Out Thinking My Brain For Better Health

    One of the biggest hurdles I have for breaking bad habits and instilling good ones has always been my own brain. I know my own weaknesses and can talk myself out of anything. I know all the excuses that work best that allow me to continue not making positive changes. Those thought processes themselves have become habitual. So the older I got and the more I try to change, the stronger my mind got at reactively shutting it down. 

    All the failed experiences didn't help. They reinforced the negative thoughts. Try to quit smoking and fail, maybe I just can't. Try to change my diet over and over only to always fall back to the easy unhealthy meals, the usual routine, what's the point of trying? 

    The big realization, the game changer for me, was when I understood that maybe radical change wasn't for me. Completely changing my diet overnight was maybe an unrealistic expectation, considering my own brain actively worked against it, so I was just setting myself up for failure. A lengthy exercise routine was never going to stick because inevitably an illness or pulled muscle would occur before it became habit. And it wasn't a lack of willpower or any of that causing the failures, it was that that the negative thinking part of my brain divided my willpower and set each half against each other. 

    The solution: one is better than none. Sometimes is better than never. And conversely, a little less of something unhealthy may not be life altering improvement, but it was far better than not doing less.

    I started with water and soda. I drank practically no water, and way too much Dr. Pepper. So I started with simply after my morning coffee, can't drink anything else until I drank a glass of water. Fairly easy for me to implement, and while I didn't stick to it perfectly in the beginning, I didn't let the days I messed up matter. Four glasses of water in seven days wasn't ideal, but far better than none out of seven. And it was enough to start building a new habit. And it was enough to start overcoming the thoughts that said since I wasn't doing it perfectly, why bother. 

    After a while it became a daily thing. With soda I just gave myself a cutoff time at night for any caffeine. Since having to drink water pushed back when I started drinking soda, and most days I actually stuck to my cutoff time, I was able to quickly cut back. Once I noticed I had actually been drinking water daily after my coffee without reminders or effort on my part, the next step was anytime I drank anything that wasn't water, the next thing I drank had to be water. Which made it even more difficult to drink a lot of soda, unless I wanted to pee constantly.

    For smoking it was a little different, but not radically so. First I identified all the times I smoked out of habit. The times I always smoked. And just one by one, stopped allowing myself to smoke at those times. I started with after waking up, then after eating. Now I had to wait at least an hour after I woke up/following a meal to have a cigarette. That's three to four times a day I couldn't smoke for an hour. I failed a lot at first. But the failures didn't matter because overall progress was what was important, and any less was improvement worth building on. 

    And some days I still screw up on all the things (except smoking, once I fully quit that became zero tolerance), but if I go a day without drinking water, if 99% of the time I'm drinking mostly water now... it's still a win. I fall out of exercise routines constantly, but I also still overall exercise far more now than before, and it's much easier to slip back into a routine for longer periods. 
    So basically, my brain is too strong to take head on. And I know I'm not the only one. Hopefully this helped spark some ideas that will help others get around their habitual thoughts, and begin to make changes. Some people can radically change habits overnight, but they probably aren't also dealing with depression, or ADD, or terrible negative thought processes developed over years. Some of us have to undo processes with processes, and focus on the overall goal, not the pace.