Having trouble kicking bad habits - Am I a failure?

cwolfman13

MikePfirrman wrote: »

Best habit advice I've ever read (and applied myself) is do one thing at a time, do it for like 6 weeks, and do it like your life depends on it. But, here's the thing. Just change one thing.

Research has proven that if you just try to change one thing, and only one thing, that your chances of building that into a habit are over 80%. If you add just one more thing to that, like try to change two things at once, your chance of success drops to under 40%.

Too often, especially on here, people try to log, workout, change their diets all at once. That's 3 things (and only like 10% success rate of changing 3 things at a time).

So, just log for two months. Nothing else. Once that's an established habit, do one more thing, like movement a couple days a week. Do that for 6 weeks along with logging. Then add one more thing in while keeping the other habits.

This works, I've done it myself often.

Well, I was going to say exactly this.

I didn't have much success trying to make wholesale changes. One step at a time, one day at a time. As for soda, that was a big one for me. I typically drank 6 Mt. Dews daily. I didn't go cold turkey on that, I cut down a bit at a time, initially cutting my daily in half and then weening down to one per day and then one every other day and then one or two per week and then none.

I didn't really go the diet route until a couple of years later when the habit was well behind me. I have a diet soda now usually with my lunch.

Xerogs

Taysonite wrote: »

I am 24 years old, I am now at 130Kgs and gained the extra 30 Kgs since dating my fiance. Ya know, that relationship weight. I sp desperately want to get back down to 100 but I have such awful habits I cannot break, coca cola being the worst, I always give into my impulse and go back to it. It makes me feel worthless. How can I start to kick these unhealthy habits? My dietician says I need to stop kicking myself and that everyday is a new day but I feel like a huge failure everytime. I'm sick of my work colleagues making comments on my body and I'm sick of looking in the mirror and crying.

I gave up regular and diet soda cold turkey. It was hard but it eventually worked itself out I just gave it time and didn't buy it. I do drink more water (sometimes sparkling), unsweetened tea, and coffee with unsweetened creamer. Habits are hard to break but it can be done if you give yourself time and space to do so.

Everybody fails its part of being human, just learn from your failures and do better. It's really easy to beat yourself up and then fall back into bad habits so just try not to do that day to day.

As far as your co-workers comments, are they constructive in any way or are they being malicious?

As for the malicious type of comment just realize that has more to do about the person saying them than who its directed at. Some people will project their misery so don't let those emotional vampires steal your energy and take up space in your head its not worth it. Spend your energy on yourself and your goals don't let them sidetrack you journey. As for constructive criticism...sometimes you have to just take the emotions out of it and see if its something valid otherwise nothing is forcing you to take that on.