How I Beat Snack Sabotage

Hands up who has been sabotaging their success by eating ‘cheat food’ as a secret snack?? Ahhhh….chocolate….chippies……cookies…..I had a love hate relationship with those bad boys……until just a few months ago……SO: HOW DO YOU CHANGE THE HABIT OF A LIFETIME??

I was talking recently with my lovely friends Paula (who has lost more than 30 kilos in weight) and Rachael (a mortgage broker, competitive athlete and yoga legend) about food. We’re all into healthy eating, movement and lower carb living and I realised from our chat just how much I LOVE SNACKS. Snacks however, can be the downfall of most diets as they often add ’empty calories’ to your daily eating plan, meaning high calories, no nutrition and often no feeling of fullness!

I’m a grazer by nature. It’s very common for me to pop past the pantry and grab a teaspoon of peanut butter or a slice of cheese from the fridge. Back in the day however, my snacks would be your typical cheat food: a chocolate biscuit (or several) or a handful of chippies (or a whole bag) and I realised in that moment what has actually been the key to my weight loss success:

It wasn’t my behaviour that changed: it was simply my choices.

When it comes to a successful ‘diet’ (hate that word by the way…) simply NOT having ‘cheat food’ available, limits your choices and options. Simple huh? Consciously do it for a period of time and you essentially create new neural pathways in the brain.

You see: 90% of your day is governed by your ‘automatic pilot’. It’s the neural pathways that control that ‘automatic pilot’ which governs our subconscious mind, resulting in our choices and behaviours.

If your automatic pilot is hardwired to choose chippies and chocolate biscuits, that’s what you’ll have in your pantry without even realising it.

After 30 days of consciously making different choices, you create new neural pathways which essentially ‘take over’ when it comes to decision making time in the form of new automatic habits, such as which snacks you choose to purchase when you’re out shopping.

IT IS ACTUALLY THAT SIMPLE!

My new habits include peanut butter, nuts or cheese, and my own amazing recipes which are super tasty and suit my low carb lifestyle. This has most certainly been one of the secrets to my success.

Like I said, I love to graze and it keeps both my blood sugars and my energy levels stable. I simply consciously changed my choices, committed to that concept for a certain length of time and now it’s programmed into my automatic pilot.

I’ve done it for so long now that even though there are chippies in the cupboard for others in my household, I would never even consider that as a snack option anymore. I’ve moved from ‘cheats’ to ‘treats’ that serve my body and my health and I’m loving the difference!

So, what can you consciously change in your brain and your pantry this week?

FYI: if you need help with re-programming, let’s connect!