Identify your values to build better habits
Do you find it challenging to form habits that last? It may be because you haven't identified your values. And if you haven't, then you're not using values to guide your daily actions.
Do you find it challenging to form habits that last? It may be because you haven't identified your values. And if you haven't, then you're not using values to guide your daily actions.
Mindfulness supports habit change by helping us view "failure" non-judgmentally, with kindness and curiosity, making it easer start again. Mindfulness meditation offers a wonderful metaphor for this.
This post is part of my “Know Better, Do Better” series, in which I revisit an old blog post that makes me cringe because my thinking has evolved substantially since I wrote it.
It’s a refrain I hear a little too often: “I just need someone to tell me what to eat.” In today’s age of rampant nutrition confusion, I sort of get it—but I'm not your boss, I'm not your mother, and I'm definitely not the food police! As adults, we need to develop the skills necessary to make decisions about the things that are important to our health and happiness.
Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset can help you be healthier and happier, in part because it's tied to self-compassion, not self-esteem
Let me tell you a little story about motivation. I really, really want to get into graduate school and study nutrition. I want it so bad I can taste it. I want it so bad that I spent all weekend working organic chemistry problems. I want it so bad that I am skipping a family camping trip over the July 4 weekend so I can work organic chemistry problems.
Do you sometimes feel that you are pulled between two choices: one that satisfies an immediate impulse and one that you know in your heart of hearts will bring you greater benefits, even if you don't feel the effects immediately? When you feel that internal tug-of-war, ask yourself "What would be the kindest choice?"
Does your social life revolve around happy hours, restaurant dinners, lunch dates, coffee-and-pastry meetups and Sunday brunches? This can interfere with your healthy eating goals—but it doesn’t have to.
If you are making a commitment to eat healthier, that commitment shouldn’t get tossed out the window the minute you experience a change in your daily routine. It’s pretty easy to get in the habit of eating healthy at home and bringing healthy brown bag meals and snacks to work. What’s a bit trickier is extending those good habits to what you eat when traveling upends your normal routine.
If you work outside the home, a huge chunk of your day is spent in the workplace, which makes that your second most important food environment (after your home). It’s also an environment that can be unpredictable in what temptations it sends your way. If your job is stressful, and stress makes you want to eat, that’s one more factor you need to consider.
Why is it important to be master or mistress of your food environment? To begin with, most of us lead busy lives, with multiple demands on our time. If we get hungry, and healthy food isn’t easily accessible, but non-healthy food is, guess what we’re probably going to eat? That's right, the non-healthy, easy-to-grab food.
It’s a refrain I hear a little too often: “I just need someone to tell me what to eat.” In today’s age of rampant nutrition confusion, I sort of get it—but on another level I don’t get it, not at all. I'm not your boss, I'm not your mother, and I'm definitely not the food police. As adults, we need to be able to make decisions about the things that are important to our health and happiness.
Read enough books or websites that claim to have the secret to how to eat (for weight loss or simply for good health) and you’ll feel like you have whiplash. That’s because the truth is nowhere and everywhere.
Last weekend I was in Los Angeles for a culinary conference which meant (oh, the irony), that I had no time to do food prep for the coming week. This meant buying my work lunches (salads, but still) and coming up with dinners on the fly. This weekend, in the interest of making my food week go smoother, I got busy in the kitchen after breakfast.
Default behaviors reduce the number of food choices you have to make in a day (since the average person makes more than 200 food choices a day, reducing this number is a good idea, especially since our willpower wanes as the day goes on), while delays are a way of creating space between an impulse to eat (or do) something and the final action.
Do you make excuses as to why you can't exercise? So do I, occasionally, but after what I witnessed today, I will never make another exercise excuse...ever!
Happy New Year, everyone! I realized in the middle of my very busy day yesterday (lots of patients!) that this is the best, most hopeful New Year I've had in a while. To make 2016 even better, I've chosen a few intentions for the New Year.
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The workplace food environment can be perilous, especially as we move into the fall-winter "food holidays." It starts with Halloween, when everyone likes to bring their extra candy to work to "get it out of the house." That rolls right on to the pre-Christmas free-for-all (which doesn't even wait for Thanksgiving to be over, anymore).
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