Five Ways to Prevent Relapsing into Unhealthy Eating Habits

Are you tempted to relapse into your old unhealthy eating habits because of stress, cravings, social events, or advertisements? Here are five ways to help maintain your healthy eating habits and avoid relapse.

1. Reduce your stress or anxiety if they are the culprits for your temptations. Explore different stress and anxiety reduction methods to find one that works for you. Consider getting professional help if you struggle to find one on your own. Check out these two links for starters: Learn to Manage Stress and Three Tips from a Therapist for Calming Your Coronavirus Anxiety.
2. Avoid moral licensing. Moral licensing in the context of eating habits is indulging in your old eating habits as a reward for performing a new eating practice—for example, eating doughnuts because you ate your servings of vegetables. It’s honoring a positive step towards your goals with an action that moves you in the opposite direction. Moral licensing keeps your old habits active. To strengthen new eating practices and make them second-nature, you must push away old habits consistently.
3. Plan ahead. Plan your meals and snacks before you grocery shop. By shopping for foods that support your new eating habits, you are pre-committing to your goals. Therefore, when you have the impulse to eat something unhealthy, you won’t have it in your fridge or pantry. Have a list of restaurants with quick healthy options for busy days. Planning meals prevents you from putting out hunger fires with whatever is available that could result in relapse. 
4. Recruit free or professional help to stay on track. Maintain accountability with friends, family, social groups, or professionals like wellness coaches. Get help to brainstorm, plan, execute, overcome challenges, and maintain changes. These connections and involvements help motivate and support you during the ups and downs.
5. Reflect on your intent and investment. Consider what drove you to pursue change. If the reasons where medical, think about the cost or risk to your health if you relapse. Evaluate how much you have invested in establishing new habits: time, effort, sacrifices, finance, etc. Are you willing to lose them?

Bebe Wilkinson is the owner of Succeed LLC. She is a Lifestyle Medicine Coach and a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach.