Food is a coping mechanism for most people, and to change our eating habits, we need new ways of coping.

We use food to cope and deal with:

• Stress -  We eat when we’re stressed.
• Sadness & Depression -  We we when we’re sad or depressed
• Reward - We eat as a reward, when we’ve achived something.
• Social needs - We eat to socialize.  How will we socialize w/o food?
• Boredom - We eat when we’re bored.
• Anger - We eat when we’re angry.
• Pleasure - We eat for pleasure.
• Love - We often equate food with love. (Lovers romance with food.) 

We have real needs. 

We all need love, pleasure, rewards and need ways to deal with stress boredom, sadness, loneliness, anger and frustration. 

And for many of us, food has become the default way of meeting all those needs.

And we can’t just take away food without finding a healthier replacement.  If we do, we’ll fall right back into our old habit.

Here are some replacement coping/dealing mechanisms that’ll work better for us.  And we’ll eat much healthier, become leaner and fitter as a result.

• Exercise -  A great way to deal w/ stress. boredom, anger & frustration.  After you get used to it, it can also be a pleasure and a reward.
• Prayer - An excellent way to cope with our emotions. 
• Tea - A great way to cope with stress, boredom and anger. 
• People - Spending quality time w/ people can be a great way to deal w/ negative emotions.
• Cleaning - Decluttering can be also a great way to deal with stress, boredom and anger. 
• Quiet Time - The very best way to invest time for your soul.  It will energize and rejuvenate your soul.

All of us eat, bite our nails, smoke, use drugs & alcohol, or spend hours in front of TV and the computer screen - - - because they are the only ways we’ve used to cope with our feelings, emotions and frustrations. 

And they’ve become our crutches to cope with life. 

And in order to beat them we need to find healthier methods to coping and meeting our needs.

1. Select a habit you want to change.

2. Identify the cue that triggers the behavior (stress, boredom, loneliness, insignificance, etc.).

3. Understand the need the habit meets (the reward).

4. Now, without changing the cue or the reward, replace the routine with a new, healthier behavior.

Contrary to what you and others might think, you don’t necessarily have Bad Habits because you’re a Bad Person.

Every behavior or habit meets a need!

What need are you meeting when you’re facebook-ing, tweeting, youtube-ing, tumblr-ing, drinking, smoking, gambling, gossiping or complainin or TV/Drama watching?

This is a question you desperately need to answer in your twenties, if you want to get anywhere in life.

**You can get the details of each process in the book “The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in Life and Business” by Chris Duhigg. A book I would highly recommend for you to read while you are a twentysomething.