Interrupting Patterns!

We all have patterns, habits, routines that we are so caught up in, we don’t even know that we are doing them at times. We follow through with our patterns, our habits even when we want to be doing other things. We want to lose weight, but we have a pattern, a habit, of walking into our house and immediately grabbing something to eat.

We walk into our house, we walk to the pantry, we grab a bite to eat. It’s such a habit, it’s such a pattern that we automatically do it.

Interrupting patterns is a BIG deal and a crucial part of changing permanently. Sometimes interrupting patterns takes doing something outrageous. My husband and I had a talk last night about how we could outrageously interrupt that pattern, that habit that includes our pantry. He came up with an outrageous idea."Let’s put a sign-in sheet on the pantry door." "You have to sign in and sign out every time you go in or out."

Now that’s outrageous, that would interrupt the pattern.

How outrageous are you willing to be to interrupt patterns?

Let’s say you have a pattern, a habit of stopping by a convenience store and getting a little something, just a little something that’s "not going to hurt your diet." What could you do to interrupt that pattern? Here’s an outrageous idea; burn a CD of a song, maybe the theme from Rocky, or Helen Reddy's, I am woman or Rudolf The Red Nose Reindeer, something outrageous! Every time you get in your car after work,you play that CD. Every time. You will laugh, It will scramble the pattern, you will think...and make a new choice.

Pattern interrupts: tools that you use to break that pattern. It can happen in so many different ways. Our clients at The Healthy Weigh work on a lot of them.

They have learned to link pain to their old life and pleasure to their new life. If you keep using leverage you’ll interrupt patterns. If you are outrageous enough about the pain that being overweight has caused you or will cause you, you will interrupt patterns.

Our clients have learned about positive affirmations, the truth that whatever we repeatedly say to our self on a regular disciplined manner our subconscious will accept reality. Positive affirmations, changing your self talk from negative to positive will interrupt old patterns. Old patterns of negative thinking.

Keeping a program journal interrupts patterns. You come from a place of eating mindlessly to bringing awareness to your eating patterns. Keeping a program journal, interrupts patterns in behavior! If you really keep it and write down EVERYTHING!

Visualizing your self at goal, living out a vital, active, free life... interrupts patterns.

Sometimes we’re so caught up in our patterns, our habits that they keep us from following through. We want to lose weight. We want to change, but our old patterns and habits take over. So we’ve got to interrupt our patterns. We’ve got to interrupt the old and replace it with new.

What are some of the patterns that have played over and over for you? Some of you might be thinking about daily patterns, habits that you repeatedly do. Others might be thinking about deep seated patters like "I lose weight, but I put it back on again." "I diet, but then I go back to eating the way I always have." I’m in smaller clothes but I end up wearing my bigger ones again." "I feel great eating this way, leaving alcohol alone, but I always slip back and start eating unhealthy and drinking again."

Here’s what it looks like to interrupt a pattern. You have a CD, it plays music. You play it over and over and over. It plays the same song, because the music inlay-ed within it’s pattern. What if one day you took out that CD and took a nail and scratched it, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I promise you,the next time you put that CD in the player to play that familiar music that has played over and over and over again, It wouldn’t play. That in-layed pattern has been interrupted for good.

Pattern interrupts, to be effective, need to be different than what you’ve done in the past. They need to be outrageous! The more outrageous you are, the more effective you’ll be. The more fun you make a pattern interrupt, the more likely you are to do it again and again.

Is there a habit that is getting in your way of reaching your goal weight or keeping it off? It's time to think of an outrageous pattern interrupt. How can you "take a nail" to a pattern or habit that is not getting you what you want, and scratch it up permanently?!

Be outrageous, have fun, and interrupt those patterns!

Always encouraging you,

Letha