Four ways to rehab your food habits

1. Become aware

Habits are automatic. Firstly you need to focus your attention on what you eat, when you eat and why you eat, says Dr David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating. Spend a week getting to know your cues to eat: going past a particular food court, in front of Glee on Sundays, just before your Monday morning meeting. Write them down.

2. Break the link

If work stress makes you crave something fatty from the cafe down the road, do something different like make a cup of tea. And the next time. “To compete with old habits, you need to practise a competing behaviour repeatedly,” says Dr Kessler. Instead of coming home and going straight to the fridge, go for a walk, have a shower or call your mum. And turn off the box: TV food advertising increases automatic snacking on available foods, according to studies done by researchers from Yale University in the US.

3. Rewrite the script

Give yourself plenty of reassuring advice and encouragement, just like you would to a friend or a child. Come up with competing ways of thinking about food. “Instead of ‘That slab of cake looks really good’ we can remind ourselves of our goals ‘If I don’t eat that now, I’ll feel better about myself tomorrow’,” says Dr Kessler. Change the way you talk to yourself about food and use that to control your behaviour.

4. Get support

It’s tough making big changes, and you’re more likely to be successful if you have an encouraging partner, friend – even health professional – to acknowledge your efforts and reinforce your motivation. It also helps you to stay on the straight and narrow when you don’t want to let someone down.