1) Practice "mindfulness," that is, observing my thoughts without judging. I want to become of aware of my automatic negative thoughts about myself and change them to positive messages. I want to practice compassion and loving kindness to myself, especially when I fall down. At first I'll just be pretending, but if I do it enough, it will become real. The same goes with having a positive attitude--you just practice it enough, it becomes your way of thinking. I'm reading this book, "Wherever you go, there you are" by Jon Kabat-Zin, about meditation. My motivation is for other reasons than food, but I think it applies here too.
2) Try not to get obsessed about food. It doesn't help that I have this blog and participate in the Fuhrman forums. Beyond that, I need to live my life to the fullest and think about food only when necessary for planning and preparing and enjoying.
3) Practice scenarios ahead of time. Practice what I will say when someone kindly offers me a vegan cupcake that they made from scratch just for me! Pretend I have a lot of self-esteem when I do this since in real life I don't. The answer is different when you have a lot of self-esteem. But that is the right answer. So you practice that one. For example: "Thank you so much but I am avoiding baked goods for health reasons. I'm really sorry you went to all that trouble for me." Remind myself in various situations why I want to not partake. For example, for me, processed flour and sugar feels yucky for a few days, not just a few hours. So that is the reason to say no to the muffins and cookies and cupcakes when the temptation is there. Same goes for salt. It causes an unpleasant physical reaction that lasts for a day or so--too long to be worth it! With oil, I don't have any physical reactions that I notice. However, I love the fact that I have more aerobic capacity than people 20 years younger than me at the gym--mainly because I'm usually the weakest one when it comes to the weight-bearing exercise, so it's so fun to surprise them when we do stuff like climbing stairs. So remembering that is enough motivation to avoid the oil. Plus nuts and avocado taste sooooo much better than oil!
And the physical things are easy:
4) Do bright light therapy every day--20 minutes under a bright light or in sunshine every morning. I don't generally do this because I ride my bike every day, but on cloudy days I really should. Take my DHA, gentle care vitamins, and vitamin D.
5) Follow Fuhrman's program. It's very simple: lots of leafy green vegetables, lots of other vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts and seeds (1-3 oz per day). And avoid oils, salt, processed grains and sugar.
6) exercise, which I'm addicted to, so no problem there. check out my biking blog...