NUTRITION - Have an unhealthy eating habit that you’d like to kick ... try this!

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Summary - 

Want to kick your after dinner treat or maybe you struggle with the 3:30pm pick-me-up? Regardless of whatever eating habit you’ve adopted, believe me when I say, there’s a good chance that I’ve struggled with it too at some point throughout my life. In this episode, I share some of the strategies that I’ve used in the past to break-free from any unhealthy eating habits.

Things I Mention - 

  • How to recognise the difference between emotional eating/ self-sabotage and a habit. 

  • Why willpower is rarely the solution to kick any unhealthy eating habits long-term.

  • How Mehmet Oz (MD) helped me break-free from eating habits, not by getting rid of them though … 

  • Why constantly tweaking and re-adjusting any unhealthy habits is key to positive change.

PLUS, I explain just how long it takes for any new habits to form and become a part of your new routine.

Links & Helpful Resources - 

Make sure you hit SUBSCRIBE so you don’t miss out on any of my practical tips & tricks and if you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a rating and a review? Thanks! 

As an overweight child and someone who has battled with weight fluctuations for most of their life, it's safe to say that I've had my fair share of unhealthy eating habits in the past. Even today, with my weight having remained quite consistent, I still find the odd habit creeping back in ... the big difference though, is that now I am able to recognise when a certain behavior becomes a habit and I know what I need to do to turn the situation around before I lose control. 

A lot of women I’ve worked with struggle with eating treats or snacks after dinner and they are well aware that this is one of the main reasons as to why they aren’t achieving their health goals. Now, it’s all well and good to say “if you’re aware of it, then just stop doing it” but we all know how hard a habit is to break. 

I also use the term “unhealthy eating habit” with caution because I’m mindful of the repercussions for labeling certain behaviours healthy vs unhealthy. For the purpose of this episode though, I’m sharing how I was able to break my own habit of eating after dinner each night which for the most part, isn’t necessarily considered unhealthy however there were a few red flags which indicated to me that what I was doing was leaning more towards the unhealthy spectrum and they were the following - 

  • I started making excuses and hiding what I was eating

  • I’d go to the effort of driving to the local store just to buy chocolate if I  had none at home

  • I found myself going back back for seconds & thirds - I was on the verge of binge eating

  • I was not physically hungry yet still wanting to eat

For me, one of the most empowering shifts came from realising and acknowledging that eating after dinner was just a habit. I wasn’t doing it for any emotional or self-sabotaging reasons which can be really hard to identify when you first start to unpack why you’re doing what you’re doing. I was able to cement however that for me, this was just a habit because it was happening at the same time every single day. During the day, I’d eat breakfast and lunch and easily go about my day feeling satisfied without any need or want to over-indulge. Come night time though and as soon as I put my kids to bed, well, that was a different story … 

A few years ago, I listened to a lecture by Mehmet Oz (MD) which really struck a chord with me because without even knowing how or what I had done in the past to break any unhealthy eating habits, he managed to explain what had always worked for me so perfectly which was a real light bulb moment for me. 

Mehmet went on to explain that you really can't get rid of a bad habit, you have to replace a bad habit. So you put a new habit into place, shove the other one out of the way and you begin to use your new habits. The key to doing this successfully though is that you have to keep modifying the new habit until it makes sense or until you are at a place where you are happy, accepting and satisfied with this new habit and this is where most people come unstuck.

Further to this, Mehmet also believes that in order to break a habit, you need to give the new habit at least 2 weeks to work its magic (though I have read studies that show that deeply engrained habits - ones that you may have had for years can take up to 60 days to crack). Let’s stick with Mehmets suggestion though of 2 weeks simply for ease of explaining his concept. If you find that you’re still struggling after 2 weeks, then you need to change tactics and admit that perhaps you were too strict with how you tried to modify the first habit. From my experience working 1:1 with women, I’ve found the smallest change to yield the best results. For example, if like me, you’re trying to break a habit of eating after dinner by replacing it with something other than eating, like a warm bath for instance, the chance of you breaking this habit is less likely long-term. Further to this, the goal should always be, as it is with any personal transformation, to aim for a very small improvement either by  doing something 10% less or choosing something 10% healthier and keep tweaking this new habit by 10% each time. Jump too quickly and there’s a great chance that you’ll end up right where you started. 

