Emotional Eating Health

How to Forever Put a Stop to Diet-Busting Triggers

February 26, 2009
By J White

Have you ever thought along these lines? “This time it’s going to be different. This time when I start my diet, I’m going to stay on it and nothing is going to get in my way.”

You have to admit, you did sound strong and forceful when you said it, but why is it that you always seem to slide back into your old bad habits?

It’s not as though you didn’t mean what you were saying. You had every intention of keeping your word. In this instance things just happened and you had to start over. Again.

Well, the good news is that it may not entirely be your fault. In fact psychology teaches us that once we get in the habit of doing something, it can be difficult to change.

As an analogy, think of your habit as a giant boulder barreling down a steep hill. In a situation such as this, only a few super strong-minded individuals can stop the boulder by sheer will alone. For the rest of us, we’re going to need some help.

And here’s some good news. The rest of us can learn to stop that boulder by simply doing one thing: becoming aware of what triggers those habits.

Like pollen can trigger an allergy attack, human actions can trigger you to react in a particular manner as well. For instance, being pulled over by a cop may trigger fear, whereas a baby’s smile may trigger happiness.

In that same manner, sadness may trigger you to over-indulge in eating to feel better.

Even though each example has a different context, they all share the same pattern. That is an activating event occurs and a reaction to that event follows.

To become aware of the triggers that cause you to overindulge, you simply have to become more conscious of your personal eating triggers.

Many of your triggers are easy to recognize. For example, everyone usually eats during certain periods of the day. Like clockwork, you either become hungry or just have the desire to eat.

A simple way that I found helpful in breaking this pattern is to eat a healthy snack before that time rolls around. With food already in your stomach, chances are you’ll make better choices when the time comes for you to eat.

Of course, the stronger triggers are emotional in content. In these situations you feel you just have to have that piece of dessert no matter how much your logical mind says otherwise.

For those circumstances, here’s a little technique that comes from NLP that you can try. First, imagine a food you dislike. Come on. Just give it a quick try.

Now imagine a food you love, but isn’t the best item to be eating to lose weight, a rich dessert for example.

Once you have this second image in mind, mentally move it to the first image. If you find this difficult or unsettling, good. This is exactly what’s suppose to happen.

The aim of this exercise is to get you to associate unpleasant emotions with your diet-busting food. Once this happens, the next time you think about it, you’ll trigger an unpleasant feeling, which will hopefully discourage your desire to eat it.

This technique works best when you repeat it several times quickly in your mind. The more you do it the better. And don’t wait until the feeling hits you. It’s best to practice before the triggering event occurs.

You can use this technique with any food you want to stop eating. In fact some therapist use it to stop habits such as nail biting and it has also been shown to work with phobias as well.

So, to make your diet plan more easy to follow through with, become aware of your personal eating triggers. Once you are conscious of them, use the techniques described in this article to lessen or hopefully to totally wipe out their impact on your diet.

Share and Enjoy: