From Kimberly...

Hi Everyone,

For my first blog post with Creating Peace With Food, I would like start by thanking you for how welcoming you have been to me. It has been a joy getting to know so many new and wonderful people.  If you are visiting our site for the first time and you are seeking to develop peace with food, please know there is hope! I am fortunate to witness behavior change at its best in this work-the battles and the beauty of developing lasting change. You can do it too!

Today, I would like to highlight a useful tactic in the beginning stages of behavior change. This can apply to any behavior whether it is jumping from feeling angry to yelling at someone or automatically tearing through a bag of chips just because they are available.

Step 1: Awareness

When is the behavior happening? Is there a pattern? What tends to trigger the behavior?

Step 2: Observe without judgment (to make a change we may first have to find out the progression of our behavior).

What happens from start to finish: from the initiating event/thought, to the habitual chain of the behavior(s), through the aftermath (how you think, feel, and act after).

Both of these steps can be EXTREMELY challenging and may take time. We are so used to just shutting off our brains and going through the motions; the last thing we feel like doing sometimes is facing the fact that we continue to behave in a way we don’t actually want to.

From the above steps, do you see an area of your behavior chain that you can challenge or change? Maybe you can steer clear of your trigger, or challenge thoughts that arise that you previously gave no thought to.

In future blogs we will revisit these ways to initiate change and build upon them!

Peace,

Kimberly