Hacking Your Tastes

Sometimes I go about habit change the entirely wrong way, as do many well-intentioned people who wish to change whichever behavior that seems to keep tripping them up.  Any time you say, "Don't do this or stay away from that" you're setting yourself up for failure.  Your inner rebel will go nuts as you take away your autonomy or someone else takes away your autonomy.  Human beings need autonomy.

Recently I've started playing around with a few new ideas.  What if I increase my tastes for good food and water instead of just trying to say no to all the food that has obviously negative consequences if consumed on a regular basis.  I'm not there yet to be sure, but I did find today that I liked my soda water better than the mountain dew I drank.  And that's only after 1 week of trying to drink 100 ounces of water a day.  So, I think if I continue to be consistent that should help change that taste preference.  I made it 6 out of 7 days this past week as far as drinking 100 ounces of water, hopefully will make it all 7 days this next week.

I've also committed to brushing my teeth at 8pm.  The only thing I want to drink or eat after brushing my teeth is water.  For me, eating badly usually happens after dinner and after David goes down for the night.  I eat badly at other times too of course but that's usually consistently when it's the worse.  Again, made it 6 out of 7 days so that's a great start for this habit to really take shape.

After a couple more weeks, I want to start purposefully eating more fruits and vegetables.  Thankfully I have an awesome wife who cooks healthy dinners all the time but I would say I need to be more purposeful about eating enough fiber from fruit and veg that I don't have room or the taste for processed food throughout the rest of the day.  I'm going to aim for 5 a day eventually.  I usually get 2 in at breakfast already with a smoothie so that seems attainable at least.

Hacking my tastes isn't going to be easy and will be done in baby steps.  But I have to have hope that I can keep it up.  Otherwise, I may as well just throw in the towel which I'm not willing to do at this point.