One change at a time

We humans tend to be resistant to change. We shuffle along in our daily lives and curse anything that isn't like it was yesterday. New boss, new food, new roads can all cause us unneeded anxiety and worry. (Unless you're in the minority of people that embrace change, which I'm not.)

What's the first thing we do when we decide to go on a diet? Tomorrow I will eat 1600 calories and not a calorie more! No more cookies, cakes, or twinkies! I'll eat perfectly healthy! Except, invariably, we tend to fail. If not the first day then probably a few days in we'll be tempted by some morsel of food that doesn't fall into our plan. Since we had a bite or slice of chocolate cake, we may as well down half of it right?

It's not completely our fault. Hormones play a big role in our appetite and hunger. Check out this link from one of my favorites sites if you don't believe me. The unfortunate part is that we set ourselves for this to happen. We expect eating perfection from ourselves, which has no basis in reality. No one is perfect and changing everything about our eating in, literally, 24 hours is just not reasonable or rational.

A concert pianist didn't start playing Beethoven until after learning and practicing the basics of piano playing.

This being the case, I've decided to change my eating habits gradually. This week I'm going to focus on breakfast. The most important meal of the day. I'm going to focus on a balanced, well-rounded, and healthy breakfast this week. Next week we'll tackle lunch.

Practice makes perfect.