It’s a new year. And “another chance for us to get it right,” says Oprah Winfrey. But change is hard. Our habits seem to be wicked entrenched and they seem to have this infuriating magnetism that pulls us back into the same old patterns when our resolve to eat differently, exercise more, meditate, whatever, — has worn off.

I just spoke with a woman last week at a Christmas party who chalked it all up to the fact that she was lazy and had no willpower. Agh! I ardently disagreed with her. It’s not really a Christmas party kind of conversation, but there it was. “It’s not about willpower!” I beseeched. In the end, I suspected that she was not only talking herself down, but also continually comparing herself to one of her best friends who sounded like she was very careful about her food and exercise habits.

How do you do it? How do you get under the hood to change things like comfort-food preferences or family traditions? Isn’t that stuff solid state? The answer is no.

In the January edition of Oprah magazine, there’s an article entitled “The Willpower Myth.” It’s worth a read. It talks about exactly this topic– How we, as a culture, tend to really beat ourselves up over our lack of willpower, when what we’re really lacking are the tools to make meaningful change. The author refers to a book called “Change or Die” by Alan Deutschman which examines heart disease patients’ and criminals’ capacity for change. The statistics are astounding. When faced with imminent premature death, only 10% of heart patients will actually change their lifestyle to be more healthy, for example.

Rather than be judgmental about this fact, Deutschman gets curious about the psychology of why this is true, and discovers a three-part toolbox used by the 10% who DID change; “relate, repeat, reframe.”

“Relate” means that you have to find someone who has done what you want to do, and tag along with them. Not only is it the power of knowing there is a role model in the world for you, but you glean some of the subtle skills needed to navigate through the obstacles of that path.

One of my previous blog entries was about “CC.” A woman who found balance with a hormone disorder by teaching herself a macrobiotic lifestyle. Her actual diet didn’t work for me (though I did try it) but the method she used for healing herself was enormously inspiring to me. I had never met anyone who had done that before and had been trying to do it myself with no role models, prior to meeting her. The “relate” part of change has real power and I can’t even put my finger on why this is true.

“Repeat” just means you have to actually get outside your comfort zone to first try, then establish, new habits. This is where a lot of people bite the dust, I think. It’s not clear to people the CYCLICAL nature of change. There are elliptical ups and downs. People give up after the first or second “down.” But the downs get slightly higher each cycle. You can only see this in retrospect over time. Not only that, but the downs are actually a crucial key to the ups getting higher each time too!

I used to binge on Ben and Jerrys when I had a bad day, not too very long ago. (3 years ago?) Now, not only do I have fewer bad days, but when I fall “off the wagon” now, I’ll (steady yourself) I’ll have some rice pasta! It’s comical, actually, what I consider “relaxing my diet” these days. In fact, over the holidays, I had two Godiva chocolates too. The thing is though– and I would have scoffed loudly in the face of whoever would have suggested this would ever happen– I didn’t LIKE the second one. I didn’t finish it. It was WAY too sweet for me. ME! …GODIVAS!! Tastes can change. They really, truly can.

The last one was “reframe.” This is what I chalk up to awareness. An example is a woman who was a real baker. She had recipes handed down to her from her grandmothers, her mom was a baker, she showed people she loved them by baking them goodies. Really good goodies. It was her identity, her expression, her tradition. Then she found out she had celiac disease and had to avoid all gluten in wheat, rye, barley, oats, kamut and spelt. Oy. Identity crisis. How would people know they were loved by her? How could she abandon her grandmothers’ recipes? What the heck was she going to do??

The first thing she did was feel WAY better. She became more and more sensitive to gluten as she cut it out, so that she could really feel it if she “cheated.” It WAS willpower at first that kept her on track. Then one day she went out for dinner and had clams. She was doubled-over in pain overnight and called the restaurant the next day. It turns out the clammers fed the clams white flour to “clean them.” Wow, was it clear as day now that wheat gluten equaled pain.

I have a quote on my website by Marcel Proust; “Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.”

Boy, is that true. When we make connections that make us AWARE of how individual foods affect us, we simply want them less over time. That part has absolutely nothing to do with willpower. She became aware of all the emotional imperatives she had around baking and then aware of the acute pain this food happened to cause her. Those awarenesses allowed her to reframe her identity and then her habits– forever.

I find the calendar to be sort of an artificial way to motivate yourself. A challenge in your life is a much more compelling motivation, whatever time of year it happens. More often than not, a new year’s resolution can end up being a blow to your confidence if you don’t have the tools you need to succeed. So if you’re planning on making any new year’s resolutions around food, make sure you have a toolbox before you get started. Otherwise, just resolve to build the toolbox and THEN get started. Keep yourself sane and give yourself credit for the smallest successes. You are on exactly the right track– the one you’re supposed to be on.

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