Exercise your brain for better nutrition?
We have learned to have a passive attitude towards feeding ourselves. Many of us have been taught that we can take a pill to counter any damage we are doing to our body from inactivity and eating junky foods. When we do decide to try to get healthy with NUTRITION, many of us have attempted making dietary changes only to end up feeling like a failure when we couldn't stick to the new program. What if there was a way to change this cycle of attempting to change, experiencing setbacks, and feeling like a failure? We know that food can be our medicine, and we try to eat mostly healthy foods, but we have a hard time making lasting changes. What if there was something that could give us a boost into that upward spiral towards better habits? What if there was a way to maintain motivation to change habits? What if it wasn't about willpower or motivation at all, but about a habit being wired into our brain?
Embrace the idea, if you can, of a more concentrated focused approach to habit change. Instead of coaching you and encouraging you to change habits, and giving you a plan of action for those times when you are about to succumb to an unhealthy habit, I will give you assignments that will be the beginning of a new healthy habit. You can become more focused on changing habits that are, for good or for bad, wired into our brains. This approach enables you to be more active and take charge of your treatment of your body, . I have noticed that when my clients experience setbacks after the initial success with a new program, that they often feel helpless and hopeless. It is not that we can prevent setbacks, but using exercises for the brain, we will use each "setback" as a motivator, as an opportunity to apply the technique's, which will ultimately work to help you establish new habits. You can exercise your brain to get better eating habits!!
Whenever an activity that links neurons is repeated, those neurons fire faster and stronger. The circuit gets more and more efficient and better at performing the skill. This is great if we are learning to swim, and get more efficient and better at swimming. This works against us when we eat a chocolate bar in the car on the way home from the grocery store. We wire habits into our brains, and we are likely to continue the habit.
The converse is also true. When a person stops performing an activity for an extended period, those connections are weakened, and over time many are lost. For example, if you are used to always getting a large sized popcorn at the movies, and 10 times in a row, you get a small bag of peanuts instead, you are weakening a connection in your brain that tells you to get a popcorn when you walk into the theater. After some time, the bag of peanuts, is your new habit. What we can do in this program, is to do exercises that can help you speed up the process, so that it may shorten the amount of time it takes to create a new circuit! With exercises for your brain, you reinforce the new healthier habits until they become just that; your new habit!
When you establish good habits, your good habits take up space in your brain. This is physical space, sort of like real estate in your body. Not only can one strengthen our good habits, but we can weaken our not so great habits, by literally weakening those connections in our brains. Our positive habits feed circuits in our brain, and our not so great habits strengthen circuits as well. There are exercises we can do, to strengthen the circuits we want to encourage, do develop habits that we have not yet developed, and to discourage the habits that are not serving us well.
Are you ready?? Make a list of your positive habits relating to food and eating and lifestyle. This will take a while. Now make a list of your negative habits relating to food and eating and lifestyle. This is a great place to begin. The next step we do together. You will be coached on how to work to exercise your brain in a way that is consciously targeting your positive and your negative eating habits. We can work towards literally shrinking or growing the amount of space the different cycles take up in the body. The exercise for your brain that will be used to change your habits, will be unique to you, just as your daily routine is unique to you. No one else occupies the exact same physical space as you, and no one else has the exact brain wiring as you. Changing habits takes work, but it is creative, and you will be in charge, and (with a little sense of humor) it will even be fun. Anytime we try to learn something new, we experience setbacks. They are inevitable! After using the brain exercise techniques you will still experience setbacks. After a not so great eating episode, the reward is to be able to say, "I ate poorly, and I used it as an opportunity to exercise mental effort, and to develop new connections in my brain to help me in the long run".
You have probably gotten lots of nutrition advice in the past. From magazines, on the radio, from your chiropractor, acupuncturist, massage therapist, hairstylist, the nice guy at the health food store, your sister......all of these people can give you "nutrition advice" in the state of WA, but none of them can legally offer you Medical Nutrition Therapy. When you have a toothache, you go to the dentist. When you have a broken leg, you go to the doctor. When you have difficulty in changing your lifestyle and want to improve your nutrition, see a provider who can offer you Medical Nutrition Therapy. In the state of Washington, this would be your Medical Doctor (M.D.), Naturopath (N.D), Nurse Practitioner, your Certified Dietitian (CD) or your Certified Nutritionist (CN).
Exercise your brain to find greater ease in forming new eating habits!
For more information, contact:
Annette Marsden, M.S., C.N., has a CN (Certified Nutritionist) license from the Washington State Department of Health.
360.376.6745
annettenutritionist@gmail.com 360.376.6745
