Healthy Junk Food and Better Feeling Thoughts

The idea of improving wellness fits best into a long-term plan in terms of making long-lasting changes. With that being the case, merging into new habits is usually more effective than jumping in and changing things all at once. So mapping a plan for getting from point A (now) to point B (our goal) is important to our success---this is nothing new.

So another perspective on baby steps...

If you're craving donuts and you don't want yourself to eat donuts, can you compromise? Could you possibly be satisfied with something else? I'm not talking about eating carrots. I'm thinking more along the lines of whole grain flax cookies or organic fig newtons or something like that...
Or maybe the compromise is to buy one donut instead of three. Whatever it is, think about how you can take yourself one step further from your old habits.

Let's say in the prior 100 days, you ate 100 donuts. If you are able to be satisfied with the whole grain cookies for 16 of this 100 days, you made progress. If you continue to be focused over time, you can pare the number of donuts down slowly and you won't ever feel the magnitude of your change.

It's similar to the concept of finding "better feeling thoughts." Let's say someone close to you has died. You're sad----and you can't go straight from being sad to being happy (i.e. get over it all at once). More likely, you have to go through a range of emotions before you reach happiness again. Maybe one step up from sadness is frustration. When you're sad, can you reach for a feeling that is more based in frustration than in sadness? If so, you've taken a step. As you progress through the emotions, you can reach happiness---but it would have been a much more traumatic and less successful journey to try and jump straight from point A to point B. I have more information about this---so I'll try and organize it and post the progression of feelings.