The Power Of Autopilot

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The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.  -Samuel Johnson

Much of our day is spent on autopilot, acting the same habits out, day in and day out. This usually makes our lives easier. We don’t have to think about how to drive our car to the store, how to walk, or how to brush our teeth. We can do all these things effortlessly. But autopilot has a dark side. Bad habits can get programmed into our system and can make life miserable. For the past 6 years, I’ve been working on getting my autopilot to work for me, instead of against me. As a direct result, I was able to go from being obese to being at a normal BMI and to begin re-shaping my entire life into one that I fully enjoy.

I’ve found that it’s a simple process.

  1. Become aware of the habit.
  2. Break the bad ones.
  3. Replace bad habits with good ones.

Simple yes, but it’s rarely easy. In this post I’ll talk about how I broke one of my most insidious habits: stress eating.

Step 1. Becoming Aware

In 2014 I became the observer in my own life. Up until this point, the way I thought about myself and my life was out of alignment with my day to day actions. I was obese and unhappy about it, but I was completely unaware of just how much I was eating. I had convinced myself that I was eating the same amount as everyone else, but that I had a messed up metabolism, and that I was essentially doomed to struggle with my weight for the rest of my life.

It was only when I started intermittent fasting that I started to observe myself and my interactions with food. Previous to this, I ate without thinking, whenever I felt hungry, which was most of the time. My fasting window set up a daily period of time when eating was off-limits, and it was only then that I started to understand myself and my eating.

At this point, I was able to look back with the benefit of hindsight. I saw that even though I thought I had been eating a normal amount of food, in reality, I was eating enough to maintain myself at my obese weight. This was an important revelation. I saw the direct cause and effect relationship between my food intake and my weight, which empowered me. I finally understood that I needed to break my bad food habits in order to lose weight.

Step 2: Break the bad habits.

Recognizing that I had a bad habit was half the battle. The other half of the battle was fought by breaking my daily ingrained habit of stress eating. Intermittent fasting helped me tremendously. The way to not stress eat is to simply not eat when you’re stressed. Far easier said than done. Had I chosen to sit on the couch and will myself not to eat out of stress, I would have floundered. It is difficult to ignore as basic an instinct as eating when you feel hungry. I had to implement a new way of acting when I felt stressed.

Step 3: Replace with good habits.

I decided to become that type of person who went for a walk when they felt stressed. That was my new autopilot. If I found myself wandering around the kitchen, looking in the pantry during my fasting window, I told myself it was time to get some steps in. I physically moved my body away from food, either pacing back and forth inside the house or going for long walks around the neighborhood. As I walked, I pondered whatever was stressing me out. I discovered I began to think more clearly as I walked. I would jot down ideas as I went, brainstorming actions I could take to change the situation that had made me want to stress eat. After I had created a plan of action, I felt better. The urge to eat would magically dissipate. I followed through on my brainstormed plan, and over time these situations were taken care of.

Learning how to break this habit, and observing how much my life improved because of it, I was motivated to continue to observe myself. I’ve made numerous changes in my autopilot’s programming in the intervening years, such as:

  • Overeating → Stopping when full
  • Sedentary → Routinely walking 6 miles a day
  • Negative inner dialogue → Encouraging inner dialogue
  • Hurrying → Taking my time (this one simple thing has drastically impacted my life for the better)
  • Worrying → Facing my fears and living my life more fully

I continue to observe myself in daily life, and I’m always on the lookout for patterns of behavior and how I’m feeling. Although the chain of habit can feel heavy, I believe it can always be broken, if you just keep chipping away at it. Of course, none of us is perfect, and even when the chain is broken, it’s easy to slip back into bad habits. The key is to continue to observe your own daily actions, and to tweak your habits if you see a problem.

Notes

  • This quote is often attributed to Warren Buffet, but it didn’t originate with him. To see the full history of the quote, click here.
  • I still feel the urge to eat when I’m stressed from time to time, but nowadays my preferred way to deal with it is going for long hikes in the woods. I still brainstorm and take action.
  • Books that helped me reshape my life:

 

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