I understand that you really want to change. I understand that you really want to rid yourself of some of these bad habits that are keeping you from the health and body you desire. Funnel this energy into mastering this strategy and you will be rewarded with real progress, not the typical dieting rollercoaster of 10 pounds lost in 10 days followed by 15 pounds gained over the next 60 days.
The Emotional Cake Spiral
Food cravings for pleasurable foods are emotional and are largely driven by emotion. Pleasure eating triggers chemical reward signals that aren’t present in hunger-driven eating.166
Knowing that food temptations are emotion-driven, consider this: What does the noble attempt to resist a food craving do to your emotional state? It increases the internal friction between your conscious and subconscious desires. This internal conflict amplifies your entire emotional state, which increases your subconscious desire to indulge.
You see the cake.
You want the cake.
You resist the cake at the thought of your weight loss goals.
You wrestle with the decision, intently resisting the cake (which increases the cake’s mindshare).
You feel stressed out, exhausted, and willpower-depleted from the high-stakes decision.
Hey, that cake looks like the perfect distraction!
You eat the first bite of cake, its sweetness rewards your brain, and you immediately feel relief and relax. But soon after, a new wave of stress and shame overwhelm over you. You lost the battle after fighting so hard, and now you feel worse than before.
As you feel more stress and shame, your desire for cake increases even more. Now you binge on the cake, because you feel like you’ve lost on so many levels and it doesn’t matter anymore. You pretend that you don’t care in that moment, but it’s only because you can no longer handle the pain of losing the battle yet again and what that might mean for your future.
Has this process matched your experience? Do you see why we’re taking a different approach?
You have a split second to decide how you will react when a food craving hits. If it’s frantic and “Oh no! I mustn’t!,” then you’re probably going to lose. Instead, take a deep breath, take your time, decide to be calm, and consider the strategic options in this book. If you want to try the optional temptation strategy, do it. If not, that’s okay too.
Grocery Store Strategy: Healthy Swap
If you buy it, you will eat it.
The home eating war is won and lost in the grocery store. The food you buy creates your food environment at home, and it is very difficult to fight your environment if it is unfriendly to your goals.
If you only bought healthy food, you would eliminate your unhealthy snacking problem at home immediately and easily. I understand that it can get complicated with others in the same house who don’t want to join you, but if that’s the case, maybe you can ask them to hide their unhealthy snacks from you.
Here’s the strategy I recommend while you’re shopping: Buy groceries as usual. When you’re ready to check out, remove one piece of unhealthy food and replace it with a healthy alternative. Why this way? It’s awkward to tell you to buy at least one vegetable or one fruit. Unless your eating habits are exceptionally poor, you’ll likely buy some amount of fruits and vegetables normally, and thus, an “at least one” requirement would do absolutely nothing for you. But replacing an unhealthy item you typically buy with a healthy substitute is an instant double win.
As with all mini habits, you can continue to make additional healthy replacements, but aim for just one to start. Here are a few examples:
Exchange candy bars for no-sugar added or low-sugar dark chocolate
Exchange ice-cream for bananas (freeze them and they taste like ice-cream) and/or other fruits
Exchange regular spaghetti for spaghetti squash or whole wheat pasta
Exchange spaghetti sauce for olive oil, pesto, and parmesan cheese
Exchange white bread for whole grain bread (sprouted if possible)
Exchange soda for sparkling or mineral water and 100% juice (and add only a little bit of juice to flavor the water)
Exchange vegetable dip for hummus or guacamole (or, even better, ingredients to make your own!)
Exchange salad dressing for olive oil and balsamic vinegar
Exchange cereal and milk for yogurt and fruit (granola would be fine and is a better choice than cereal, but it’s very hard to find any without added sweetener). Alternatively, plain steel-cut oats or plain rolled oats are decent options (steel-cut is better). Avoid the instant oatmeal packets loaded with sugar.
Exchange meat for fish
Exchange a processed snack for carrots, celery, radishes, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, or nuts (for snacking).
If you literally only buy processed foods, you can buy at least one kind of fresh or frozen vegetable (with some plan of how you’ll consume it later; don’t buy a squash and let it rot in your closet… don’t put vegetables in your closet).
The Price of Healthy Food
People assume healthy eating is expensive, but is it really? Upfront, it is a bit more expensive. A meta-analysis of food costs covering 27 studies in 10 countries found that the difference in price between a healthy and unhealthy diet was $1.50 per day per person.167 That’s $45 extra a month and $547 extra a year to make a significant positive investment in your health, weight, and well-being. It’s a cliché but true to say that you’ll save money by cutting down on medical costs when you eat healthy food and take care of yourself. The price of healthy food is less expensive than the long-term costs of eating unhealthy food.
