Feeling guilty about eating too much chocolate? – Part 2

After my first post about this topic, I have been asked to explain how I changed my own excessive chocolate-eating behaviour. So, here are some important points that helped me do it:

The hardest thing about behaviour change is self-control, which is especially important when it is impossible or impracticable to have someone else do the monitoring and controlling for you. Of course, a behaviour such as eating chocolate leaves a lot of room for easy cheating, and it is imperative to acquire the right attitude before you can even start to attempt a change. This means that you need to seriously want the change, and for all the right reasons. If it helps, you can write down all the things that will be better once you eat less chocolate.

Then you have to set a reasonable goal. Trying to cut out chocolate altogether would likely drive you insane, so try to find what would be a sufficient amount to satisfy you somewhat, and then reduce by an amount that is acceptable to you. You can always reduce further later on.

Instrumental conditioning is often used to change an undesirable beaviour. Two forms of instrumental conditioning are positive reinforcement where good behaviour is rewarded, and punishment where bad behaviour is punished. These can be used separately or in combination, but punishment alone seems to have a less lasting effect (as most parents would probably agree). This will be even more true if you have to punish yourself, while it is easy to reward yourself. In my case, a combination of both did the trick.

First, decide on something you would enjoy very much but don’t normally indulge in (of course, it has to be something that has nothing to do with food). For me, the prospect of a head-to-toe massage was a great incentive. Your chosen reward can be something small that you give yourself fairly often, something a bit bigger that you can treat yourself with a few times, or something really major that you receive once you have successfully changed your behaviour. Choose the time interval that suits your personality best, and make an exact plan of when you will receive what.

Of course, there may be the occasional relapse that could wreck your confidence in your ability to stick to the new regime (it can be difficult and sad sometimes to think that this is it, from now on and forever after.) That’s when the punishment comes in which is a good way to help avoid such relapses. However, it only works if you hand it to yourself immediately. You can start with a mild punisher and see how you go. It is best to find something that you hate doing but that needs to be done anyway (in my case, it was cleaning, definitely cleaning…) Here, of course, you must be honest with yourself and really make yourself do the chore whenever you catch yourself eating more than you are supposed to.

I expected at first that I would need a stronger punisher, but was then surprised at how well this one worked. Ten minutes of cleaning whenever I went overboard was enough to put me off very soon. Of course, I could always eat the chocolate and not do the cleaning, but that really made me feel like a loser and I did not want to feel like that. I also noticed that the timing was important because I tended to eat too much chocolate in the evenings after settling comfortably in front of the TV or with a good book, and this was the time when I felt like cleaning the very least. So keep the timing in mind when you decide on your little punisher.

After a while you will notice that it makes you feel good when you manage to stick to your plan and to receive your rewards for it. Nice things are so much more enjoyable when you feel that you truly deserve them! Hopefully, you will then also start to feel the other benefits of reduced chocolate consumption, such as improved health and general well-being, and even some more money in your pocket for other things. You’ll find that it is all worth the trouble in the end!

Now, there is only one more thing to do: keeping the good work up. Chances are that once you have successfully reduced the amount of chocolate you eat, you will never want to go back to the old ways and will ask yourself how you could ever stomach such large quantities. However, don’t fret if you want to pig out sometimes, as long as those occasions remain few and far between. I think my average consumption has slightly increased again since I finished my program, but I am happy and comfortable with it at this stage. The following rule can also be applied to weight control and lots of other things and behaviours we would like to adjust: it is better to do it slowly and then find a good balance you can live with.

Go ahead, give it a try, you may find it easier than you think

Best of luck to everyone out there who might get a little motivated by this.

Yvonne