Our CEO said that on our company meeting this morning and it really resonated with me. I’ve read a lot that says that human beings struggle with change. No matter how much we like to think otherwise, we are creatures of habit and routine. Breaking out of those, to truly create a new reality, is incredibly difficult.

I read a book called “Brain Over Binge” a long time ago, and it changed my life. It was the one single thing that shaped my belief that I was not cursed to have binge eating disorder forever, and it made me realize the importance of habits. For the longest time, I thought habits were bullshit. You read all this nonsense like “go to the gym 30 days in a row and it will be a habit!” No, it fucking won’t. I promise you on the 31st day, I can absolutely skip the gym & not feel bad about it. But real habits are generally unconscious – you always use the same locker at the gym, you always start in the same aisle in the grocery store, etc. Maybe you use that locker because it’s towards the back, and it’s not usually crowded. Maybe it’s towards the front, and you can put your stuff up faster. Maybe you hit that aisle in the grocery store because one time there was a lady giving out cheesecake samples. Your brain created an association: “Aisle 1 = Cheesecake! Yay!” And maybe you’re not actively thinking “Man I hope the cheesecake lady is back” after the next several trips, but your brain is still thinking “Aisle 1 = yay!” and so you automatically head towards aisle 1.

Your environment has a huge impact on habits as well. For example, my office provides free snacks & drinks. I have definitely cultivated a habit of eating shitty snacks, and drinking way too much diet soda. Sometimes I will actually want water, but it’s much easier to just grab a Coke Zero than wash out my water bottle & fill it up. The shitty thing is, it’s hard to change a habit once it’s developed. It never goes away completely – habits are like roads. When you first start doing something, it’s like a path in the woods. Then as you do it more, it becomes a dirt road. Then a paved road. Then eventually an 8-lane superhighway with traffic constantly flowing. And just like a real road, if you stop using it, if you let it fall into disrepair, it’s still THERE. And it does not take much to start going down that path again.

That isn’t to say they CAN’T be changed, it just takes some thought and effort into figuring out what you’re doing. For instance, when I first started my job, I hit a combination of things: I loved what I was doing, I felt incredible pressure to be successful, and I had more work than I could handle. This lead to me often staying late at work, which in the culture at my office is something that gets praised a lot. I thrive on that praise, so then I developed a habit of always staying late. Over the years, though, as things got more under control, I no longer had that mountain of work all the time and did need to stay late. I still did, though, except then it created a habit where I would be lazy in the afternoon hours, thinking I’d just catch up late at night. Then I’d be scrambling to get things done, stressing myself out, mad at myself for not finishing earlier, and oh yeah – starving. This 100% lead to me binging almost every single night. Even if I went to the grocery store, fully intent on eating healthy, I would inevitably cave into temptation to make myself feel better.

Once I figured out what I was doing, I had to do two things: first, force myself to be productive during my regular working hours, and second, set a hard stop time for myself at work. I’m not going to say it was flawless, because of course change is hard and habits are powerful, but it got a LOT better. Another thing I figured out, is that on my drive home I pass a strip mall, the grocery store, a Jack-in-the-Box, and a Taco Bell. If I was feeling frustrated or upset, I would stop at the strip mall & go into Ulta (I freaking love makeup.). I would reward myself by making a purchase there, and then the urge to binge eat was greatly diminished. Granted this wasn’t great for my credit card bill, but it helped break the habit of “I’m upset so I binge eat.”

I know that a big part of the reason I’ve had so much success now is because we switched to working 100% from home due to Covid. It’s not even the removal of the temptation, which obviously helped, but the CHANGE – the environment, the schedule, etc. – that lent itself to forming new habits. Obviously it was not always easy as I struggled greatly with depression, but it’s a testament to how powerful the change in environment led to new habits because I was able to not bury my feelings in food. I’d be lying if I said I was not concerned about what will happen when we go back to the office – after all, those roads are still there. I’ll have to think of what change & habits I can form now that will continue my success.