Can you fix bad habits or should I focus on one at a time?
December 15, 2014 2:12 AM   Subscribe

I have a lot of bad habits, should I try to change one at a time or all at once?

I've read some good books on changing habits and they recommend baby steps.
But I have a few bad habits that need to end as soon as possible.
This is the list:
-binge eating (I'm 23 and it's been 5 years now, I used to be anorexic)
-spending too much money that I don't even have
-not doing exercise
-spending too much time in bed
-too much time on the computer instead Of reading, painting, writing
-giving my heart to men who don't deserve it, falling for emotionally unavailable men (not a habit but not good for me either)

I'm on the waiting list for CBT but it's a long waiting list and it's only for my eating disorder. I managed to go three months of mindful eating but this month I'm back to square one unfortunately. I'm spending Christmas alone and want to do a master cleanse but I know that's a very bad idea. Some days I feel amazing and have a glow according to some people, so it's not like I'm this way 24/7, it's more like I have two personalities. I love life and love volunteering and being in nature. But then I can feel on the other extreme, and hate myself, I never really feel like I'm in a normal mood. It happens for no reason too, it's not because something bad happened. I don't take drugs and dint want to consider medicine. Nobody is really helping because although my dad has been very supportive, he lives far away, and some people here need me to be there for them and don't realise that I need help even though I have told them. My best friend is also really supportive which helps, but some days this is all very overwhelming and it's scary to think of being like this for another five years. Usually when it gets bad I pack up and move, so have lived in lots of places, which helps at the beginning but eventually my problems creep back. I want to deal with this once and for all now. Has anyone had experience and managed to change all their habits? Should I focus on my eating disorder first for a few months or should I focus on all of them now? Thank you.
posted by akita to Human Relations (13 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don't think any the the things you have listed are "bad habits." Biting your nails is a bad habit, but binge eating and spending a lot of time in bed? I'm not sure about that. For example, while I am no expert on binge eating, there have been periods in my life when I have done it. I know that for me anyway, binge eating is a response to real pain and anguish in other parts of my life. When the other parts of my life calmed down, I stopped binge eating, and I haven't done it in years.

Therapy sounds like a great idea, but while you are a waiting, a good book that helped me is Feeling Good by David Burns. It covers some of the things you'll learn in CBT. You can start with that right away.
posted by islandeady at 2:49 AM on December 15, 2014 [5 favorites]


Most of them go together. If you go outside for a long walk (or running, bicycling, skiing, climbing, swimming, yoga, weightlifting, aerobics, martial arts, etc.) without food, money, music player, or computer, you'll be getting exercise and fresh air and time to think (to create and recreate) while staying away from the computer, food, bed, and cash registers. And exercise helps to ward off depression.
posted by pracowity at 2:50 AM on December 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


When I read the intro, I was expecting that the bad habits would be, like, too much facebook and nail-biting, and even then I would tackle them at a pace of maybe one per couple of weeks. But eating disorders definitely tend to improve in a three steps forward, two steps back fashion.

Three months of mindful eating is fantastic! A single disappointing month does NOT put you back at square one. The "bad habits" you're trying to overcome are HUGE undertakings and it's a process that takes many people years.

Be as patient and kind with yourself as possible. Celebrate the small successes and try to let go of the setbacks that will inevitably pop up. What you're trying to do is really hard, but you'll get there.
posted by horizons at 2:53 AM on December 15, 2014 [8 favorites]


Best answer: It's clear that you've been thinking about this for a while, so you're already in a state of mindfulness about your habits. That's a great thing! You're right to be concerned about how many habits to "fix" at a time.

The poster above has it right: often you can knock out several undesirable habits with one change. Fix one habit, and you will find that several others will domino. This isn't to say that you won't backslide (and really, the eating thing is not easy to change. I think most people deal with undesirable eating habits), but the very act of trying to change a habit is useful. It's a skill that you can build on over time. Changing a habit now is hard, but later it won't be as hard, because you will have practiced doing it.

