Mindful Bytes: Changing What Feels Good

This is a continuation of my post on Canadian Connect that attempted to re-frame what we’re doing on this health journey.

In it I talked about how I never really connected my food behaviours/habits to the unhappiness of obesity. It was the opposite actually, I connected my enjoyment of food and those corresponding habits directly TO happiness.

Healthy people don’t have some special skill or love of salad, they’ve just built different habits than I have, and they know that living healthy feels amazing.

I don’t think most people break free of that phase of resisting the habits they love. Those habits seem too essential to our happiness to consider changing them, but bare truth? Those habits are the roots of a life so unsatisfying that we were all pushed to join wellness programs or read incredibly long blog posts (🙄).

So if you’re looking for a boost going into the holiday season (Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas/Hanukkah) don’t think of this journey as losing weight or getting healthy or even improving wellness.

Think if it as changing what feels good.

Look, I’m never going to NOT love salty snacks or ice cream, but before all my mindset and habit changes, the only way I thought I could be happy was keeping certain habits I thought were essential to my identity. Gaining weight during the holidays and special occasions, “enjoying myself” on weekends. Basically keeping food as my prerequisite to happiness. I was able to lose 70 lbs with that mindset, but couldn’t keep it off. And when I restarted my health journey in 2018 I kept thinking, “if I could just get back to that 70 lbs lost I’ll be on the right track”.