Eating and food habits challenge us when we are trying to lose weight.  Diets encourage eating in a different manner but habits have a way of coming back, reappearing just when you’re making progress, or getting to a comfortable weight or size.

Why?

One of my brilliant clients coined a new phrase last week when she said many of her food habits had become more engrained than simple habits – they had deepened into behaviors – they were like

“behabits.”

It’s actually a great word because behavior is deeply engrained.  We don’t question it.  We often don’t realize it’s there.  And it causes a great deal of excess weight, the type of weight that resists and derails diets.

Behabits are stable, constant, consistent and insistent.  They are deeply hooked into reasoning – they make sense to us on some level and there may be a lot of defensiveness around changing them.

Is it a habit to eat everything on your plate or a behabit?

Is it a habit to eat at every movie or a behabit?

Is it a habit to eat when transitioning to home every day or has that become a behabit, something you feel you MUST do?

There’s a standard “break-a-habit” recipe in weight loss that says you can break any habit in 21 days.

I’ve always disagreed with this theory because of my experience breaking hundreds of poor habits while I lost weight permanently (-74 lbs GONE since the year 2000, another 20 lost recently).

A simple habit might take 21 or 30 days.

But a behabit might take longer.  It is so easy to give up on change.  It is so easy to mentally work our way out of it with an excuse, a drama or crisis, a denial or a procrastinating reason.

To make changes that last, we need to strengthen our physical muscles but also our patience muscles.

It just may be the most important thing you can do, if you want lasting change.   Giving ourselves the time necessary to break the deeper engrained behaviors requires patience.  Each behabit may take a different length of time to break.

I tell my seminar audiences that it took me almost two years to feel that exercise was my “norm”, not something I “had to do.”

But, since exercise is more important than anything else we can do for our health (IMO), it was well worth the time and patience.

The Payoff

What did I get for my 2 years of patience and love?  That change has been paying off for me for over 12 years now.  I have enjoyed a lower body weight, brilliant health (I track 25 years younger in my vitals), no illnesses, and ramped-up energy.  I’ve saved tons of money on clothing, food, pick-me-ups, insurance and diet crap.

There’s also a satisfaction of knowing that I’ve had real and substantial impact on my health and my future, and continue to do so.

So, what can some applied and directed patience do for you?