Replacing -- not fixing -- is the name of the game. I have found this list at ZenHabits to be useful over the years.

Please know that you're not alone in dealing with these problems. It's very common in people of all ages, and especially in younger folks. Most people will grow out of some bad habits naturally over time, but obviously if you can speed this up and be deliberate about it, then that's even better. As Horizons said above: be gentle with yourself.
posted by joebakes at 3:32 AM on December 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


Go on a daily walk or run in nature. 20 to 45 minutes per day.

Adopt this one habit while pursuing all the other stuff you talked about. Do not skip too many days. Do not combine this with, say, a walk to the store. No! It has to be a walk in a park or neighborhood with lots of tress, hills/grass/dirt, the beach - just for the sake of being in nature and outdoors. Every day. 20 to 45 minutes, minimum.

Write down where you are today in your goals. Do this one healthy happy thing 20 to 45 minutes each day that is easy and just for you. Every day for 6 months, ran or shine get out there and get moving. For 6 months, make this non-negotiable. Do it.

Check your notebook in 6 months.

Even if you've made zero headway on your goals, you would still be better off in 6 months time for having adopted this habit.

(If you remember, Memail me around June 15th and tell me how it's going!)
posted by jbenben at 5:20 AM on December 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


For people with a history of eating disorders, it's really common to think of lifestyle changes in grand, sweeping, all-or-nothing terms. It's usually a setup for failure no matter what your mental state, but it can backfire especially hard for someone with an untreated eating disorder: either you throw yourself into it to an unhealthily obsessive degree, or you swing in the other direction at the first misstep (e.g. you eat one cookie and the whole plan is ruined so might as well binge).

Approach one at a time. Several of the things you mention are connected, but that doesn't mean you should tackle everything at once. Even with each individual goal/habit, you want to break it up into smaller, achievable bits. Like, if you sleep until noon on the weekends and want to get up at 8, start by getting up at 11 until that becomes comfortable and easy to do, then get up at 10, etc.

Changing takes time; it does for everyone. It will be a slower process than you'd like, and it won't be without occasional backsliding (so you may eat more junk food over the holidays - it might be a setback, but it doesn't undo all of your progress). But the slow, incremental approach is more likely to stick in the long run, and gradual changes are more likely to feel natural and like part of who you are, instead of forcing yourself to suddenly fit into habits you're not used to. Good luck and be gentle with yourself.
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:34 AM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


"I'm on the waiting list for CBT"

You don't have to wait. You can do CBT yourself. There are lots of good books and websites out there that show you how to do it. I would start with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy: The Clinically Proven Drug-Free Treatment for Depression, by David Burns, MD. The book is ostensibly about depression, but large parts of it are relevant to any sort of mental-health issues, such as the ones that you described in your question.

Another point: I remember reading somewhere (I think it might have been a book by psychologist Martin Seligman) that, with regard to self-improvement, you are generally better-off trying to further develop your strengths rather than address your weaknesses. Treating deficiencies is very hard; it's easier to work on improving things that you are already good at. You'll get more "bang for your buck" that way.
posted by alex1965 at 5:48 AM on December 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


"I managed to go three months of mindful eating but this month I'm back to square one unfortunately. "

Just wanted to second horizons' post - you're definitely not back to square one at all!

Think of it maybe how I see it - you just completed a three month (intensive) course in learning mindful eating! You are now three months BETTER at mindful eating. You probably learned a lot about yourself and your body during that time.
That is fantastic and a long stretch for a new habit, so please give yourself credit for it!

And - very important for all habit-stuff - stopping your new habit for some time is NOT A BAD THING!
Despite what popular myth about habits and badassery and such would tell you, it's sometimes the right thing to just take a break from the habit and come back to it later, just as you might an assignment or any other project.
Maybe it's like the semester break at school - you take the time off for a bit, and after some time you're ready to go back. Even itching.
It's definitely not a signal of failure - the simple message from your body/subconscious is "I need a break." That's all, nothing moral about it!

Just keep coming back to it, and you'll be notice yourself doing it without thinking one random day, and notice that you have been doing it without thinking for quite some time.

