One of the hardest things about changing certain limiting behaviors is that there's usually a strong association of pleasure to the behavior in an immediate/short-term sense - despite a strong awareness that in the long term it'll have a negative impact on your fitness and/or your life. And that association is hardwired into the brain, creating an impulse that makes it hard to resist temptation when a trigger such as stress is activated. For example, you get off work and feel awfully stressed. You had originally planned to head to the gym, but you feel a strong impulse that tells you that you really need a break... You have no intention of abandoning your fitness program - you just really want the pleasure of a strong drink or a good meal or chocolate or whatever. The pain from the hit on your progress seems so far away and the immediate gratification so close!
So what do you do? Tell yourself that it won't hurt "just this once!"? Well, how did that work last time? Or you could tell yourself that your program is too strict and you need to allow for exceptions. Maybe, but when you let your standards slide, your passion usually goes with it... You might be able to convince yourself for the moment that this particular episode of straying from your nutrition plan is no big deal - but underneath it all you fear that this is likely to take you down a familiar road... one you swore you'd never get on again...
A lot of people have success coping with such temptations by simply exerting tremendous willpower and conviction, refusing to budge from the standard they have committed to keep - no matter what. They might still have that same association of short-term pleasure to such potentially destructive behavior, but they usually find a way to override or limit that and stay on track. In general, I think that's a pretty solid approach. However, throw in a huge dose of adversity such as a chronic illness or a divorce and you just might find that you just can't muster up the emotional and mental energy necessary to resist those temptations... And to complicate things, you're experiencing so much emotional/mental/physical pain that you are desperate for some kind of diversion or escape. To hell with the long term consequences! You're just trying to make it through the day! And you're not really worried, because you're sure you'll get back on track as soon as you get through this storm...
But what if that storm lasts more than a day or two? What if you find yourself in a constant storm of adversity? A day or so of making exceptions won't likely hurt too much, but what if the adversity persists for weeks, or months... or years? Eventually, you find yourself so far off the deep end that it seems impossible that you'll ever be able to come back... Such was the case for me after years of chronic illness. For most of my adult life, having drinks on the weekend was no big deal. It was a nice escape from the pressures of my computer career and I really enjoyed hanging out with friends, with a rum and Coke in hand. I still maintained a decent level of fitness and didn't see a pressing need to change.
But when illness really starting hitting me hard in 2001, it seemed easier to justify those exceptions and harder to override them. I was so sick every day that it only seemed reasonable to have a few drinks at night. And as exhausted as I was, it made sense to just drive through the taco place to grab dinner. I usually tried not to overdo it, but it was inevitable that over time my body would take a huge hit. Add in the steroids I was taking to treat pituitary failure, along with almost no activity due to fatigue and I found myself in the summer of 2004 hitting an all-time high of 330 lbs. My doctors insisted that this was as good as it was likely to get... making it seem even less likely that my big comeback was even possible...
I had some great success in 2005 with the Body-for-LIFE program, making the best of those times when the illness allowed me a window of opportunity. But when the storms of illness blew back in, the old habits resurfaced. I began to realize that as long as I associated any pleasure whatsoever to drinking or inappropriate eating, that I would continue to be at the mercy of those habits. In 2008, I decided that trying to manage a habit that you still associated pleasure to was a losing cause in my particular circumstances! It was clear that illness was going to constantly test me and I wasn't going to be consistently successful until I changed the "wiring".
I started associating a lot of pain with even having one drink. I skipped past the impulse and the usual focus on immediate gratification and instead connected to the true consequences. I asked myself questions that made me feel the long term pain in the short-term. "Where is this going to ultimately lead and how do you feel about that, Jim" "Are you okay with giving up on your fitness dreams?" "How does that make you feel right now knowing the painful consequences of this choice?" "Can you really enjoy even one drink, knowing what it will ultimately cost you?"
In a nutshell, I turned an association of pleasure to drinking into one of pain. And I made sure that it really hurt! After that, when the impulse to drink flared-up, I immediately felt the pain of the unacceptable cost that went along with it and suddenly that impulse no longer had any power over me. I haven't had a drink since February 2008 and most importantly I haven't even felt the temptation to have a drink! There's no longer that impulse that once felt like a need. There's nothing I have to override or manage because it's just not there! Shazam! It doesn't matter how hard the illness might hit me or any other adversities, because I'm simply no longer wired to drink under any circumstances...
My main reason for sharing my experience with conquering a drinking habit is that the same approach can be used to address issues with inappropriate eating. And I speak from experience - lots of it! In the past year, I've mostly done well staying on track with my food plan, but there have still been times where I've been reminded that I need to apply the same basic approach I used to kick alcohol out the door to help me do better on my Body-for-LIFE program. I hope you can take away something helpful from my post. I say take a look at any behavior that has been detrimental to the life you really want to live and find a way to derail any immediate gratification or short-term pleasure you derive from it. In a nutshell, make it hurt when you're tempted - and make it hurt NOW!