I can confidently say that I have unknowingly until recent years, used this exact method for a lot of different habits that I’ve created, not just those related to food however food habits do tend to be a common occurrence for me. Let me share two examples of how I’ve used Mehmets theory in the past. They are both related to chocolate because let’s face it, a lot of women can relate to this - 

My go-to chocolate today is 90% dark chocolate. It’s the type of chocolate I now prefer and would choose above all else. Also, I’m not saying that dark chocolate is healthy but it's certainly the healthier option when comparing all the different types of chocolate on the market but I just want to make it known that this preference for dark chocolate didn’t happen overnight. Up until my mid twenties at least, I was a white chocolate kind-of-girl and ever so slowly over the years, I've altered my taste buds from white chocolate to milk chocolate to now well and truly sitting on the dark side of the fence. Back in the day though, I would have turned my nose up at dark chocolate because it would have been much too bitter for my liking. Anyway, the point of the story is that using Mehmet's theory, I was slowly but surely able to take my less healthy preference for white chocolate and change it ever so slightly to milk chocolate. From here, and once I was confident that white chocolate was no longer my go-to, I replaced milk chocolate with the lowest % of dark chocolate and weaned my way slowly of milk chocolate to dark. I then, slowly just increased the percentage of cacao over time from 70% to 90% 

Now with this in mind, let’s go back to my habit of eating after dinner because despite it being 90% dark chocolate that I was eating, it was those unhealthy behaviours that concerned me the most, so this is how I’ve applied Mehmet’s theory again within the last few months. So rewind a good 4-5 months and there I am - kids are in bed, tv is on and I’m sitting on the couch eating dark chocolate for probably the 68th night in a row after sneaking said chocolate past my husband. I’ve just eaten a decent sized dinner though, so I know it’s actually physically impossible for me to be hungry, so why am I eating? It was at this point that I realised that what started out as a harmless treat after dinner was becoming an unhealthy habit so I made the decision to trade my dark chocolate for a cup of cacao tea and a teaspoon of peanut butter (something I love equally as much however for whatever reason doesn’t have the same risk of becoming something I’d over-indulge on). I kept this habit up for a good month or so, I then tweaked and continued to tweak until recently, I became aware that I had kicked my dark chocolate fix and had actually achieved a health goal that I’d had in the back of my mind for a really long time. This is not to say that I'll never eat dark chocolate again because I definitely will - it's my treat of choice but eating the same thing, every day out of habit and then noticing some of those unhealthy behaviours was the real problem in my eyes.

Annd just an FYI - I recently included this as part of my Monthly Favourites which is an email I send out once a month to my email subscribers where I share my Fashion, Nutrition & Wellbeing favourites but the tea I mentioned before was The Crazy Good Cacao Tea by T2 and it was a game-changer for me. This episode is in no way sponsored by T2 (I wish it was!) but that particular tea tastes like a warm cup of chocolate and this is coming from someone who isn’t a big tea drinker. I’ll link it in the show notes. 

So perhaps you’ve got to the end of this episode and you know you’re doing something that could very well be just the thing that’s holding you back, try using Mehmet’s theory yourself and see how it works for you. Remember the goal is to start with very small tweaks, smaller than you think and I have no doubt that slowly but surely, you’ll kick it - Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was your unhealthy habit so take it slow and let the theory work its magic. 

Elisha CasagrandeBrisbane Personal Trainer, Brisbane Health Coach, FEEL BE LOOK, Womens Confidence, Confidence, IIN Health Coach, Healthy Eating, Mehmet Oz, Emotional Eating, Self-Sabotage, Habitual Eating, Eating Habits, Unhealthy Eating, Chocolate, Crazy Good Cacao, T2