Why is it so difficult to change your habits permanently?

You want to get rid of your struggle with food altogether, but you keep slipping back into the same old pattern!

Switching your habits up is not that hard on paper.

All you need is a specific plan, follow through, and then testing and tweaking the plan until you reach your best health and weight.

The amount of energy it takes to follow a plan and eat off plan is the same.

Eating and prepping a salad takes the exact energy as making up a bowl of crack.

(Heat butter and marshmallows in the microwave, mix with Chex cereal, add in peanut butter and melted chocolate chips. Mix all together and inhale food rapidly in the corner of your kitchen!)

Or, make a boring salad and eat at the table.

Doing either one is the same amount of time and energy!

So why is changing to the boring salad so hard?

It's the thought and emotional work!

Your brain freaks out and goes into the land of resistance.

Resistance to change is a protective mechanism in your brain.

It thinks you are going to die if you overhaul your eating habits.

Remember your neuropathways are dying...

Re-wiring your brain is the point.

You want to create new healthy thought patterns!

When you build new a new thought pattern which becomes a habit, the old thought pattern dies off.

As you practice the new thought in your brain, the old one will eventually fade away.

Feeling what you don't want to feel and ultimately changing your habitual thought and emotional patterns feel like dying.

No lie.

You will have cognitive dissonance as you let go of the old way of thinking and practice a new way of thinking.

Holding two conflicting thoughts is very uncomfortable for your brain.

This can feel like withdrawal, depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, and just plain weird.

Changing neuropathways from outdated efficient thinking to new clunky thinking takes time and effort.

Your brain does not want to change its efficient, default way of thinking.

Even if it is killing you!

Your brain automates thoughts and beliefs and wants to keep them automated, which is efficiency.

Your brain doesn’t care about health and well-being. It only cares about efficiency, safety, and pleasure!

Most people won’t willingly sign up to process intense emotions. But if you are willing to process them you can permanently change!

I just went through another shift, and it was miserable. I had to deep breathe through the emotions that felt like I was never going to make it.

I wanted to quit!

All of my old thoughts came up!

These thoughts are never pretty and feel extremely painful.

I want to throw in the towel.

At this point, most do and quit.

When you quit, you will get the relief from your onslaught of old programming and negative thinking.

If changing your current patterns is going to bring up the same old insecurities and pain why would you be willing to do it?

Because staying the same eventually feels worse than growth and improvement.

Staying the same feels way safer and more comfortable, and it is.

But safety emotionally in this day and age, is precisely what is killing all of us long-term.

It is what robs us of our dreams. It blocks us from our highest health.

All because we don't want to feel an emotion.

I coach my clients continually that yes, you can feel any emotion.

Any!

Our brains are working perfectly. They are protective, efficient and very outdated.

When you decide to change, your brain will offer all of your painful thoughts from your past in an attempt to keep you safe.

Your brain thinks familiarity is safety.

There is only one way to move past the emotions and gain control over them, and folks that is through them.

Process and feel all your emotions to get to the other side.

Getting rid of the food struggle that doesn't matter and then using your energy for what you genuinely care about is the best feeling in the world!

It feels like you have conquered the world! And guess what??

You have!!