Ready to add some ease to summer travel?

One of the best tools I teach my clients to make weight loss easy is to make decisions ahead of time. 

By deciding ahead of time what we’ll eat or what we’ll commit to on our schedules, we avoid spending time and energy negotiating with ourselves all day or at every meal. 

Think about all of the habits we already have that we’ve decided ahead of time. 

Things like… 

Brushing our teeth, taking a shower, or the route we’ll drive to work. 

These tasks feel routine because you’ve done them often enough that they’re a habit.

But they all started with a simple decision -- whether we remember making it or not.

I recently took a short trip to Arizona to see my sister, and I made a few decisions ahead of time to make my days easier while allowing some flexibility. 

I decided to drink 8 glasses of water a day (staying hydrated helps with listening to hunger cues), to eat when I was hungry and stop when I was satisfied, to move 30 minutes a day, and to drink up to 2-3 cocktails a day. 

None of these felt hard. They simply gave my brain some direction. 

I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what to eat at meals or in the mind drama of “I shouldn’t have that…” 

Since I was already practicing some good daily habits, I could be flexible to choose what I wanted to enjoy at my other meals…while listening to my hunger cues.

When you make decisions ahead of time, you’re typically using your calm, rational brain instead of making choices when your over hungry or buzzed. You usually have your best interests in mind. 

Of course, we won’t always want to do what we’ve decided. That’s where we also decide ahead of time what we’ll say to ourselves when our habit brain objects. What are our reasons for keeping our word to ourselves? 

A little practice and some coaching can help build this commitment muscle.

The first step is to start with something small, and doable, and to build from there. 

What’s one simple decision you could make ahead of time to make meals easier today?