Distraction

Boredom is one of the biggest things that contributes to any of my bad eating habits since my gastric bypass surgery. If I am occupied and busy thoughts of eating things I shouldn’t don’t even cross my mind but if I’m bored it can be a bit of a struggle. Old habits die-hard (really, really hard) I guess.

After my gastric bypass I was incredibly focussed without even trying too hard on doing exactly what I should. Once I got to my goal weight it seemed like the hard work had stopped and I started to fall into old habits a bit easier than I had been up until that point. I had to think of ways to make my newly established habits stick and distraction was one of the things I figured out really helped me.

I think having something to focus on has been really helpful and gives me something to wonder about and ponder that’s not food. For me this has been beauty products and makeup, in particular lipsticks. Instead of spending time looking up recipes online and planning out what I need to make them et cetera I started spending time online looking at makeup and started working on my makeup stash for a while there.

I did get a bit crazy at one point and in the year since my surgery I went from having six lip products in total (gloss and lipstick) I went to having near on 70. This was a bit obsessive for a time and I think I may have had a little bit of addiction transfer going on so I don’t think it was necessarily a good thing.

Distraction as a technique to get you away from focussing your thinking about food is really helpful and has helped me avoid or get out of habits that I knew wouldn’t do me any favours long-term. As well as beauty one of my favourite forms of distracting myself now is with exercise.

To make this successful for yourself you need to find something that you have more than a passing interest in. Maybe its something you have always been interested in but your weight for whatever reason has held you back from expressing that interest before. Go forth and investigate it, think about, ponder it and use it to occupy your mind if you start struggling with eating out of boredom or you develop habits that you know you need to break.

Once you become attuned to what you are doing and get better at recognising behaviours that aren’t helpful it’s easier to let the distraction take over when you need it to. Sometimes admitting the behaviour to yourself is the hardest part so be honest with yourself about it, then figure out ways you can distract yourself successfully from it and use it until it becomes a new, healthy habit.

Do you use distraction as a technique to keep you on the right path for you in trying to lose or maintain your weight? What do you do and do you find it effective? Comment below and tell me I’d love to know.