How to Stick to Healthy Eating

There are all kinds of tools to help people lose weight, but there’s one tool that stands out above the rest for new mums.
This secret weight loss tool is to harness the power of Habits.

There are three things that stimulate us to do the things we know are good for us. Those three stimulations are Motivation, Willpower and Habits.

Motivation is magnificent, but it is fickle and fleeting. We wake up one day and motivation is on our side. We wake up full of inspiration and say “Today we are absolutely going to get healthy! Nothing is going to stand in our way! There ARE NO excuses!” We eat heathy for a day. We exercise. And we go to bed feeling good about ourselves, knowing that we are kicking *ss.

Then we wake up the next day. Our motivation is gone. She’s completely deserted us. We go back to eating whatever we usually eat. Exercise? Pftt! No way!

Willpower is wonderful, but we only have a limited supply. We wake up one day and we’re full of determination. Come hell or high water, we are going to lose weight. Willpower powers us through the day. We have a healthy breakfast, eat a salad for lunch and a carrot for afternoon tea. But when dinner comes around, we’ve exhausted our supply of willpower. We give in to the idea of take-away pizza.

Habits are different. Habits aren’t fleeting, they are reliable. Habits don’t come in a limited supply, the more tired you are, the more likely you are to fall back into your habits. Habits are the best tool to help you loose weight because a habit becomes the default action. When you build a habit, it actually takes effort to do anything other than the habitual action!

Using In Shape Mummy Health Shakes to build a habit is one of the easiest ways to lose weight. In Shape Mummy Health Shakes are they portable, convenient, and very easy to use. And when something is easy to use, it is easy to use a lot. And when we use something a lot, we build a habit.

We all know that habits are difficult to implement when we try to replace an easy routine with a hard one. Want to replace your Saturday morning lie-in with an hour of running at 5 a.m.? That may be tricky! Want to replace spending an hour in front of your favourite TV show with an hour at the gym? Sounds tough! Replacing easy habits with more difficult habits is hard.

But the opposite is also true. Want to replace a 5 a.m. run with a lie-in? Bam! Done. New habit installed. Want to replace an hour at the gym with an hour curled up on the couch with your favourite TV show. Wham! Done. Welcome to your new habit!
The easiest way to create a new habit is to make the replacement routine quicker and easier than the routine you’re replacing. We can harness this phenomenon to our advantage. If your current breakfast takes 15 minutes to prepare try replacing it with a breakfast that takes less than 1 minute to prepare. Now that’s interesting! What mum couldn’t use an extra 14 minutes in the mornings?

Sure, back in the days PK (Pre-Kids), you’d think nothing of spending 15 minutes preparing a healthy breakfast. You’d make sure the eggs were perfectly poached. You’d make the hollandaise sauce from scratch and meticulously arranging the spinach leaves in line with your own personal Feng Shui. Now that might not have happened but it could of!

But now our PK days are gone. Our mornings are not ours anymore. We have dozens of tasks that we need to get done before we get slapped in the head by the afternoon. So, we need a breakfast that takes as little time as possible. You need to get some food into you before your toddler eats any more dishwasher soap pucks. And before your pre-schooler pours any more of his blueberry yoghurt into his new shoes!
But quality health shakes are more than just convenient. A quality shake provides your body with the nutrients of a balanced, healthy meal. When we don’t have time to cook the variety of healthy meals needed for balanced nutrition, we can count on a quality health shake to provide the nutritional support our bodies and help us lose weight and give us energy to power through our busy days.

So if you’re serious about getting healthy, forget about your fleeting motivation. If you really want to get into shape, disregard your limited willpower. If you really want to manage your weight, harness the power of habit and let your habits carry you to the body you deserve!

Making a habit of having a health shake for breakfast is the easiest place to start. The In Shape Mummy Health Shake has been specifically formulated to give breastfeeding and busy mums the ideal blend of nutrients they need to boost energy, lose weight and support milk supply. It’s a perfect habit to build!