In 2 days, it’s Halloween, but I am sure you have already been around the candy. It may be sitting on your counter or in the lunchroom at work.
If you are anything like I was, there was no way that I could stop myself from eating the candy and most of the time, it is was not just one piece; it was many!
I remember there were times that the urge to have it was so strong that in front of others, I had one piece, but when no one was around, that was when I found myself stuffing a few extras back.
What I didn’t know back then was this was normal, there was nothing wrong with me. Giving in and eating the candy was something I did all the time in the past this was my habit, so how could I expect anything different if that was the way I had done it for so long.
I had to change my habit of how I always gave in to eating the candy before I could stop doing it.
I am not going to tell you that you have to stop having the candy; what I want you to know is that yes, you can have candy and still lose weight.
What I want to help you with is how you can have candy and not lose control.
To start, if you want candy, you must first put it on your 24-hour plan.
When I work with my clients, they can have whatever they want, there is nothing off-limits, but they must plan what they want to have 24 hours ahead of time.
For me, in the beginning, I was so resistant to writing out ahead of time what I was to eat, this was because it felt to me like just another diet. The reason why it felt like a diet was that I was putting all the foods that I thought I “should” eat instead of realistically what it is I would eat.
What I mean by realistic is that if I knew I always had 2 cookies in the afternoon, I put those on there until I decided to cut down or cut them out. To expect myself to be going from every day, eating them to never again was not realistic, so no wonder following my plan never worked.
The other thing about 24-hour planning and then journalling after about did you follow it or not and why this gives you data to see what you can do differently next time.
The next step I want you to take is before you ever see the candy, I want you to visualize yourself picking it up and then putting it right back down. Really think about it being in your hand, what you will be thinking, what you will feel, explore all of that and then see yourself putting it right back down.
Doing this is about helping you retrain your brain. You need to practice seeing this in your mind so that when you are in the moment of grabbing that candy, what you practiced is now your new habit of what to do next.
You have to help catch yourself in the act before you stop the action, that is why telling yourself “just don’t eat it” never works.
When I first started working on not giving in to eating my kids Halloween candy, there was no way I could stop myself, but because I did the visualizing ahead of time, I would take a bite and then end up throwing the rest in the garbage. I was able to do this because I was aware in that moment of eating it, and that put me in my conscious brain. From my conscious brain, I was able to decide that it wasn’t worth it in the end to eat it all.
Our unconscious brain doesn’t have goals or reasoning, so the only way to get to the place of not eating what we didn’t plan to eat or overeating is engaging our conscious brain more than our unconscious brain.
When you start becoming aware, you still might choose to eat, but then you are choosing to eat it on purpose, not out of habit.
Reach out and book a free strategy call if you know that you need support in making the changes to end the giving in to the Halloween candy once and for all.
Click here to book your free strategy call.
Hugs,
Karen
P.S. Click here to join a community of Successful Women losing the Weight For The Last Time.
