The Key to Consistently Reach Our Healthy Eating Goals

Why is it so hard to consistently reach our healthy eating goals?  There are so many compelling reasons to eat healthily. Eating a well-balanced diet helps us boost our immune system and ward off illness, sleep better and have more energy, keep our vital organs healthy, balance our blood sugar, and store less of our food as fat. 

If we intellectually know all the reasons eating healthy is so important, why do we struggle to stay consistent with our healthy eating goals?

You might think you lack willpower or have no self-control, but the real reason you abandon your healthy eating plan over and over is STRESS.

Stress throws us into The Chronic Stress Loop which causes us to continually make the same unhealthy decisions even if we have just decided to eat healthier.

Stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop

Let’s take a closer look at how Eating Well Blockers sabotage our best intentions over and over.

Eating Well Blocker:  Stressors

There are five main categories of stressors that throw us into the Chronic Stress Loop:  

• Daily Stress: traffic, finances, work, poor sleep, children
• Environmental Triggers: vacation, seeing food, time of day, pairing
• Stressful Events: death, illness, moving, divorce, unemployment
• Stressful Emotions: unsatisfied, anxious, bored, frustrated, overwhelmed, guilty
• Stressful Relationships: humiliated, rejected, judged, excluded, unappreciated, unsupported

Once we are in a stressed state it becomes our brain’s primary goal to get us back into a relaxed state.  Our brain will activate our subconscious thoughts and beliefs based on our values and core experiences that help us justify why it’s okay to abandon our healthy eating goals. (sometimes these thoughts activate cravings) 

Even though we aren’t always aware of these thoughts, they control between 80-90% of our conscious actions. Once the stress and subconscious blocks are activated, we rely on our default habit to soothe ourselves.

If you are here, then your default habit is likely overeating or not prioritizing habits that support your healthy eating goals like meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking healthy meals, exercise, self-care and sleep.

If the stress has been occurring for a while, a manifestation like extra weight or guilt for not sticking to your healthy eating plan begins to present itself.  The extra weight or guilt becomes an additional stressor and you get stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop.

Stressful Emotion:  Overwhelm

Let’s take a look at how the common stressor of feeling overwhelmed can derail our healthy eating goals.

Stressor:  You have a million things to do and something else unexpectedly gets added to your already too full plate.  

Subconscious Beliefs: 

Your subconscious beliefs and thoughts get activated.  

• I can’t handle this.
• This always happens to me.
• I am not good enough.
• I never have enough time.
• I am such a mess.

Subconscious Thoughts:  

• I don’t have time to eat a healthy lunch.
• Eating healthy is so hard.
• Forget it, I’ll just grab a bag of chips.
• Just this once won’t hurt.
• I deserve this.

These subconscious thoughts and beliefs drive us to make an unhealthy decision to soothe our stress.  So sticking to your healthy eating goals has become another stressor and is even more difficult.

Default Habit:

Once these subconscious thoughts and beliefs get activated, you will eventually rely on your default habit to soothe yourself.  This might look like:

• Ordering take out even though you have food at home to cook.
• Stopping at a coffee shop for your favorite drink and doughnut.
• Grabbing a handful of candy that you have been resisting all day long.
• Sitting on the couch at the end of the day with a bag of chips. 

Unwanted Manifestation:

Eventually, this default habit will manifest as extra weight or guilt for not sticking to your healthy eating plan.  The extra weight or guilt becomes an additional stressor and you get stuck in The Chronic Stress Loop and stress escalates.

How do we begin to break out of The Chronic Stress Loop? 

Breaking Out of the Chronic Stress Loop

There are eight steps that allow us to tap into our brainpower vs. willpower so we can break out of The Chronic Stress Loop and become a Peaceful Eater.

Step 1:  Identify Stressors 

Step 2:  Create Healthy Replacement Habits

Step 3:  Create Peaceful Eating Habits

Step 4:  Identify Subconscious Blocks

Step 5:  Remove Sabotaging Subconscious Thoughts and Beliefs 

Step 6:  Reprogram Brain with Peaceful Eating Thoughts and Beliefs

Step 7:  Identify Core Events and Values at the Root of the Subconscious Blocks

Step 8:  Remove, Release and Rewire Core Events and Values 

Identify Stressors:  The first step is to identify your personal Stressors.  Utilizing the five main categories brainstorm your personal stressors.

• Daily Stress
• Environmental Triggers
• Stressful Events
• Stressful Emotions
• Stressful Relationships

Pick a Healthy Replacement Habit:

Picking the right replacement habit is dependent on the stressor, default habit you use to soothe that stress and where you are when the stress occurs.

If you are really angry about something, then exercising can be a great way to release that negative emotion.  However, if you are at work, that might not be possible. Maybe a relaxing breathing sequence would be a better replacement habit.

If you get triggered by seeing or smelling food, then brushing your teeth might be a good replacement habit.

Although I use numerous strategies to help my clients return to a relaxed state, my favorite tool that works beautifully for all stressors is the Emotional Freedom Technique or tapping.  

The Emotional Freedom Technique:

The Emotional Freedom Technique is based on lightly tapping on meridian points similar to acupuncture. When you tap on these points, a relaxation signal is sent to your brain. This allows you to safely and easily release the stress, which helps you feel at ease and your craving or desire to quit decreases.

Replacing our default habit with the healthier replacement habit of tapping quickly calms the stress.  Once the stress is decreased, our brain knows it is safe to relax and our craving for food or to skip something healthy decreases.  (If you are interested in learning how to tap, go HERE to learn more.)

The Struggle is Real

While this sounds great, in reality,  replacing a negative default habit with a new healthier habit is challenging because it feels more comfortable and safer to do what we have always done.  

Our brain is always scanning our subconscious mind looking for the quickest and easiest way to reduce stress and automates the action.  

Even though we want to make the change, in the moment, it just doesn’t happen. Our subconscious takes over, and we do the same thing over and over again even if we consciously decided to make the healthier choice.

An Actual Solution

That’s why identifying stressors and choosing healthy replacement habits are only the first two steps in becoming a Peaceful Eater.

In order to get our brain on board with our healthy replacement habits we need to:

• Automate Peaceful Eating Habits
• Identify Subconscious Blocks
• Remove Sabotaging Subconscious Thoughts and Beliefs 
• Reprogram Brain with Peaceful Eating Thoughts and Beliefs
• Identify Core Events and Values at the Root of the Subconscious Blocks
• Remove, Release and Rewire Core Events and Values 

Once we identify our personal Eating Well Blockers and rewire our brain with peaceful eating habits, thoughts and beliefs the journey to our feel-good weight becomes pleasurable and therefore sustainable.  

Working on identifying your stressors and implementing healthy replacement habits is a great place to start your journey to becoming a Peaceful Eater.  However, if you are interested in learning more about all the steps on the peaceful eating path go HERE to learn more about The Peaceful Eating Method.

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