A few months ago I decided that I would try to reintroduce a healthy habit to my life each week to help myself get through the early months of winter. With the new year here, I'm finished with the weekly challenges. Some worked out much better than others, but with each one I learned something. For example, last weeks challenge (daily guided visualizations) was a massive flop because without a sense of routine over the holidays, I just didn't find time to fit in a new habit. This reminded me that sometimes the timing of a healthy change is integral to it succeeding. When patients are contemplating more drastic changes to their life and diet, I always recommend that they try to set a date when they know there will be minimal obstacles to their success. I learned that sometimes even smaller changes need careful timing.
I was reminded of all the challenges to making changes. The biggest for myself is forgetfulness. It's all well and good to say that I'll do something daily, but many days I don't remember that I was supposed to do it until I turn off the light to go to sleep. I found that tricks like the rubber band in the shower to remind me to end on cold were helpful. For some of the things that I didn't have such an easy trick for, I realized that the main thing I needed was to be easy on myself for forgetting and promise that I would try harder the next day. Building new habits is as hard as breaking old ones, so a little forgiveness goes a long way in figuring out how to make long term changes.
I also learned as it went along that some habits would stick easier than others, but if a week of focusing on something led to me doing it a few more times each week, that still left me farther ahead than not trying at all.
What's next? I'd like to start working on longer term changes. I found I had a lot of ideas for healthy habits that needed more than a week to see real benefit. I'm planning to take a few months to really focus on my eating patterns in late January, mainly to work on reducing some of the foods I know I'm sensitive to, so look for a blog post about that around the week of the 21st.
I was reminded of all the challenges to making changes. The biggest for myself is forgetfulness. It's all well and good to say that I'll do something daily, but many days I don't remember that I was supposed to do it until I turn off the light to go to sleep. I found that tricks like the rubber band in the shower to remind me to end on cold were helpful. For some of the things that I didn't have such an easy trick for, I realized that the main thing I needed was to be easy on myself for forgetting and promise that I would try harder the next day. Building new habits is as hard as breaking old ones, so a little forgiveness goes a long way in figuring out how to make long term changes.
I also learned as it went along that some habits would stick easier than others, but if a week of focusing on something led to me doing it a few more times each week, that still left me farther ahead than not trying at all.
What's next? I'd like to start working on longer term changes. I found I had a lot of ideas for healthy habits that needed more than a week to see real benefit. I'm planning to take a few months to really focus on my eating patterns in late January, mainly to work on reducing some of the foods I know I'm sensitive to, so look for a blog post about that around the week of the 21st.
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