Prepare For Weight Loss, Part 4: Starting New Habits
You already have a number of good habits that support your health and make your life more enjoyable, productive, and efficient. For example, you brush your teeth and bathe regularly, put away clean clothes in particular spots, pay bills on time, get up and go to work every day, wear your seat belt, put your keys or purse in one place when you get home, balance your checkbook periodically.
At one point, these habits took much more effort than they do now. But you decided they were the right thing to do, made them a priority, practiced them at first, made a conscious effort to perform them on schedule, and repeated them over time. All this required discipline. That’s how good habits become part of your lifestyle, part of you. Over time, your habits require much less effort and hardly any thought. You just do it.
Your decision to lose fat permanently means that you must establish some new habits, such as regular exercise and reasonable food restriction. You’ve already demonstrated that you have self-discipline. The application of that discipline to new behaviors will support your commitment and willpower.
December 9th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Thanks Dr. Parker.
I think new habits are key and they don’t set in overnight.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I see your approach is more like “psychological” rather than “hormonal” as I go along the series
And that’s for sure - new habits will have to be put in place forever (or at least for how long one wants to keep one’s new reduced weight on)
December 13th, 2008 at 11:26 am
zbiggy, I wish I had more time to devote to the issue of establishing new habits and extinguishing the old bad ones. Others have covered it in great detail, however.
I once heard a psychologist say that people don’t change until it’s more painful to continue the old way than it is to change.
The problem with bad nutrition habits is that it may be 30 years before the pain starts. By then, it may be too late.
-Steve