Please be kind to yourself and good luck!
posted by Pieprz at 7:21 AM on December 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thank you so much for the answers. Thank you for the book recommendations and also zen habits list, the website looks like just what i need!
The idea of strengthening my positive qualities is a really good idea. I felt really terrible after going backwards when I thought that it took 21 days to change a habit, so I thought i was fixed and clearly I'm not.
So in the end I've decided not to do a master cleanse, and will carry on instead with practicing mindful eating plus think will do the walk/run every day for half a year as that seems like a small thing that can encourage me.
posted by akita at 9:57 AM on December 15, 2014


I thought that it took 21 days to change a habit, so I thought i was fixed and clearly I'm not.

IMHO, thinking in terms of "broken" vs "fixed" is the road to being totally overwhelmed and shutting down. The 21 days thing is a rule of thumb about how long it takes for a new habit to overcome the initial withdrawal and begin to feel more natural; it isn't a magic number after which you absolutely will never feel tempted again.

Rather than thinking about some future point at which you will be "fixed," consider that you are not actually broken at all. You just currently are in the habit of doing some things, and you'd prefer it if you were not in the habit of doing those things. So you're working on "not being in the habit."

When bad habits feel overwhelming, we're more likely to think that any slip-up ruins all of our progress, but it isn't so. They're just behaviors like anything else. If you were trying to get in the habit of flossing your teeth more often, and you forgot to floss on Saturday, would you give up flossing forever? Would you feel like you might as well never have flossed even once? Probably not, you'd just remind yourself that you'd better floss on Sunday.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good: if you splurged on shopping three times last month, and only once this month, that's still progress!! Just strive to do the good things more and more often, as best you can. There isn't a finish line, just a long life made up of days where you try to have more good ones than bad.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:40 PM on December 15, 2014 [4 favorites]


I could have written this like 10 years ago when I was your age. Or five years before that, when I was also anorexic. Or at any time in the last ten years.

CBT is definitely the right track for you. Look into mindfulness, as mentioned above. I downloaded a sleep meditation app (from Ipnos soft?) that does a little self-hypnosis thing and it is changing my life already more than a life time of planning to fix everything starting every Monday since high school. Just getting enough sleep without a ruminating, worried brain is such a relief -- soon I noticed I want to eat better and I want to do yoga, just because I'm not so exhausted from the cycle of anxious sleep and worrying while I'm awake.

Approach habits one at a time. Let your first two be getting into CBT and sleeping better.

Best of luck.
posted by mibo at 4:16 PM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


I managed to go three months of mindful eating but this month I'm back to square one unfortunately.

I agree with those who say this framing is self-defeating. I'd phrase this as, "I managed to go three months with mindful eating, so now I know I'm capable of having good eating habits for at least three months." If you spend the rest of your life doing mindful eating in three month spans, with short breaks in between, you've really mostly achieved your goal!

I felt really terrible after going backwards when I thought that it took 21 days to change a habit, so I thought i was fixed and clearly I'm not.

Haven't heard 21 days before. This post cites research showing that how long it takes to form a habit varies by habit. Just because you're not effortlessly achieving your new habits after 21 days does not mean there's anything wrong with you.
posted by galaxy rise at 4:21 PM on December 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


One of the things I've learned after decades of struggling with depression is that the "I'm going to get better and then this will Never Happen Again" idea is part of the depressive distorted thinking. It's not just unhelpful, it's the disease trying to sabotage me so I fail and sink back into it. Consider other areas of your life: if you were learning a new language, would it be reasonable to expect to never forget a vocabulary word? If you were learning to lift weights, would it be reasonable to expect to be able to lift heavier weights every time you lifted? No, not at all. This is something you're learning, which involves changing habits — it will take time, and that's totally fine.

Any time you notice a thought that says you've failed, try replacing it with "look how much better I've been doing. I'm committed to caring for myself and learning new skills, and I appreciate me for doing this."
posted by Lexica at 6:34 PM on December 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


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