What changed? When you find yourself struggling with maintaining habits or behaviors that were once automatic, ask yourself this. It’s usually pretty obvious.
Had a conversation with a client yesterday about how she was starting to struggle with eating breakfast. Now, my first question was, “is this leading to excessive hunger later?”
If she had said no, then it wouldn’t be a big deal. Lots of people skip breakfast to no detriment. Fancy ppl call it intermittent fasting. However, she answered that she was finding herself overly hungry at lunch which led to overeating in those moments. So I asked what had changed.Well, she had a change in medication (for ADHD) and she had started taking it upon waking before eating. Her food aversion started around that point. It could be coincidence but if that’s the one change we will look to that first. If you find some struggle appear from nowhere, try looking to what changed.
Oh, and what was our solution? We simply are looking for foods that are more appealing. A protein shake and some peanut butter toast or a smoothie with chocolate protein, some peanut butter and frozen banana were a couple of options of meals that would be appealing even when “not hungry”. Just like we look to the “low hanging fruit” when approaching obstacles, we look to the simplest solution as well. We can always add complexity if our first interventions don’t work, if we start there it often obscures the potential easy fix.
