Breaking Bad Habits Using Mindfulness

How can we BREAK BAD HABITS using mindfulness?

Last time, episode 1 in this series, I defined mindfulness and applied it to reducing anxiety and stress.  

Again, mindfulness is the awareness of the present moment from a place of curiosity.  Instead of being judgmental, we become more objective...more curious...and even compassionate with whatever it is we find, even stuff we don’t like.

One of the many reasons people come into my office for counseling, is because they’ve tried to break a bad habit or pattern on their own, and despite their best efforts, they’re still hooked:

• This may be a destructive relationship pattern (like always chasing after the unavailable person or finding yourself in one-sided relationships),
• Or it could be difficulty managing your alcohol or drug use to the point where it becomes self-destructive, despite your best efforts.
• It ALSO may be yoyo dieting or yoyo exercising...vacillating between two opposite extremes and having an unhealthy relationship with food or exercise.  

EXAMPLE:  Yoyo Dieting

I’m gonna use the example of yoyo dieting, wanting to lose or gain weight, as it’s something most of us can relate to at one time or another in our lives.  There’s so much societal pressure to lose/gain weight, get fit, have ripped abs or some other body ideal. It’s challenging to have a good body image in this day and age.

It’s very easy to go drastic, and in ways that are not so healthy.  We may find ourselves in a habitual pattern of searching for the next best diet regime, doing it for a period of time, losing dramatic weight but then finding ourselves unable to sustain it...because ultimately it’s probably not very healthy for our bodies and our mind in the first place.

A natural byproduct of being too rigid, too perfectionistic or too limiting with anything — let alone our food intake — is that we often swing to the opposite extreme and then feel completely out-of-control.

So...what’s the antidote to yoyo dieting?  Using the tool of mindfulness, we can get to know our self-destructive habits, where they come from, and learn to be kinder and more compassionate with ourselves, like we would a best friend.

So let me take you through what this might look like.

1. Outer Circle:  Mindfulness of External Messages

 

Imagine for a moment, circles within a circle, and the outer circle being our external environment while the inner circle represents our inner life.  When it comes to yoyo dieting, I find it useful to start from the outer external environment. I have a helpful graphic about this, so check it out at www.livingmorefully.com/mindfulness/ along with the show notes for this episode.

Look at Past Influences:

While mindfulness is rooted in the present moment, it’s sometimes helpful to look at our past in order to better understand where our current thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviors around dieting come from.  This isn’t about getting stuck in past resentments or regrets but rather about having a deeper awareness of how we got here. This can help us have a greater felt sense of choice IN THE PRESENT MOMENT.

From a place of mindfulness, ask yourself some questions:

1. Why do you believe you should lose/gain weight?  
2. What messages did you receive about your body’s weight, shape or size growing up?  
3. What messages did you hear from your family of origin, peers, the media and society at large?
4. What actual experiences have you had where you started to believe that a certain body shape/size would get you more attention, love or validation?  
5. Did you get teased for not being society's ideal weight?  
6. Did you get shamed by a medical provider?
7. How often have you heard or told fat jokes?

Let’s recognize that the US weight loss market, at the time of this recording, is now worth 66 billion dollars….a record number, so we see dieting fads marketed ALL the time.

Instead of just analyzing these things from an intellectual perspective, using mindfulness allows us to connect the dots from our past experiences to how we formed our current beliefs.  

Look at Current Influences:

Also, mindfulness allows us to pay attention to how our current environment impacts our yoyo dieting and poor body image.

From a place of mindfulness, ask yourself some questions about your current environment:

1. What magazines, TV shows and other media do you currently consume?
2. What social media accounts do you follow and how do they impact you?
3. How does your behavior on dating or hookup apps influence your body image?
4. What messages do you hear currently about dieting from friends, family and co-workers?  

Take some time to notice how you digest images, and what assumptions you make about people or yourself based on these images.  This leads us to the inner circles of influence.

2. Inner Circles:  Mindfulness of Internal Messages

Next, it’s helpful to be mindful of our internal landscape.  Being mindful, we take ourselves off auto-pilot, and notice what’s going on inside, using our physical sensations as a guide.  If our thoughts/beliefs influence our feelings influence our behaviors (like yoyo dieting), then let’s start with our thoughts.

Thoughts/Beliefs:

Having just acknowledge all of the diet/body-related memories, external messages and how they’ve formed our self-limiting beliefs what happens in your physical body?  Notice the areas of tension/contraction, maybe numbness or disconnection, whatever is there, just allow it to be for right now.

What happens inside when you compare yourself to someone else, and judge yourself or others accordingly? If you observe a belief that you can only be worthy, loved or noticed if you look a certain way, notice how this shows up in your body.  Is there any jitteriness, paralysis or jumping-out-of-your-body like sensations that manifests in your body? Maybe shallow breathing or holding tension in your digestive area? Again, it’s important to watch this things with curiosity and without judgment.

Feelings:

Next, notice any associated feelings.  Do you feel fear, hurt, anger, apprehension, desperation or anything else as it relates to yoyo dieting or your body image?  Observe these feelings without having to DO anything about them just yet. First we need to know what’s going on before we can treat them.

Behaviors:

Give yourself some time to recognize your behaviors too.  What are your patterns with yoyo dieting? How long do you sustain certain diets and what percentage of the time are you in alignment with your goals?  Again, this is simple taking a measurement of where you’re currently at and your typical patterns, not analyzing things from a place of judgment. So if you start judging yourself, notice that from a greater place of neutrality.

3.  Compassion/Care Toward Your Body:

The third step to working with yoyo dieting is to be compassionate and caring of your body, soul and mind.  Whatever you discover, hold it with curiosity and kindness. When we’re compassionate with ourselves, we can take responsibility for how we’ve treated ourselves and others and do it differently.  When we beat ourselves up, we’re more likely to repeat vicious cycles of abuse.

Feed your body, mind and soul from a place of love and kindness.  Notice when your body is hungry AND when it’s full. Eating slow enough and mindfully we can reorient the body to these cues.

Instead of labeling certain foods good or bad, notice how each kind of food can have a different impact on your body and adjust accordingly, from a place of care not dogma.  Give yourself time to develop a taste for foods that have a higher nutrient value, usually foods that have a more direct relationship with the sun, the source of energy. This isn’t about being perfect, whatever that means for nutrition, just making sure you’re getting enough whole foods to help your body function well, heal, and have a good immune response.

Compassion in this area is about having good enough nutrition, exercise and sleep - to have a holistic perspective of what your body needs, not a number on a scale or a certain shape/size.

The 3 step process is:

1. Be mindful of external messages
2. Be mindful of internal messages and where they come from
3. Be compassionate and caring of your body, soul and mind