20 Empowering Tools and Mindsets for Successfully Changing Your Diet

(or Facing Any Big Life Change)

This article appears in July of 2012 in the (amazing) Ithaca food co-op's newspaper, GreenLeaf. Because I wrote it for the co-op, the focus is on making dietary changes or dealing with dietary restrictions. Every one of the 20 points (even the one about snacks!) applies to anyone making or wishing to make any life change.

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Whether you've received some diagnosis (say, hypoglycemia, diabetes, or celiac disease) that requires a change in your eating habits, or you simply decide to experiment with food choices to see if a change of diet might give you a different experience (as I did — successfully! — with trying an anti-inflammatory diet to reduce pain levels), you may find the prospect of radical dietary change a daunting one. You may feel ill-equipped to face it.

The concepts that follow can be applied to any realm of life, to any place where life invites you to step into change that scares you ... even as you see the greater well-being and better life such change may offer.

1. It's empowering to hold a consciousness of choice. Even if it's life-and-death (as with diabetes, for instance), changing your diet is still a choice. Dying is an option. So if you choose to live, choose it with gusto and conviction. Choose the diet that will give you a vibrant life.
   
   
2. Having chosen, get 100 percent behind your choice. I never stand in front of a case of pastries wondering if I should have one because the decision's already been made; there's nothing to debate. (If you've made the choice to be monogamous, isn't it insanity to walk around checking out others? You'll only feel a constant dissatisfaction and bring a flimsy presence to your relationship.)
   
   
3. Remember what you're up to. Have clear intentions around health and well-being. Write them down. Post them. Read them often. Remind yourself every day what you're doing and why. Be in a grand experiment!
   
   
4. If dietary changes mean misery and deprivation to you, you'll feel miserable and deprived. Focus instead on how lucky you are to have this information, to have the option to control your own diet. Try on a spirit of exploration and curiosity, a conviction that if this change is what most serves you, you'll figure it out and life will support you in the process.
   
   
5. Don't expect yourself to have a great attitude all the time, but do catch yourself when you're in misery and deprivation and shift to something else. There's hardly anything in life we just turn on and it stays on. Your conviction will likely waver. Just keep coming back to your intention as quickly as you catch your mind straying.
   
   
6. Remember that others on the planet have it worse than you. Consider those who would gladly trade their food (or lack thereof) for your dietary restrictions. I don't mean you should access the vicious inner parent and hiss reminders about children in Ethiopia. But if you can always think of someone who's worse off than you are, this can bring you back to appreciating what you've got (which is empowering).
   
   
7. Stay open. Keep learning, keep experimenting, keep talking to people to get their ideas and suggestions. If something tastes off or incomplete, then you're probably not done — spicing can be corrected; ingredients can be added. For me, giving up dairy has meant creamy avocados, flavorful fresh herbs, the clean crunch of sauerkraut.
   
   
8. Get comfortable with your discomfort. You can't get through a human life without it, and if your m.o. is to prevent all discomforts, this only leads to more! So when life brings up unavoidable discomfort, why not sit squarely in it and get okay with where you are? You're there anyway. Comfort and pleasure will surely cycle back around, and discomfort has gifts to offer while it's here. (You may grow some muscles you didn't have before, and muscles of any kind are totally appealing.)
   
   
9. Consider giving up snacks, especially if finding snack foods seems problematic. Snacks are one of the ways we comfort ourselves as quickly as discomforts come up. They can also keep us from hydrating properly — why not reach for a glass of water when your body needs something between meals?
   
   
10. If dietary restrictions make you feel like all pleasure has been drained from your life, this is a sure sign it's time to redefine. Has food always been your primary source of pleasure? What's gotten lost that you need to get back to? What have you never yet sampled? Pleasure comes from many arenas: it may be time to explore.
    
    
11. Stay aware of cause-and-effect. If I'm thinking I'd like to put cheese on something just this once, I ask myself, Do I want to be a constellation of pain centers tomorrow? I love my job, and it's important to me to be fully present to my clients; I do this more effortlessly when my body feels good.
    
    
12. When you feel discouraged, don't do anything that actually harms you, and do anything you see to do, however small, that helps you. With food, this may simply mean eating to feed yourself within your dietary restrictions whether it's a great delight or not. Sometimes food is just fuel — can your inner gourmet live with that? And courage is a renewable resource, so go to bed with the idea you'll find your creativity and tenacity in the morning and get more information and support.
    
    
13. Don't talk to anyone who treats you like a victim of dietary restrictions. If you let him, Eeyore will gladly join you for breakfast and you can both sag glumly over your gluten-free, sugarless, hold-the-cream cream of buckwheat. Find true allies instead. Find people who inspire you because they've made successful changes, people who have great recipes, people who say “You can do it” and “How can I help?” instead of “Poor you — I could never do that.”
    
    
14. Have mini-goals that you can actually meet and set up a reward system that doesn't sabotage your process and truly feels rewarding. (In my twenties I used to reward myself for not eating sugar with a major chocolate binge that happened to coincide with the full moon and disorienting hormonal shifts. Yep, total looney tunes.)
    
    
15. There's a lot of wisdom in the 12 Steps' one-day-at-a-time mindset. Giving something up forever, especially if you love it and can hardly imagine life without it, is very hard to do. Giving it up for today is completely doable. Bring it to NOW. One day, one meal, one moment at a time.
    
    
16. Think of when you've navigated major change: When you took some higher education or training program? Got into a serious relationship? Had children? Started a new job, your own business, some creative endeavor that blasted your prior efforts out of the water? Was it stressful? Yes. And was it worth it? Yes, yes, and yes again. Make a list of all you've already changed or given up. Honor your own strength. Believe in your capacity for change.
    
    
17. Don't tell yourself lies. “I can't do this.” “This is terrible.” “I don't have time for this.” “I could do this if only … [something were happening, or something else weren't].” Recognize such thoughts as lies, and recognize their power to undermine your efforts. Acknowledge you don't know how, acknowledge it feels hard right now, but do not tell yourself, as if it's a fact, that you can't do what most any human on the planet can do.
    
    
18. Remember you never have to know how. The how always reveals itself in the process. Just be clear about what you mean to do, and let the how take care of itself.
    
    
19. Believe that the Universe is conspiring in your favor. List every benefit you can find to making these changes. This challenge is here to grow you, not to thwart you; it's here to move you toward greater thriving. List the benefits again in six months, because you'll be amazed by how the list has grown. Life is not against you. Life is for you, and this change will bring in something you needed in order to step more fully into the next highest version of yourself.
    
    
20. Start now. Don't wait till some event has come and gone or you've had one more chance to have your favorite sundae in that cute little shop in Provincetown. Why prolong decision or action? Do you really need more evidence or more preparation? Once you have clear intentions, the only thing that can stop you is your own movement in another direction. Proceed toward your intention, today.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Here's another post on 6 tips for conscious eating.
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Here's a post with a cool process for leveraging changes made before to fuel the next change you'd like to implement into your life. I used food mindsets I changed to provide an illustration.