9. Empty The Cupboards Of The Junk, Period, End Of Story
If it is not in the house you are not going to eat it, no matter how much your husband or kids complain.
I’ve heard – but I can’t do this, I have teenage boys in the house! Or, why be such a zealot, I can just learn to have a small portion and still enjoy myself. Or I love food and no one can make me do this!! You’re absolutely right. I can’t make you do this and this is all up to you.
You have a choice. You can keep doing what you’ve been doing for the last 20 years or you can make some changes and get a different result. The truth is, you can have a house junk free even with teenagers in the house. Your teenager will still love you if there are no cookies in the house (or will still argue with you, still throw fits).
This is a choice. You can do this. When there is junk in the house, the emotional eating binge becomes VERY EASY. Almost effortless. You need to make it a little harder on yourself. Especially at 2 am in the morning. Many of you have insomnia and sleeping problems. No shocker there. Sleep problems can start at a very young age when it was a struggle with your parents and you could always get them to let you stay up just a little bit later. Or you’re drinking too much caffeine during the day and the stress is taking over.
If it’s easy to eat junk, you’ll eat it at 2 am in the morning. If it’s hard, it will make it that much harder. The other day I was talking to a client who eats after dinner and I asked, what are you eating and she said, I start off with a square of unsweetened chocolate, then I move to a large Lindt bar of dark chocolate and then I start on the cheese. I said what kind of cheese? She answered, “Oh, I have the best cheese in the world.” There was pride and delight in her answer. She has every kind of cheese she can think of and it’s all there right when she needs it most, when she’s trying to stuff down her emotions.
You have to mix up your patterns. A tough fight with your husband means your favorite bag of sour cream and onion potato chips that sits “right there’ on the counter. In your mind, this has become as absolute as the concept of 1+2 =3. It’s almost as etched in your mind as solid as mathematics. Fight with husband + potato chips on counter = a typical night in the household. The only way to make a different variable is to change the variable. And the easiest way you have at your disposal to change that variable is to GET RID OF IT. GET RID OF IT.
I’ve been told I’m harsh from therapists. You can’t get a patient to let go of something and not give them a replacement is what I am told. I will be giving you replacements in rule #4. I’m not telling you to not have food. I’m telling you to GET RID OF THE JUNK. Even Dr. Andrew Weil, in his book 8 Weeks to Optimal Health has you strip your entire cupboard and refrigerator of all partially hydrogenated oils, and corn syrup and a variety of other “bad foods”. What you don’t have in your house, essentially, what you don’t see, you won’t have. Remember your mind sometimes, is an easy thing to understand: whatever it focuses on, it gets.
