Freedom around food - do you know your triggers?

When you are trying to lose weight, it is common to think you have no self control. To make the effort to lose weight into a venture as large as turning the titanic. 

I believe our brain does this to overwhelm us so that we don’t create any change. It is almost like the old saying, quit while you are ahead! Our brain wants to blow it up, make it seem insurmountable so we don’t even start.

When I look at all of the times that I have created change, or followed a plan there are 2 consistent things that I did. The first was having a vision of where I wanted to get to. Something that inspired me, that excited me. The second was a weekly plan which had me gradually tackle various elements one by one. 

I have found over the years, if I am trying to integrate a new habit I make sure I schedule it for an amount of time that I think I would be crazy not to be able to achieve.

So for example I have been wanting to exfoliate and moisturise my body each week. You would think this should be easy enough, but at the end of the day I feel exhausted and for some reason think the extra 10 minutes it would take is too much…So recently I have started to schedule exfoliate and moisturise twice in my week. 

I work out the time and also the day I am most likely to do it, so when I am not too tired or have other things on and then I just commit to getting it done. I could stretch to 3, hell most people are able to do this daily, however for me I know that I can commit to two since it is a new habit and by keeping it low, it keeps my brain from shifting into overwhelm and not doing it even once.

When it comes to weight loss, we have our hormones, what we eat and how we move. We have our desire, our habits and our triggers. 

I define a trigger as a stimuli that then sets off a reaction. Something that elicits an emotion which then sees you taking an action.

So for instance, when someone is yelling at me, I notice myself shutting down. I don’t engage, I don’t even hear what they say, I just feel my brain and body almost shut down, disengaging from the situation. This can be incredibly frustrating for the person who is yelling at me, as I don’t react like they expect. In fact I almost do the opposite in that externally I seem eerily calm and speak in a very monosyllabic way.

Another trigger for me is the smell of freshly cooked bread. Instantly this smell creates a feeling of desire in me. It reminds me of waking up at my parents house to freshly cooked bread. When I walk into bakeries I often marvel how the team members are not just sitting there constantly eating everything in sight.

When it comes to weight loss, you want to be aware of what your triggers are. To create any change we first need to bring awareness to what we are doing - often unconsciously. Once we have brought awareness to it, we can then decide if the action we takes serves us, or if we want to start taking an alternate action.

So how do you identify what your triggers are for eating? I want you to think of your day, think of the times when you are eating for reasons other than breakfast, lunch and dinner. Try and identify what prompted you to eat something? 

Was it a feeling of hunger in your stomach at 10.30am after the sugar crash of breakfast? Was it during a work webex when you noticed yourself getting frustrated or bored? Was it at 2pm after back to back meetings and no break? Was it when you were out for dinner with girlfriends?

Was it at 3.00pm because you were feeling exhausted and needed some energy? Was it after dinner when you craved something sweet?

Did you feel like a glass of wine after seeing two people enjoy a glass on tv?

Your day will be filled with triggers, some will come via a smell, some visual, some physical, some mental. The important thing is being really conscious about what your triggers are. When do you reach for food at times other than your main meal? When do you eat for reasons other than true hunger? 

This week I encourage you to think of those moments you are eating and list down what the trigger was. What prompted you to eat and the choose the food you ate? Once you have your list, then question each trigger. Ask yourself is it something that serves you, or that is getting in you way?

Starting to bring these to the surface will then enable you to assess whether you want to keep doing what you are doing, or start taking different actions. 

It all starts by building up your awareness, making the unconscious conscious.