There are days when  I seem to lack inspiration.
Today my plan is to address the issues of Habitual Behavior,
in order to carry out the theme of my Words of Wisdom video,
and I'm just not in the mood.

 My HABIT, however, is to write here each morning,
so I'm working to follow through with my plan,
Perhaps in a "reduced capacity"
but as much as I find it possible at the moment.

Those of you who are familiar with the No S Diet principles
are also very familiar with the concept of Habit,
but I think the Habit concept is still worthy of additional thought.

A Habit is simply an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed
until it has become almost involuntary, or automatic.

Features of an automatic behavior can include:
efficiency, lack of awareness, unintentionality, and uncontrollability.

A "bad" habit is a negative behavior pattern,
and a "good" habit is a positive behavior pattern.
Ultimately Good and Bad are personal  value Judgments,
even when one is talking about Habits.

So...we don't ALL agree on whether a Habit is good or bad
....allthough, as a society in general, many people who 
have values differing from what is considered the norm,
tend to "pretend" they possess those "shared" values in order to "fit in",
and thereby make their lives less confrontational.

Most of life is habitual.
Each of us tends to do the same things we did yesterday,
the day before, and every day for the past month.
It is estimated that out of every 11,000 signals we receive
from our senses, our brains only process about 40.

 Habits, good or bad, make us who we are.
The key is in controlling them.
If we know how to change our habits,
then even a small effort can create big changes.

But before making such an effort,
each of us needs to determine for ourselves
if a change is REALLY something WE want,
or if it is something we think we SHOULD want.

Here is where our personal morality or ethics comes into play.
What makes a Habit good?
Will it really benefit me in a positive way?
And how will it do that?

It is unlikely that we will be successful in either
implementing or overturning Habits 
in order to accomplish things like an overhaul of our diet,
cutting down on TV viewing, or exercising regularly,
unless we truly believe it will result in an improved quality of life.

Re the Question: "How Do I Form A Good Habit?"
The answer is the same for both good and bad habits.
Making a good habit is the same as making a bad habit.
The brain is amoral when it comes to habits.
It does not care if it is good or bad.  All it knows is that
the habit action is routinely performed so it would benefit
from an improved neurological pathway for more efficient processing.

Creating a habit is actually easy.
All you need do to form a habit is to repeat the activity.
With enough repetitions it becomes a habit.
The more you do it after the habit is formed,
the more reinforcement you give to that habit.
and the stronger it becomes.

Scientists have come up with the following reasons
why humans stick to bad habits....
Among these reasons are:

• Innate human defiance
• Need for social acceptance
• Inability to truly understand the nature of risk
• Individualistic view of the world
• The ability to rationalize unhealthy habits
• Genetic predisposition to addiction.
  

 However....remember...
it is important to determine WHO is defining the habit as bad...or unhealthy.
Frequently it the person defining the habit is NOT the human WITH the "bad" habit.
Which, of course, IS an important issue which is often overlooked.

I've found that the less committed I am to the VALUE of a particular behavior
the less likely it is that I will ever be successful in making that behavior into a habit,
or in eliminating it as a habit. It all starts with: 
DO I REALLY WANT TO DO ... (OR NOT DO) ... THIS SPECIFIC BEHAVIOR.

A member of a forum I frequent,
who is also a member here at DietHobby,
recently posted the following excellent suggestion:

"At a very dark time in my life,
I was assigned the task of finding "5 good things"
in each day, no matter how small.
(Originally it was 10, but I felt that was asking more than I could do.)

It was a powerful assignment, because it made me
LOOK for "something good, somewhere."
Many of the things on my lists were miniscule
... but the process made a real difference to me."

Changes happen every day,
Sometimes these remove us from our comfort zone,
but changes challenge us,
and can cause us to live our lives more fully.

Even if we simply change our route to work,
or the path we walk the dog,
it can change our state of mind.

Routine is something many of us need and thrive on,
but consistency doesn't mean "the same".

  Like, you consistently think,
but you don't always think in the same place.
You can love a person or pet,
but it's not always in the same way, shape, or form.
And, you can do the same exercises,
but your body changes and adapts to grow with you,
...if you continue to work at them.
 
