Habit-breaking pattern (oh how well I know you)

blushing_russian · Post by **blushing_russian** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:21 am

Just want to vent to nobody in particular about the fact that my habit of habit-breaking (oh the irony!) has struck again on the 3rd week of the plan. I was doing so well for two weeks and now I went and indulged myself in a huge FAIL day (let's see if you can break all three of the rules in one sitting, my brain thought, and oh boy did I). I will not, cannot, shall not let it ruin this plan for me, but I just want to see if there are others with major Fail days that kept on going the next day, and if this means I need to start counting tomorrow as day 1 of my habit building?
Also, what does Vanilla S mean? Because it sounds delicious..
PPS Why is that my habit of habit-breaking is the only consistant habit I can build? And if I break that, wouldn't that just mean that I am unable to even hold that habit? Oh man.. I think I just twisted my brain muscle with this

NoSnacker · Post by **NoSnacker** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:15 am

Are you talking about failing on S days, I see your post is Monday? You can't fail on S days.

And if you are talking about weekdays, yes, in the past I have let my fails carry on and on until I left and then came back heavier. Best thing to do is nip it in the bud and move on.

Vanilla S means following the No S plan on building habit, no modifications to the plan. No Sugar, Snacks, or Sweets Monday-Friday.

Do you have the book??

blushing_russian · Post by **blushing_russian** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:18 am

I am talking about N-day, as it is Monday night here already (I'm living in Asia currently). And no I don't have a book, I have only been going by information i have been reading on the website, is there a .pdf version of the book, do you know?

NoSnacker · Post by **NoSnacker** » Mon May 14, 2012 10:32 am

I don't think there is a PDF version. I have a kindle that I downloaded the book. You can order the kindle version and use cloudreader to read it.

There is a lot of information here for sure that you would not require the book, especially if you can't get one.

This is in the book "So when you fail, just get up, brush off the dust, pause to consider what you did wrong and how to avoid it going forward and move on. The positively strict thing to do is NOT beat yourself up, but to acknowledge that you failed, without punishing yourself. Save your strictness for your future self rather than your past. Self revenge is really a kind of self-indulgence."

Hang in there....

Dale · Post by **Dale** » Mon May 14, 2012 11:43 am

I've had a couple of "failures", but I don't even count them as that. The way I look at it, I'm trying to sort out my eating habits for life. Even if I "failed", say, once a month, for life, I don't think it would matter too much. I'm finding that it's getting easier rather than harder (in that the habit's easier. I've been upping my exercise and find that I'm now hungrier! It's easier to stick to, but harder to tolerate, if that makes sense

). Personally, I felt that the weeks which included the failures still counted towards the habit building. 95% of the week had been sticking to the plan, after all.

For me, personally, I don't count tiny little "failures" (such as tasting something that I'm cooking) because I've a tendency to become obsessive and want this way of eating to feel "normal".

If I felt that failures were becoming a habit, then I think I'd look at what had triggered them and what I could change (e.g. if I'm hungry in the afternoons, do I need to eat more at lunch?). It's probably a good idea to do that before they become a habit!

I try not to let myself feel guilty because I think it's unhelpful and destructive.

(I don't know if habit-breaking really is a habit, but if you feel that it is I suppose that you wouldn't have broken the habit if it wasn't a habit. Which means that it had already become a habit two weeks in

. )

carpediem · Post by **carpediem** » Mon May 14, 2012 12:16 pm

I love this forum! Seems every time I come on here I find someone else who is going through the same thing. It just confirms the fact that we are all in this together and NONE of us are alone in our struggles! I am a retired guidance counselor and the little spiel I used to tell any new elementary students who would come to see me with a problem, would be in part that there was nothing they could tell me that would shock me or that I hadn't heard before, and we would work together to see what we could do to deal with the issue. It's the same here. We are all here to both provide and glean support from others in the group. Kind of a safe haven in a sense...
We have ALL failed! We have ALL thought about giving up! We have ALL mentally beat ourselves up because we've gone a bit nuts over food. It's part of the game I guess.
Over eating is a habit, and learning to not overeat has to become a habit. Learning to not depend on food for comfort is a very hard habit to develop. But it can be done!