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Bad Habit Busting – My 30 Day Challenge

I pride myself on eating fresh, healthy food with salads and veggies being a large component of my weekly diet; however it is no secret to those who know me that I have a sweet tooth….and lollies are my kryptonite! I love chocolate too, but with chocolate I can reserve some restraint (most of the time), and don’t they say that a little bit of dark chocolate is good for you anyway? I am sure I’ve heard that somewhere….. 😉 Lollies for me are my go to snack, my 3pm sugar hit, and once that lollie bag is ripped open that’s it – they need to be demolished!

So I thought I’d set myself a challenge to break this habit to see if I can exert some restraint over my lollie consumption; which is aligned with my health goal for 2018. My overall aim is to not eliminate lollies from my life altogether (so don’t worry confectionery companies – you need not fear going out of business!), but to instead exert some willpower and just take one or two and then walk away from the lollie bag like most people do…. Seems quite straight forward you might think – yeah, not really for sugar lovers like me….

They say that it takes 21 days to break a habit, and as I know I am at times a little bit stubborn – and I really want to nip this habit…. So I have put myself on a 30 day lollie ban to really smash this. When people are trying to quit something I know it’s not usually recommended to go cold turkey, but I know too well my current lack of willpower in this area of my life and enjoying a couple of lollies will quickly lead to half the packet being inhaled…

To set myself up for success with the challenge there are several steps I am putting in place; as it’s not about luck, I need to take action. Here is a sample of some of the actions I am currently taking:

1. Telling people about my challenge – this makes it much more real and I feel that it holds me more accountable. This is one of the reasons I am writing this blog; so I tell as many people as possible, and blogging about it makes it very real – in writing, on the world wide web for all to see!!!
2. Not visiting what I refer to as “the lollie aisle” in my supermarket so as to not lead me into temptation (I am sure that there are other products for sale in that aisle too, but I wouldn’t know as my eyes are fixed on only one thing!). So this means short-circuiting my oh-so-reliable autopilot whereby I always end up browsing the aisle just to see what lollies are on special that week which then of course leads to some packets magically appearing in my shopping basket….
3. Finding alternative snacks – which are of course ideally healthy and not sugar laden
4. Creating and rehearsing a script to talk to myself when I am starting to weaken; and also another script for when I am offered lollies by others so I am ready to decline their offer and don’t fall back into old habits
5. Using an NLP technique we use in coaching which turns a like into a dislike

So, this is my eighth day into the challenge and I am proud to report that so far I have not weakened – have I missed them, you bet I have! Is it getting easier as time goes on; most of the time, yes. Did I nearly tread a very dangerous path when I visited a different supermarket on the weekend whereby I didn’t know the layout of the store to purposely avoid their lollie aisle so of course the lollie aisle ‘found me’ – so I had to make a very quick turn to get out of there!

I am confident I can do this and bust my bad habit. I’ve got to have the belief I can do this or otherwise it definitely won’t happen. I’ll keep you posted! Only 22 days to go…but gee, who’s counting 😉