Your Breakfast Habit Starts Today
You’ve been snacking and drinking 40FRESH for a while now, but today we start our first meal habit. This is where things start to get real. There’s going to be more time commitment to prepare healthy meals. Fresh ingredients expire quickly, so you might find yourself making more trips to the grocery store.
This is also usually the point when you start to get crazy cravings. Maybe you already are having cravings! Ultra-processed foods are as addictive as tobacco, so don’t be surprised when it starts to happen to you. It’s not all bad news though. This is when you’ll start to notice some of the positive changes we talked about on day 12. Remember your health mantra and hold strong as you layer on this new habit. You can do it!
Today’s Checklist
If you’re following along with the 40FRESH Challenge, here’s your homework for today:
Read this post
Continue to drink 40FRESH
Continue to snack 40FRESH
Start eating 40FRESH for breakfast
Dealing With Setbacks
Life is complicated and chaotic and setbacks are inevitable. Your system is what will support you as you transition to eating 40FRESH for breakfast. We talked about all the things you can do to reinforce your habits when we replaced snacks on day 10. It never hurts to refresh and reinforce, so we’re going to review them all again today. These are the systems that are going to help sustain you through your breakfast habit.
Accountability Calendar
If you’ve managed to make it this far without breaking your string of X’s, good job! The physical copy of a 365 day calendar is a daily reminder of our commitment to healthy habits. The longer your string of X’s (up to 20 now!), the harder you’ll work to keep that chain going. It feels good to stick to our goals and the act of marking off each day provides a huge sense of accomplishment and pride.
Never Miss Twice Mindset
It’s pretty likely that you’ll face a situation where you end up deciding to eat from the Nope list. Whether it’s a hot dog at a sporting event or a hamburger at a friend’s barbeque, it’s pretty likely that it will happen at some point. Don’t beat yourself up! Just dust yourself off and get back in the saddle and don’t make a habit of it. If you’re committed to never missing twice, you’re much less likely to let the occasional slip turn into a slide.
Habits Scorecard (aka our Food Journal)
After we completed our diet study, many of you may have set aside your food journal. If you’re struggling with the desire to break your health habits, I’d encourage you to open this up again and start keeping a log of everything you eat. When you write it down, it’s a direct acknowledgement of your choice. You’re more likely to make healthy choices when you feel you’re accountable, even if it is only to yourself. It’s also useful as a tool to help you identify your cues for falling back into old patterns. Understanding and preparing to deal with those cues is vital to your success.
Your Health Mantra
One of the best tools you have for dealing with your triggers is your health mantra. As we talked about on day 1, the most successful health transformations happen when you commit to an identity transformation. It might feel silly to recite a health mantra to yourself over and over, but your mind needs that constant reminder. It forces you to interrupt your normal mode of operation and really focus on the thing that you’re trying to change. Your habits are much more likely to stick if you make this a regular part of your practice. Keep the sticky notes around until you feel like your default choices fall in line with your mantra.
Make Healthy Choices Attractive
On day 5, you spent some time reorganizing your pantry to make your healthy food more accessible than your ultra-processed foods. On day 11, you spent time learning how to streamline your snacking habit. Spend time up front to make the healthy choices you want to make the easiest ones. If prepping your healthy breakfast the night before is going to help you make better choices tomorrow morning, don’t hesitate–do it.
Stack Your Habits
On day 6, we covered a few strategies that can help make habits stick, including stacking another action when making a healthy choice. Try it out! After you eat a healthy breakfast, add on a reward that makes the act of engaging with the new habit more satisfying. This will create a positive association between the healthy habits you’re trying to form and positive reward.
Up Next...
You now have a solid three weeks of the 40FRESH Challenge completed! Complete that three week string with another X on your accountability calendar.
Tomorrow is another breakdown on the top 10 most popular dinner items. Why dinner before lunch? Simple: breakfast and dinner are the meals where you’re most likely to be home and have the most control. Many people go to the office during the day and lunch can be the hardest meal to transform. We save it for last so you can build on your previous success and not feel discouraged right away.
We love to hear from our readers! Let us know how you’re doing and what’s working for you.