The Wisdom of Baby Steps When Embarking on Eating & Lifestyle Habit Change

“Don’t be afraid to start over.  This time you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from experience.”  -Unknown

Are you feeling unbelievably frustrated about repeated attempts to change your eating habits that haven't worked for you, no matter how perfectly you followed the rules???  I'm here to show you a very different way to approach transitioning away from overeating, emotional eating, dieting, or food addiction, and how to move into plant-based and planet-friendly non-toxic healing cuisine.  Change is in the air!

By far, the most reliable and secure way of affecting long-term and permanent change is to take small baby steps.  This is because it gives you the opportunity to fully integrate every change into the complex levels and layers of YOU!  Of all the different parts of your life.  Integrated into your day-to-day household activities.  Integrated into your exercise, nutrition, and rest.  Integrated into your relationships, your hobbies, integrated into your beauty routine, integrated into your workday.  Integrated into how you dress and how you express yourself through clothing.  Integrated into your beliefs and how you feel.

All of these things take a little time.  And if you neglect to do them, because you’re in a rush to “see results,” then we have skipped steps.  The tendency to skip steps is extremely high, and it’s totally understandable why, as so many of us reach the end of our rope before we make the decision to embark on a real and significant journey into our inner selves.  Skipped steps can induce cravings.  When we skip steps, we do not create as secure a bond to ourselves.  Many people already feel disconnected from their body-mind when they begin.  And so we must secure our own connection to ourselves, our healthy bonding with oneself, by giving ease around the time it takes each step. In this way we're acting on our own behalf as our own compassionate inner parent.

The baby step method is so uncomplicated, it’s so straightforward, it moves and changes shape depending on where you’re at and what’s going on in your life, so it’s highly adaptable.  For somebody in chronic pain, for example, it becomes so difficult to set goals and make plans, set out steps and put everything on a timetable; it’s almost impossible because things will continually get hijacked by any number of unexpected episodes and flare-ups of pain.  This interruptive pain can be physical and it can also be mental-emotional.  And that can just completely co-opt any timetable that we establish.  And what happens then?  We get discouraged, we get frustrated, we feel like we let ourselves down.  There’s grieving involved, and loss; betrayal even, from our own body.  Because we’re not meeting our own expectations and goals, that can lead to a loss of hope and a loss of belief in the wisdom of our inner selves.  Then we really get separated from others, as well as ourselves.  My version of baby steps (similar to the concept of titration, but different), is based on our own readiness and willingness to take the next step, completely without any preconceived time constraints.

Another great advantage to baby steps, is that taking a step “backwards,” back to where you were, is simply a return to your comfort zone.  You haven’t damaged anything, you haven’t “failed.”  It’s simply an indication there is more important exploration to be done and another opportunity awaits to move through it when you’re ready.  Accepting and remaining flexible to the steps up and back helps us tremendously in the long run by negotiating self-judgement and criticism that dampens our spirit.

We still establish intention and conscientiously direct our attention on what we intend; the difference here is that we are unconditional towards ourselves and any potential outcome.

PRO TIP:  when things feel harder to do, and/or you recognize you're out of sorts, slow- it- down.  Take the pressure off!  Be the first to notice and praise your efforts (not just the end results).  Move into gratitude~restabilize there-BREATHE.

So this is a slower yet stabilizing route of change that I’m advocating, but I know personally and with clients, it works beautifully every time.  And the longer you continue at your own pace like that, the more magic there is!  For example, at first it IS small baby steps.  Then, as you establish your baseline of customized self-care (MUCH more about this in future blogs) and get into a new pattern that works well for you, you may experience a huge “quantum leap,” where suddenly your efforts have hit "critical mass," you have a realization and what seemed impossible or improbable now feels do-able.

Please say with me right now: “I know I can find a way.”