It’s a common held belief that it takes 21 days to change a habit. Personal experience tells us it may take years to change some habits, if they ever change at all.
In the world of coaching around dietary behavioral changes, I take a “no will power” approach. With the understanding that habits are hard to change, but not impossible, and it's important to first realize your natural behavior style. This can help you understand what will work for you around dieting and exercise, such as keeping records of your eating and other solutions we've been given around traditional dieting.
The verbiage may be different, like points instead of calories, or “my plate” rather than weights and measures, but there are no simple answers. The basic principle for weight loss is fewer calories in and more calories spent out. And while some people will actually get the results they are looking for with a variety of “diets," keeping those results is another issue. Some may start a diet that seems to make sense, buy the food with great enthusiasm and then find themselves eating foods not on the “plan"--ending with a sense of failure because "there wasn’t any choice,” or maybe the program was a "gift" and the person didn’t want to hurt the giver's feelings.
Whatever the excuse or reason, eventually people stop following the plan and usually that’s followed by another disappointment, set off by another round of searching for the next “miracle diet."
At Dale Resource Group we've found that most people need to adapt their way of eating to their natural style of behavior which has a direct relationship to an ability to “follow a diet” and begin to see the value of changing for a maintenance lifestyle.
In the world of coaching around dietary behavioral changes, I take a “no will power” approach. With the understanding that habits are hard to change, but not impossible, and it's important to first realize your natural behavior style. This can help you understand what will work for you around dieting and exercise, such as keeping records of your eating and other solutions we've been given around traditional dieting.
The verbiage may be different, like points instead of calories, or “my plate” rather than weights and measures, but there are no simple answers. The basic principle for weight loss is fewer calories in and more calories spent out. And while some people will actually get the results they are looking for with a variety of “diets," keeping those results is another issue. Some may start a diet that seems to make sense, buy the food with great enthusiasm and then find themselves eating foods not on the “plan"--ending with a sense of failure because "there wasn’t any choice,” or maybe the program was a "gift" and the person didn’t want to hurt the giver's feelings.
Whatever the excuse or reason, eventually people stop following the plan and usually that’s followed by another disappointment, set off by another round of searching for the next “miracle diet."
At Dale Resource Group we've found that most people need to adapt their way of eating to their natural style of behavior which has a direct relationship to an ability to “follow a diet” and begin to see the value of changing for a maintenance lifestyle.