Many people in the USA spend $5 or more every day on lattes and other superfluous foods and beverages. In fact, $1.50 is close to the price of getting a soda at a restaurant, and low-income people drink more sugary drinks than others.168 It is possible for most to afford healthy food if it’s prioritized.
Home Eating Strategy
The single best thing you can do for better home eating is to make healthy foods easily accessible. Accessibility plays a big role in your willingness to eat well. Buying healthy food is not the complete answer, because it’s very easy to buy healthy food and let it spoil as you eat something else. There are three components to making healthy home eating more accessible.
1. Plan for consumption. When you buy broccoli, you should know how you’re going to eat it. Be precise. Are you going to boil it in water? Are you going to sauté it in a pan? Are you going to use it for a casserole? Are you going to eat it raw, and will that include dip? Will it be a random snack food where you reach in the fridge and grab one or two, or a more robust snack of several stalks? Are you going to put it in a salad? You don’t necessarily need to decide the exact use for it, but determine at least one or two ways you intend to eat it. This seed of intention can make a huge difference, and it will also prompt you to buy the right accessories you need while at the store. If you prefer to have broccoli in salads, but you don’t have any lettuce, then you’re much less likely to eat broccoli.
2. Learn faster ways to cook. If you’re like me, you don’t enjoy the time required to cook a decent meal. That said, there are plenty of fast ways to cook healthy food. One of my go-to methods is to stir-fry vegetables and meat. It takes 20-30 minutes max and afterwards I’ll throw all cookware and dinnerware into the dishwasher. Easy. Rice cookers and slow cookers take longer, but they take about one minute of your time to prepare!
Salad is one of the healthiest things you can eat, and also one of the fastest to make, as it doesn’t require any cooking. Sometimes I’ll make simple salads with lettuce and just a couple other vegetables, olive oil, vinegar, pepper, all-purpose seasoning, and cheese. Other times, I’ll create a mega salad with 15+ ingredients. The easiest way to do this is to cut a lot of vegetables in the first session. Cut an entire bunch of radishes, an entire stalk of celery, several whole carrots, a bell pepper, a few tomatoes, etc. Then use what you need for your salad, and store the rest in the refrigerato
r in sandwich bags or Tupperware. They’ll last about 3-4 days, and the next time you want a salad, you can pull out all of your ingredients, throw them together in a bowl, and have a delicious mega salad in no time! For me, this sort of speed hack is the difference between me eating salads or eating at a restaurant.
3. Give yourself plenty of options. Do you have plenty of fruit for sweet cravings? Do you have healthy snacks like nuts or easily prepared fruits and vegetables? Do you have several viable healthy dinner options? Given that processed food is always going to be easier to prepare than healthy food, I rarely buy it (and I eat whatever I buy). But if I’m not buying processed food and I’m also not stocked with healthy food supplies, my only option is to eat out (and hope in vain that the restaurant uses quality ingredients).
To be satisfied with a healthy diet, which is absolutely possible, you must have enough food. You do need to balance this with the first component (plan for consumption), because the only thing worse than not having enough food around is having healthy food around and letting it spoil because you didn’t plan how to consume it. That wastes your time, money, and motivation to eat healthy food.
The overarching goal is to create a home environment that is conducive to healthy living. Increase the ratio of healthy food to unhealthy food, plan for consumption, and learn what sort of food preparation you’re willing to do. As much as I like to eat healthy food, I’m not willing to cook two hours every day to do it. If you are, that’s great, but if you’re not, then don’t make that your win condition. Make it convenient, make it easy, and you’ll do well.
Snacking Strategy
Emotional eating is a major cause of unnecessary snacking, and it is difficult to overcome. I know.
You might be expecting me to tell you that you need to get your emotions in check in order to fend off emotional eating. Not in this book. Mini habits are effective because they don’t depend on emotional manipulation.
The smartest approach to overcoming emotions is indirect, because when you fight your emotions directly, well, you usually lose. Emotions are subconscious feelings that don’t just go away because you want them to go away. In order to feel differently, you have to act differently. Feeling itself is not a choice, but it is greatly affected by your choices.
Every person hopefully learns at some point in their life that it works better to focus on things you can control. So, instead of trying to reverse the emotions that cause excess eating, we’re going to rewire your emotional response software. Right now, you might be programmed to eat potato chips, ice-cream, and chocolate bars when you’re stressed out or sad.
The Two Possible Emotional Support Systems
Being a human is hard work. I think we can all agree on that. Since life is hard, we tend to need support from others, and also from things.
Some people get their support from ice-cream, the couch, and a good TV show. This isn’t even wrong in moderation. But if this is your primary and regular therapist in life, your body will almost surely accumulate fat.
