State of Readiness
Improving Your Eating Habits
- Create a list of your eating habits
- Highlight your bad habits
- Eating too fast, always cleaning your plate, eating when not hungry, eating while standing up, skipping meals
- Identify triggers that cause you to engage in those habits
- Opening up the cabinet and seeing your favorite snack food, sitting at home watching television, before or after a stressful meeting or situation at work, feeling bored or tired and thinking food might offer a pick-me-up
- Ask yourself:
- Why do I do this?
- Is there anything I can do to avoid the cue or situation?
- Am I truly hungry or just tired, anxious, or feeling an emotion besides hunger?
- Plan meals ahead of time and replace unhealthy habits with new, healthy ones
Weight Management Plan
- Make a commitment
- Sign a written contract committing to the process
- Amount of weight you want to lose
- The date you’d like to lose the weight by
- Dietary changes to establish healthy eating habits
- Plan for regular physical activity
- Sign a written contract committing to the process
- Take stock of where you are
- Writing down the reasons why you want to lose
- Post these reasons where they serve as a daily reminder
- Keep a “food diary” for a few days
- Become more aware of what you are eating and when you are eating
- Examine your current lifestyle
- Set realistic, short-term goals
- Two or three goals at a time
- Specific and realistic
- I will walk 15 minutes, 3 days a week for the first week
- Forgiving (reward your efforts)
- Identify resources for information and support
- Request family member/friend support
- Monitor your progress
- When setbacks happen, get back on track as quickly as possible. Also take some time to think about what you would do differently if a similar situation happens
- If you are consistently achieving a particular goal, add a new goal to help you continue on your pathway to success
- Be proud of your progress, but use non-food rewards