Change is the only "constant", and much of it is unavoidable.
Learning to embrace changes leads us to transformation and fulfillment.
Along that line, I've made a few changes related to DietHobby. 
My 30-seconds-or-less inspirational videos are now labeled:
"Words of Wisdom", and my son-the-web-genius convinced me to expand
my DietHobby-YouTube-Channel further into the YouTube World
by starting a weekly "question and answer" series video called:  "Ask Grandma".  

While the subject matter of that YouTube video series will expand to a variety of issues,
my hope is that....eventually,.... adult viewers who are seriously interested
in weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss will join us here.

Ordinarily I won't be posting individual "Ask Grandma" videos here in my Blog,
...although you will be able to find them here at DietHobby.com by going to RESOURCES,  videos.
 I am sharing the first one with you here so you can get an idea of what they are like.

Diet does not mean a diet plan…
…a brief term alteration of regular eating habits.

Diet means the everyday, day after day,
...for all the days of your life...WAY that you eat.

For a few lucky people losing and maintaining weight
is a easy matter of cutting down portion sizes
to move from “bad” eating to “good” eating.
However, this is not true for most of us.

An important key to sustaining an effective diet is planning,
and one of the biggest barriers to weight-loss and maintenance
is lack of planning.

 The best benefit of planning is control over our future eating environment.
Our weight loss efforts will succeed or fail based largely on our food environment.
We set ourselves up for success by taking charge of that food environment
which is:

when you eat,
how much you eat, and
what foods are available.

For some people the planning will involve specific advance menu planning,
and some people find a more general plan to be workable.
No matter whether our planning is specific or general, planning our future
food intake involves our shopping process, and what foods we choose to buy.

  When we cook meals at home,
we have the control over exactly what goes into the recipe
and therefore into our bodies.
However without a meal plan,... for some people ...
the longing for inspiration on what to cook may prove to be too much.
This results in take-out or eating-out again, and when doing this
someone else decides what goes in the meal,
and our control becomes far more limited.

There are plenty of small but powerful, changes we can make
that add up to lasting weight loss success.
The key is to create a plan that we can individually live with.
Part of planning is understanding that occasionally the plan will fail.
We must not let a failure discourage us.
Cheating with one snack or at one meal does not mean
that the whole diet plan has failed.
Keep in mind we have an every-day-forever diet plan,
not just a few-days diet plan.
For me,   planning involves the use of tools that help me track my progress.
I keep a food journal and weigh myself regularly.
Tracking my food-take, along with my weight loss efforts,
shows me the results in black and white, which helps me stay motivated.

During an online discussion of fasting in a forum I frequent,
one of the participants wrote:

"I don't think fasting works for everyone. ..
some people find that they are so hungry the day afterwards
that they eat more that day to compensate for the fast.
I suspect that, for people like this, fasting is simply not a helpful tool.

I've talked to lots of people about fasting
...which is a common practice here in India...
and I've never run across someone who found it difficult
and was hungrier the day after who ever really got used to it."

Based on my own intermittent fasting experience..which is extensive...
and my observations of others,
I tend to agree.

Although intermittent fasting has sometimes been useful to me as a maintenance tool,
my body has never become accustomed to it,

I have to be EVEN MORE CAREFUL to consciously moniter my food intake while doing this,
because I am always more hungry during for a day or two following a fast,
no matter whether the fast is 19 hrs, 24 hrs, or 36 hrs,
and if I left it up to the desires of my body, I would always overeat after a fast.

Of course, if I overeat the day BEFORE a fast,
I'm not as hungry as usual at the very beginning of a fast,
because my body is still digesting the food from the day before.
However, this does NOT mean that fasting is beginning to reduce my desire for food,
and I am always more hungry during the following day or two.

It isn't how hungry I am at the beginning of a fast that is predictive of overall success.
It is how hungry I am during the day or two AFTER a fast, when I return to eating.

Anyone with a tendency to have binges..
...by which I mean short unrestricted, uncontrolled high calorie eating episodes...
must watch and moniter their subsequent food carefully,
or intermittent fasting will simply become a "binge-fast" cycle...

In time, when it becomes extremely difficult (almost impossible) to fast,
this pattern can easily transform itself into a cycle of "normal eating & bingeing".
This "normal eating-binge" pattern is also a major difficulty
many very obese people have when following a "vanilla" No S Diet plan
and...in my own experience, and my observation of others...
this is NOT ALWAYS self-correcting...even after a lengthy trial period.