Eat more vegetables! Stop eating junk food! Start cooking more meals at home!
This is the time of year that many of us make the new year’s resolution to improve our eating habits. We’re only a couple of weeks into the new year and already many of us have faced setbacks with our resolutions. For some, this is all it takes to give up. Yet, a slip can provide a valuable opportunity to learn more about the circumstances and our thinking patterns that influence our eating. This is when clinicians can draw from the myriad tools and techniques of Craving Change with their clients.
Registered Dietitian, Ainsley Tsetsekas shared her experience in doing just that.
“I recently used the ‘Slipping Toward Success’ tool with my client as she often refers to her actions as a “failure” and will “fall off the wagon” for months at a time before getting back on track. She judged that she was to “blame” for not having enough “will power” to continue on the right track. I explained to her that having setbacks with a new behaviour is normal, life is busy and not every day is going to be perfect and nor should it be. The client shared that she was specifically trying to limit evening snacking.
We reviewed the 5 ‘Slipping Toward Success’ steps outlined in the Craving Change workbook:
- Be curious.
- Ask yourself questions such as, “What was different compared to the times when I didn’t slip?”
- Journal your answers to these questions.
- Come up with a plan on what to do differently next time.
- Try the plan and evaluate how it worked.
By the end of the session, we created a plan that the client felt good about. At first, she thought it would be a lot of ‘work’ but once we went through it together, she stated, “I know this is going to be helpful in my everyday life.”
With this exercise, the client also was shocked to discover several of her triggers for night snacking. She recognized that she turned to food to cope with stressful situations. After this realization, we were able to list alternative coping mechanisms to choose instead, like going for a walk or calling a trusted friend. The client ended the session with a goal to write non-food coping options onto sticky notes to place in her kitchen as reminders to try a different response to a stressful evening.”
“I enjoyed using this Craving Change approach in my session because it clearly lays out exactly how to guide the client through the exercise and support them in making changes. The approach uses simple terms and instructions, making it easy to follow along for the client, which put her at ease. I was very impressed with how quickly my client was able to come up with an effective strategy for the next time she was in a similar situation, just by asking herself a few reflection questions from the tool.”
