How to respond to struggle long term

When facing a difficult decision such as food choice at a restaurant while stressed or tired, I encourage my clients to think in 5s.

A big struggle many of my clients face is that of decisions around food that they later regret. Now, long term we want to stop seeing food choices as good or bad and to be able to recognize how we’ve long benefited from using food as coping (and thus why it’s so hard to change these behaviors) but in the short term we need skills to help us make decisions that are congruent with our values.

This simple practice of looking forward in time through simple increments of 5 (the number isn’t important, you could use 3s or 10s or whatever you like) helps us to see where patterns start to emerge based on decisions made in the past. Being aware of these patterns can help us to break the chain.

This practice also helps us to increase our self efficacy in difficult situations and to trust ourselves and our intuition more. This will further internalize our motivation and make subsequent decisions less challenging.

This also helps us to identify those times when saying yes is the right choice. Maybe it’s that birthday cake at a party or ice cream on vacation. We can make choices that we previously thought of as “bad” or not aligning with our goals and realize that they do align with our values. This is one way we start to remove labels around food choice and instead look at things much more holistically.

Each decision we make influences the next. By looking forward, even just 5 minutes, we can gain clarity. And oftentimes, clarity is all we need.