Building Better Habits

[shipperx]

Okay, reading this article on Nerdfitness about building better habits.

Some of these strategies are ones I try to employ:

I don’t keep junk food in my house.

I have friends that come visit and stay with me all the time. This past weekend, I had four people staying with me and 10 people in town total. Every time they come to visit, they make fun of me for only having healthy food in my apartment. ”Damnit Kamb, what the hell am I supposed to eat!?” they say.

It’s not because I only eat healthy foods ever. On the contrary, I know that if I have any junk food in my apartment I will not be able to keep myself from eating all of it. If you bought me one of these, I would sit on my couch all day until it was all gone.

Some are ones that I would never in a million years try (even if they would probably work):

Tyler Stanton stopped watching TV by putting his TV in his closet. If he wanted to watch a show, he had to carry the tv out of the closet, plug it in, set up the cable box, etc. 95% of the time, he’d say “Screw it, I’ll do anything else.”

No thanks.

Another "no thanks" but probably works. (But also, dear God!):

Derek Halpern lost 25 pounds by putting his scale in front of his refrigerator. Every time he went to the fridge to get a soda, he saw the scale and remembered that he was trying to lose weight.

And another "no thanks"/dear God:

Want to run every morning? Sleep in your running clothes! Put your alarm clock across the room, with your shoes right next to it.

On the one hand, I can see the appeal of not having to dress when dragging yourself out of bed. On the other hand... seriously??!

Though it ended on sage advice:

Don’t make too many changes at once. At most, focus on trying to build one new habit and changing one bad habit.

Comments

[owenthurman.livejournal.com]

As background, I'll say that I seldom eat out, about once a month. And I don't eat much grab-and-snack food, either; I do that about once a week. Most everything I eat is prepared by me in the kitchen.

A relative came over to visit a couple years ago and looked in my kitchen and refrigerator. "There's no food here," he said. Nothing in my kitchen was suitable for picking up and eating immediately. Everything required some kind of cooking or peeling or mixing or boiling or toasting or slicing. I would have pointed out that the home pickled okra or sorrel and spinach salad were pretty good straight out of the container, but I don't think that's what he had in mind.

I do buy chocolate. If it survives the trip home, it gets eaten the same day. Occasionally I say to myself, "self, it would be more economical to buy the big bulk fancy dark chocolate bar." The result is that I end up eating chocolate nonstop until it's gone.

I think it's good to buy small quantities of chocolate snacks and eat them all at once. Maybe it's not economical but it keeps me searching the community for yummy things and patronizing local small boutique businesses.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I buy the Lindt "Touch of Sea Salt" dark chocolate or Ghirardelli's 72% Dark Chocolate bars, but ration them to a single square at a time (though I often melt the one square and mix it with plain greek yogurt -- and sometimes a little bit of coffee -- to stretch it).

Chocolate has health benefits! :)