Since my post yesterday, I have read another seventy pages of Atomic Habits. I am learning so much about how to build better habits and dismantle the habits that no longer serve me. I want to write about everything I am reading so that I don’t just learn it for a few weeks and then move on to the next self-help book. If I write about the things I am learning, and how I am applying them in my life, then I can effectively rewire my brain. I won’t just chew over these ideas for a few weeks. I’ll absorb them and let them change me for the rest of my life.

Before I bought this book (I heard about it on the Awesome With Alison podcast), I was trying to lose weight. I am always trying to lose weight. A few times in my life, I have lost all the weight. Then, for a few months, I struggle to stay at my ideal weight. But since about the time I was fifteen years old, I have mostly been in a state of trying to lose weight.

For my latest weight loss effort, I decided it was time to address my emotional eating. This was not a bad idea. I know everything about nutrition and exercise but over the years, I have gained a lot of weight thanks to emotional eating. But since having postpartum depression in 2013, I have been working at becoming more comfortable with my feelings. And I have become a lot better at feeling my feelings.

But I am still eating too much.

The past few months, I have journaled about my eating habits. I have delved into what I thought might be the emotional and spiritual reasons behind my excessive weight. I had a lot of good ideas, but not a lot of progress. Then, at the end of a recent session, my therapist asked me to pay attention to my eating triggers.

I started to pay attention and took notes on my iPhone throughout the day. What were my eating triggers? I assumed I would make all sorts of connections between “feelings” and “food.” Stressed? Grab some crackers. Sad? Gobble some chocolate. Lonely? Hello, ice cream, let’s be friends.

But as I got curious about my eating triggers and paid attention, I noticed that I did not really have any triggers. Every now and then, I’d have some intense difficult feeling and head for the kitchen; but mostly, I ate because why not. In the kitchen? Eat. Making the kids’ lunches for tomorrow? Eat. Sitting on the couch watching television? Eat.

In other words: I used to eat to suppress uncomfortable feelings; now I let myself feel all my feelings; but I am still eating too much because that is what my body is trained to do.

A few weeks ago, after doing lots of thinking and writing about my eating habits, I started to wonder if maybe I was assigning too much meaning to my bad food habits. I was writing and journaling as if my food habits signified a spiritual crisis. But maybe my bad food habits just signified bad food habits.

When Alison mentioned Atomic Habits on a recent podcast episode, I knew I had to order that book. I wanted it right away, but we were actually leaving for Nebraska. So I put the book in my Amazon cart and ordered it the day before we flew home. It was waiting for me in California as we pulled into our driveway.

The first 130 pages have confirmed what I was starting to suspect: my bad eating habits do not result from some moral or character weakness. As Clear writes:

If you’re overweight, a smoker or an addict, you’ve been told your entire life that it is because you lack self-control–maybe even that you’re a bad person. The idea that a little discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture.

Atomic Habits, p. 92.

I don’t need to address some spiritual failing to become a healthier person. I’m on a spiritual journey, and I intend to be on a spiritual journey for the rest of my life; but I don’t need to stay overweight as some sort of punishment or motivation. I just have to change my habits to become a healthier person.