Reinforce Habits That Are In Harmony With Your Instincts
It is instinctual to eat when you are hungry, right? But dieting has taught you to eat according to diet rules instead.
Here is the good news:
The minute you start respecting your natural instinct to eat, and NOT to eat, you are reinforcing the most important habit of a thin mentality: eating to satisfy hunger.
And this habit is more sustainable than “dieting habits” because thin mentality habits are in harmony with your instincts.
For example, dieting teaches you to wait for the two hands of the clock to be pointing a certain way to eat. You may get really good at waiting for that external cue. But eventually, you crack, right? And you overeat or disregard the clock. You are “bad.”
But thin mentality habits are so natural, that there is much less motivation to break them.
And, over time, after you get comfortable with your thin mentality and trust yourself, I promise that eating when you aren’t hungry holds absolutely NO JOY.
You may be thinking, “oh that will never work for me.”
I didn’t think it would for me either. I used to think that if there were no food rules, I would eat a ton of “bad” food and blow up.
NOT TRUE.
When you can eat whatever you want when you are hungry, there is no motivation to stuff yourself full of junky food. Yes, as I wrote on Facebook the other day, I crave candy like Snickers bars. And I really enjoy them when I do.
But I also crave salad.
At dinner last night, for whatever reason, I didn’t eat much. I was craving light, cold food. I had gazpacho and a small salad. Probably very few calories. But I wasn’t trying to “be good.” Just as I respect my craving for a Snickers bar, I also respect my craving for a small meal of mostly vegetables.
I promise, in the past, I would have been so bummed out if I thought I would have to eat a small dinner of gazpacho and salad. But when you are in charge of your own food choices, you have no worries. If I had been craving a burger, I would have eaten one. But I wasn’t.
And an important part of having a thin mentality is listening when your body asks for vegetables as well as when it asks for hardier fare.
Thin mentality habits are easy to follow because they work with your body’s instincts, not against them.