Patience. We’ve become so accustomed to virtually instant gratification — anything we want to know or see is on a device. Anything we want to have arrives on the doorstep. Food is constantly available.
Waiting for or creating something we want often seems like torture. Except there really isn’t any torture. The feelings we experience while we wait are all the result of the thoughts we’re thinking.
And for many of us over 50, there are thoughts about our time being short fueling our impatience.
Like many women, I’ve battled with my body size most of my life. I’m on the road again, intending to get to a healthy body weight and stay there for a good long time.
Achieving a healthy weight and maintaining it are both results requiring patience. It took decades for my body to create the weight I carry now and there is no quick way to change that. We all know it.
Feeling My Feelings
Learning to just sit with the thought that just one cookie won’t hurt takes patience. I have to learn how to “feel the feelings” of frustration, desire, deprivation and skip the cookie. I have to pay attention to my actions and my thoughts.
The practice, a.k.a. habit, of eating a cookie whenever I felt like it is how I got to where I am.
Learning to experience the desire for a cookie, just sitting with the urge and deciding not to eat the cookie when I feel like it is a new habit. I’ve used food to address boredom or to soothe hurt feelings or embarrassment most of my life.
Being the woman who can live with a box of Girl Scout Cookies in the freezer and not take them out until there’s someone to share them with takes practice.
I practiced using cookies a million times. Now I’m learning to recognize there’s a choice to be made and intentionally making a choice to not eat the cookie will take patience.
It may seem hard. Our brains, modern marketing and food processing practices are working against us.
Our brain has evolved to see pleasure, avoid pain – physical and emotional, and conserve energy. Thes are hard wired responses initially useful in protecting us from harm and death. These instinctual behaviors have served us well for eons. Often, we’re not even aware of the thoughts in our brains behind these actions.
Marketers and food manufacturers are well aware of these instinctual human motivations and they use them to their financial advantage. There’s a message about Girl Scout cookies we all “hear.” Eat a Girl Scout cookie and support the Girl Scout organization. That’s one reward. The other comes from eating the cookie and the dopamine hit from the sugar.
And yet, not everyone who has the means to buy the cookies or eat the cookies does. There are those who seem to keep the cookies in the freezer and not open them until there’s someone to share them with.
Everyday Choices We No Longer Notice
Each of us is making thousands of choices every day, most we’re not even aware we’re making. At one point, we were aware we were making a choice. We’ve made the same choice so many times it is now automatic.
My habit of soothing myself with a cooking may have innocently started with my mother offering me a cookie as a small child when I felt bad and was crying. Can you relate?
This practice worked for both of us and I’m not sure either of us was aware of the choice we were making. My mother could have distracted me in another way. I could have refused the cookie because it didn’t offer enough pleasure or relief.
Many of the habits we have that operate against us over time started out innocently.
Unlearning the habit of using food when I’m bored or want attention, feel frustrated or sad starts with being aware of when I’m eating something that in hindsight I didn’t need — I wasn’t starving. I wasn’t even hungry.
I think reflection is the first step in making a change. You’ll also need intention, patience, and persistence.
As you look at all the aspects of your life, identify one area where you sincerely want to make a change.
Take time every day to reflect on the choices you made and whether they aligned with your intention. What do you remember about why you made a choice at the moment that didn’t align? Get curious about what you were thinking and the feeling that led to your choice. What can you learn from the choice you made in that moment?
Describe what you want to change and write out what the effects of the change will be. I suggest you do this in a journal or on a piece of paper.
Imagine your future self having made this change. How will you show up differently? How will you feel when you’re presented with a plate of cookies, or you know the cookies are in the freezer, and yet you’re not hungry?
Does the idea of cookies in the freezer still make your mouth water? Ask a friend who doesn’t seem to have the same practice how they feel when presented with a plate of cookies and they’re not hungry. Imaging not noticing the plate of cookies at all. How does that feel?
Write about how your future self behaves with food when they’re not hungry in as much detail as you can.
If your relationship with food isn’t the issue holding you back, select anything else you feel you want and keep avoiding what’s next. Fitness, a side hustle, a better relationship with your children, you name it.
That’s where to start. Imagine a future where the choices you make align with how you want to show up once you’ve internalized the change.