You can get a similar type of support from things like going to the gym, eating healthy food, and meditating. Not only is this type of support more effective—because it strengthens rather than weakens your mind, body, and emotional fortitude long-term—but also these things can be done “excessively” without negative consequence. They’re stackable!
When someone is faced with changing their behavior to achieve a result (weight loss), they may think about the enjoyable things they’ll have to lose, and they should consider that. But they also need to consider what they’re gaining. A balanced perspective is best.
The feeling I get after playing basketball for a couple of hours is one of the best feelings I know! I feel relaxed, worn out in a good way, satisfied from being active, and my endorphins are flowing. Exercise is proven to reduce stress and improve mood. Meditation does the same.
Matthieu Ricard credits meditation for his nickname, “The Happiest Man on Earth.” Ricard is a Buddhist monk, and, in his TED Talk, he shared the results of a brain scan of his fellow monks. The monks were four standard deviations higher in left prefrontal cortex activity, the side of the brain associated with happiness. Their happiness by this measure was off the charts, because they meditate so much.169 These sorts of activities can be a powerful defense against emotional eating, because they improve your underlying emotional health.
“Snackers Gonna Snack”
Snacking is fine. What’s the problem? This isn’t a starve-yourself diet. The same perspectives and ideologies apply to snacking as much as to dinner. Obviously, it’s better for your weight to choose celery over cupcakes, but if you want to eat a snack because you’re hungry, then it’d be foolish to restrict yourself, since weight is not lost (long-term) by eating less food, but by eating more healthy food.
Some people suggest that you only eat 3-5 meals per day without snacking. They don’t understand what they ask of us snackers! Newsflash: It’s possible to lose weight and snack at the same time. Forbidding snacking is a classic example of needless restriction that makes us rebel and grab a doughnut.
If you’ve decided to snack on something unhealthy, select the amount you want to consume and place it in a bowl. Don’t select less than you want, as you’d be fighting the wrong battle there. If you go back and get more, that’s fine if you really want it, but try to select how much you actually want next time. Studies have shown that “second helpings” result in more food consumed, compared to those who fill their plate to satisfaction at the first serving.
You’re not artificially limiting your consumption by choosing your snack portion; you’re avoiding the mindless “out of the bag” eating. If you’re eating fruits or vegetables, take the whole bag and enjoy. Mindlessly eating food that helps you lose weight isn’t such a problem, but be careful not to confuse raw fruits and vegetables with “fake healthy” options like organic vegetable chips or fruit cups with added sugar.
A good rule of thumb to follow is: Snack when hungry, not when bored. Snack because you need energy, not because you need a therapist. If you feel the desire to snack, and it isn’t because you’re hungry, you can take a look at the temptation mini challenge. The mini challenges can improve your mood and reduce or eliminate your craving if it’s based on emotional distress.
Remember that the goal is not the strategy. The goal is to not choose ice-cream and cookies when you snack, or to not eat much of them if you do. The strategy is to respect your craving, not try to deprive yourself of it. Make calm, rational choices, such as going through the temptation mini challenges, choosing your portion size, eating mindfully, and stopping when you’re satisfied. If you do this, you WILL eat less unhealthy food. Don’t lose sight of this and begin falling back into the dieting mindset of “Oh no, I want chips. I need to resist it in order to succeed!” That’s when you’ll fail. Direct resistance is futile, and the goal is not the strategy. Don’t forget it!
That said, your goal isn’t to be ignored either. You should remain mindful of your goal to eat healthier food. If you stop caring about your goal and mindlessly go through the motions of the strategies in this book, then you’ll struggle to do the right thing. Be mindful of your goal and strategic with your actions—that’s what you need to succeed.
Eating Out Strategy
In most cases, it’s hard to lose weight when you eat out frequently. Eating out is one of my favorite things to do and I do it often, but I’m very selective of where and what I eat. When you eat at a restaurant, you can’t assume that their food is healthy, as it likely has unhealthy additives and unnecessary amounts of sugar, sodium, and fat. Restaurant food is generally made for taste, not health, especially since customers are oblivious to the ingredients used (something I find frustrating).
It’s unusual for customers to ask about ingredients and nutrition information. This made sense back when food was simple, but now it’s more important than ever to know what you’re eating, and a restaurant is one of the few places where you
may have to “eat blindly.”
Assume that restaurant ingredients are unhealthy unless the food is obviously simple (like steamed vegetables) or the restaurant explicitly says what ingredients they do (and don’t) use. More restaurants these days are advertising about things like no artificial colors or flavors, no preservatives, antibiotic free meat, and so on. Just be warned that the meal probably still has excessive sugar, salt, and fat.
Mini Habits for Weight Loss: Stop Dieting. Form New Habits. Change Your Lifestyle Without Suffering. Page 24