5 Mental Tricks to Beating Your Unhealthy Eating Habits

Sometimes eating healthier is a lot of mind over matter. With a few actions and some mental tricks, you can beat your unhealthy eating habits once and for all. Check out these tips to get yourself on the right track fast:

1. Do an In-House Purge

Get rid of everything unhealthy in your home. Once and for all. No saving that can of raviolis in case of an emergency need-dinner-now night. No keeping that bag of stray Fritos in case you need a nibble. Donate what you can to a local shelter. Rid your home of the rest. If it’s not around, you can’t reach for it. Replace this stuff with an abundance of fresh foods. Load up on veggies and fruits. Make big batches of green juice. Make your fridge and pantry an enticing place for healthy eating, and you won’t look back.

2. Use the Power of Images

If anything unhealthy lingers in your pantry or fridge (due to your motivation to not waste food or perhaps because other members of your household keep some of the unhealthier stuff around still), it’s important to keep yourself motivated to stay away from it. To help aid yourself in this quest, find some images or quotes that inspire you to eat healthy. Maybe it’s a picture of you at your healthiest. Maybe it’s a quote about the importance of healthy eating for longevity. Or perhaps it’s an image of something you’re looking forward to doing or a place you want to go where you hope to be your healthiest self. Tape these images and/or quotes to your fridge or pantry shelf to help remind yourself the reasons why you want to keep eating healthy, even if there’s tempting stuff in the house. We are visual creatures, after all, and these will serve as an image-based constant reminder to steer clear of the unhealthy stuff.

3. Get Your Posse on Board

In the quest for healthy eating, it’s really important to get your friends and family on board with the idea of eating better too. While you can’t expect everyone to make the same shifts you do (unless they want to, too), you can take different angles to try to get friends and family to, for example, try a Meatless Monday meal or switch out at least one bag of potato chips for some homemade healthy french fries at least a few times per week. At the very least, even if your friends and family decline to make some changes in their own habits, you can, as an alternative, openly express your own desire to do so (and do so frequently). The more people you tell, the better — as the motivation of not wanting to fail in your goal after everyone knows about it can be quite powerful. Ask your best friend to lovingly “yell” at you if she catches you eating fast food. Ask your S.O. to gently remind you to choose carrots over chips. It may just help you along the path to healthier eating habits when all the people you surround yourself with are trying to guide you along too.

4. Celebrate Small Victories

Did you choose salad for dinner over a can of something processed? Take 5 seconds to give yourself some mental props. In the building of any good habit, allowing a moment or two to reflect on every right decision will give your brain the green light to make similar decisions in the near future. Don’t just munch mindlessly without reflecting on the fact that every time you choose to eat, you have about a billion choices, and if you have the willpower and good mind to make the right decision, you should be proud of yourself. Each and every time.

5. If You Fail, Don’t Beat Yourself Up

Even still, failure is inevitable. You may make a bad snack choice while at a party, or you may reach for that bag of chips one night, even after 2 weeks of consecutive victories. If you slip up, remind yourself that you are human. Beating yourself up will only create a mental state that will tell you that you’re not worth making the right choices. If you make a bad choice, simply start at square one. Remind yourself why you want to eat healthy (see #1) and tell yourself you have the power to make better choices. The next time you do, you’ll be mentally prepped to make the right one.

Image source:  Ag Beat / Creative Commons