People who have never had breakfast explain that at 40 they simply can’t do it.
Do you think this is possible?
– Possible, but difficult. It requires developing new patterns of behavior in specific situations. This takes time, just as it took us time to get used to not eating breakfast. In order to start eating breakfast, you need to change a lot of things. First, give up a dinner that is too late and too big to feel hungry in the morning. Second, get up a little earlier than usual, and third, go shopping earlier so that you have something to eat at home. You also need to break your inner belief that you can’t eat anything in the morning. It is unlikely that we will convince a person who has not eaten breakfast for years to eat an omelet with spinach. Let him start with small steps – first eat natural yogurt with muesli and a handful of raspberries or drink a cocktail.
The problem for most Poles is the lack of vegetables in their diet.
– Many people do not eat vegetables because they do not have good experiences with their consumption. This may be the case when they were served in a family home in an unappetizing way and eating them is not associated with pleasure. Culinary experiments that involve, for example, trying to eat vegetables in a different way than they were previously known to be, prove effective. If we do not like Brussels sprouts as a complement to a meal, perhaps we like them as a creamy soup? If we have bad associations with cooked spinach, let’s make a salad with it. We feel nauseous at the sight of overcooked carrots – let’s try eating them raw.
Psychologists say that motivation is crucial for a person to change their eating habits.
– We often make the decision to change our eating habits when we feel bitter, for example, someone told us that we don’t look good or that we don’t fit into our clothes. Under the influence of such an impulse, we often try to make sudden changes in our lives. We start restrictive diets and thus declare war on our bodies. This is the road to nowhere. When we want to change something in our lives, including our eating habits, we should ask ourselves: why am I doing this and for whom am I doing it? If we are convinced that changing our eating habits is necessary to improve our health and well-being, or if we treat it as an investment in the future, it means that we have internal motivation, which increases the chances of the change being successful. It is worse when we are guided only by external motivations: the wife puts pressure on the husband, the doctor puts pressure on the patient, and we succumb to the pressure of fashion trends. The trap of restrictive diets includes, among others: the fact that we often think about what it will be like when this terrible period of restrictions is over and we can go back to eating whatever we want. So we focus not on changing our eating habits, that is, developing alternative behavior patterns, but on trying to survive. Therefore, after finishing the diet, we quickly return to square one. This is why all the diets in the newspapers, planned for days, weeks or months, do not work.
Is fear for your health and your life sufficient motivation?
– The fear that a patient feels, for example, immediately after a heart attack, can have a motivating effect. Question: for how long? Let us remember that the very orders: “Please change your diet, stop smoking and start exercising, otherwise you will have a heart attack” do not work. The patient must feel responsible for his or her health. Research confirms that the more distant the negative consequences of our behavior seem to us, the less likely we are to decide to change them.
What should we think about before organizing a plate revolution?
– About the change that is being introduced in terms of potential benefits, not limitations. Instead of focusing on what we will have to give up – less bread or fewer hours in front of the television – let us try to look for the benefits of the change from the beginning. Because we will be healthier, lighter and will have more satisfaction in having done something for ourselves.
It is also important to formulate the goal of the change and the expectations associated with its achievement. It is not uncommon for people who have difficulty maintaining an ideal body weight to believe that the source of all their failures in life is their excess weight. They are convinced that when they lose weight, their lives will change dramatically for the better: they will find a new and better job, a more attractive partner and, finally, create a satisfying relationship. They lose weight and… feel as unhappy as when they weighed 20 kg more.
How to choose the right time to change?
– Any change is a process that requires the involvement of many resources. If we want to make a revolution in our diet, we should not only focus on what and how much we are going to eat, that is, plan our shopping, but also keep our brain in check, which will try to react in a known way – “there are sweets, so I will eat them”, and the more tired we are and preoccupied with other things, the more likely we are to act normally. Let’s ask ourselves: do I have the time and energy for this right now? Let’s not try to change our diet, quit smoking, exercise, look for a new job and at the same time sort out our personal affairs. Our minds simply cannot handle it.
Therefore, the best approach is to take small steps.
– This method helps our minds to function. It is also important that changing our eating habits does not take over our lives. Paradoxically, it is easy to fall into the trap of obsessively thinking about food. At some point we may discover that our lives revolve mainly around it. And thinking about what to buy, how to prepare it, when to eat it, weighing the portions of food in grams, counting calories takes up so much time and our cognitive resources that we neglect other important areas of life. As a result, even when our diet becomes healthier, we are not happy about it because, for example, our relationships have deteriorated.
See: Flexitarianism: If something is not allowed, but you really want it, you can
How to prepare for a crisis? What might be the most difficult thing for us?
– Renowned social psychologist Elliot Aronson says that to be successful you need to double the number of failures. This also applies to the process of changing eating habits. It is worth understanding that they cannot be changed without difficulty and pain. We will experience frustrations and failures along the way, but this is a completely natural stage in the process of change. What matters is what we do with them. Many people in this situation abandon all actions, saying to themselves: I am too weak, I can’t handle it, I give up, it doesn’t make sense. It is good to set small, short-term goals. Too far away causes fatigue and frustration while waiting for the reward. The short term allows for faster gratification. That is why it is worth celebrating the smallest successes. It is a state in which the proportions between old and new behaviors change, in which we increasingly choose a glass of water over a Coke.
A crisis often occurs when our plan does not take into account that we have good and bad days. We assume that every day we will have enough energy and good will to implement our resolutions. Then we have to stay at work longer, we get tired and we discover that we have no strategy to deal with this state of mind and body, so we do nothing. This is a mistake, because in the process of change, continuity of action is fundamental, as it stimulates the mind to follow a new path. That is why you need to have a plan B on hand to use in case of emergency. For example, we decided that instead of having dinner at the employee buffet, we would eat a salad for lunch brought from home. But we slept too much and did not have time to prepare it. The brain suggests the old solution: eat a hamburger at the buffet. Many people will use this because it is the easiest. As a consequence, this can end in what is called a bad eating day, because since we have already broken down, we can give up at least one day. However, if we think about what we would do in such a situation, we might discover that there is a salad bar near work or that the buffet also serves vegetable snacks.
What to do when we can’t deal with the situation and keep making the same mistakes?
– You can seek help from a specialist. However, don’t expect to get a ready-made recipe for success from them. Many people change specialists because they are disappointed with the lack of effectiveness of the proposed actions. The role of the specialist in the process of change is to accompany and support the patient. A specialist can help monitor the changes that are taking place, but he or she will not do the work for us. If, despite his or her help, our eating habits do not improve, it probably means that we have not faced our problem and have not done anything to actually make this change happen. We have stopped at just making statements.
How can loved ones wisely support someone changing their diet?
– First of all, don’t be a police officer focused on pointing out mistakes and pointing fingers, saying, “You can’t do that, you should give up dessert!” It’s important to highlight what this person has already achieved. People who try to change their habits often don’t realize how much they’ve already achieved. However, the most valuable form of support is to join forces with the person you’re supporting and change eating habits together.
Dr. hmm. Izabella Bednarczyk-Bochenek – psychologist, assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. She gives lectures and workshops on the psychology of eating and weight loss. As part of the program “Psychological consequences of controlling the eating process”, she examined the eating styles of Polish adults
