How to change habits

Why is it so hard to change our habits?

Don’t give up. It is confusing, I know, because there is so much information out there, yet we know so little about how to take better care of ourselves. Additionally, we don’t even know what we need, so we jump on one diet after the next, only for the diet to fail us. Then off we go to the next, with a slump in between where we feel like it will never work and we will forever be stuck. Well, you can change.

Habits:

Knowing what to eat is one thing; actually doing it is different! How often have you promised yourself that tomorrow you’ll do “better,” only to realize at the end of the day that you forgot or simply did not follow through? Did you think there was something wrong with you or that you were weak? Not true! It’s only that the nature of habits (good and bad) is mindless and automatic, so we need mindfulness to be able to change them. If you’re beating yourself up about your inability to change, you can stop now. To change our habits we need to identify and get clear about what’s important to us, what motivates us, and create action-steps toward a nourished life. Habits are what makes-it-happen. It is how we get healthy and deal with hunger and cravings, lose weight, stop overeating and change our emotional eating patterns. It is what makes us stop feeling blah and gets us to change… so you can enjoy living healthfully, sustainably.

The thing about habits is that they are automatic. 95% of our actions are unconscious, meaning only 5% result from conscious choices! To change our habits, we first have to become mindful of our patterns and become more familiar with the choices we are making.

Mindfulness:

Mindfulness means that we’ll get to know how our thoughts affect us. Becoming more mindful about how our thoughts shape our actions is how we can recognize our existing mindless habits keep us stuck so we can create new mindful ones that will naturally empower us to move forward. For us to get unstuck we have to shift our focus to what we want instead of what is missing and with that we can create a clear vision of what we really want in life, how to be truly nourished and get the tools to make it a reality.

We have an estimated 70,000 thoughts per day, and 70% of them are negative. About 90% of our thoughts are repeat thoughts from the day before. To change our lives, we need to get in touch with our thought patterns. When you become aware of your thoughts, you can learn to shift them and make the choices that work best for you. Mindfulness is essential to building the awareness that will empower you to make good choices.

Food-knowledge:

The basis for knowing what to eat is to know how your food choices affect you, but you also need to know how to eat what and why. So often we eat completely disconnected from how our bodies feel and we try to match up feeling good with the food we are supposed to eat, rather than learning how to eat in a way that feels good. There are apps and tools that tell us what to eat, but essentially it is our very own body wisdom that holds the key.

When you truly understand how food works in your body, how it affects you physically and emotionally, you will also know why you want to choose one food over another. This means learning why and how to choose your food rather than attempting to follow a diet, you can navigate your options and find your personal food-style. That is what sustainable eating really is. The knowledge I share in my sessions, in the book and the online course is all based on the years I’ve spent studying food and its healing power, merging all the new information out there with real client experiences, and seeing the results of how eating according to what we truly need, changes our relationship both with food and with ourselves, giving us a whole new path to nourishment.

Re-train your mind

My online course is designed for you as an individual and structured into nine steps following the pathway of the bagua, which is based on the ancient wisdom and healing path of Chinese medicine. Each step contains three key elements for transformation: knowledge, mindfulness, and habit shifting, which you will learn how to apply to you. Integrating these elements, each step builds on the one before it. This allows you to experience a process of change that follows your body’s natural processes and functions. You will be given two weeks to complete each step, although you can always take longer if you like.

The online course will teach you not only what to eat and why, but also how to re-train your thoughts, shift your mind, and change your eating habits.

I hope you will join me for the online program, stop the dieting madness and learn to take better care of YOU in a sustainable way full of self-nourishing habits 🙂