Last night I headed to a Fundamentals yoga class. I didn’t know beforehand that the room would be heated to 93 degrees. I also didn’t know it was 2 hours long.
I’m glad I didn’t know beforehand because I probably would have cancelled on going. But I am so happy I went.
No I am still not a yoga convert BUT I finally had an instructor where it just clicked.
First of all he tied the practice to a story which I really liked. He actually talked about a book called Change or Die* and the study of how successful people are at changing. Apparently 1 out of 10 people succeed in changing and in most cases the person who succeeds is the one who goes the most cold turkey.
The example he gave was that 10 incredibly unhealthy people met with a doctor. The doctor to a t wrote out a diet, exercise, sleep etc. plan for each of the 10 in essence to save their life or they would die. Only one out of the 10 in each group succeeded and 99% of the time the one person who succeeded is the one person who put 100% into it right from the start and cold turkey quit smoking, drinking, eating sweets, binge eating, etc. and every day exercised in some form. The people who tried to “wean themselves” or ease into change kept too much of the bad habit and slowly went back to their old ways. Sadly, a lot of those people even died.
It’s interesting to think about. In a lot of ways I think parents, friends, even coaches can baby people into becoming healthy. Even with a scary reality – like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and death – we still try to couch what we say to them or applaud when we make a minor change while ignoring the bigger issues.
On one of Jillian’s dvds she even says, we’re “told to just take the stairs” basically meaning it’s a cop-out, that’s not enough exercise!
I have to admit, I know cold turkey is harder, but it is the only way that works for me. I haven’t had a box of cereal in my apartment for over a month because my self-control goes out the window when I see cereal. I try to limit myself but one bowl always turns into 3 of pure mindless eating. It’s not because I’m hungry, it’s because I just want to be eating. On Sunday night I was tired and hungry and bought myself a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It was finished by last night. (Umm yeah, 1 whole box in 2 days.) If I go cold turkey and keep cereal out of my apartment I am fine, but weaning for me was just an excuse to keep doing the bad habit and a lot of times to cheat and full fledge return to the bad habit.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think we need to applaud any change, even small insignificant ones. But it’s a very interesting concept to think about, would you be more successful going cold turkey or slowly weaning a bad habit?
*I haven’t read the book so I am taking what the instructor said he learned from the book and the class he took for discussion points here
I weaned myself off of cigarettes, and thought it took a while, I did end up quitting. But I definitely think change is more successful when someone goes cold turkey. Cold turkey is so much harder though!
I love me some hot yoga!
I am trying to wean myself off of pretzels AND cereal. I can easily go through a bag/box in a day