delivered so little. Cheese footballs do that for me every year around Christmas. It’s been quite a struggle for me to face facts with those once-enticing snacks from my childhood.
It’s these disappointing foods that offer the easiest place to start your spring clean.
Low Hanging Fruit
Ditching the foods you don’t enjoy is easy to give up as they involve zero, or near-zero, pleasure.
- Second helpings when you were already full
- The last few bites on your plate when you’re already had enough
- Nibbling on ingredients whilst cooking
- The (boring) biscuit you ate just because it was there
Your own low hanging fruit may be quite particular to you, like my seasonal cheese football buying. Hoovering up your kids’ cold pizza crusts maybe.
How to reduce you disappointing eating and lose weight (without losing pleasure or joy)
Take a cool look at what you actually eat and how much pleasure each eating occasion actually gives you.
Keep what sparks joy – those meals and/or snacks which are
- foods you really love
- eaten when you’re actually hungry
- savoured
- the thing that you fancy right now
Then tackle one particular type of non-enjoyable eating at a time. Being specific like this helps keep your focus, and you’ll be able to see how little joy you are sacrificing.
The spring clean may just be your first step
Once you’ve tidied out the disappointing eating, you can take stock and see how you feel about how your eating patterns are now. Do you feel liberated? Have more energy? Have you lost pounds? Have you gained confidence? I’m asking, because that’s what my clients say when they ditch their disappointing eating.
However you feel after this step, there may be more things you want to change about how you eat, either for health, weight loss, or simply a happier relationship with food.
If so, my Youtube videos will help you make further progress. In “Breaking the yo-yo dieting cycle” I explain how behavioural science can help you take a systematic approach to changing your eating habits, so you eat more in tune with your appetite and can ditch the dull foods and lose weight for good.
A (big) problem with diets
If you had a cluttered drawer or closet, and wanted to make some space, it’s the unwanted bits you’d put in the trash, not your most loved possessions.
One of the really tough things about most diets is having to give up the tastiest – your most favourite – foods.
This means self-imposed restriction. Unappealing and difficult.
Because it’s so hard, it’s only going to be a matter of time before you’re tempted by the foods you’ve always loved. Whether that’s crusty bread when you’ve gone Keto, or ice cream when you’re low fat.
Going by what most people who’ve followed numerous diets tell me, it’s the deprivation that kills each diet. Whatever the approach, cutting our favourite treats is absolutely not a recipe for success.
Would you like help with weight loss?
You can apply for a free Eating Pattern Analysis call with me, to identify your own Unhelpful Eating Habits and make a plan for how to change them, to achieve weight loss or simply a happier relationship with food.
Photo by Alex for Unsplash