Rewards

I've gotten to the first four day win in Martha Beck's book. This is the one that explains how to take a goal (getting rid of ritual eating) and breaking it down into managable chunks (eating a tiny bit less during the ritual). The little chunks should be so easy that you roll your eyes and say 'of course I can do that'. This helps to teach the idea that big goals can be accomplished but in little steps.

So I recognized that part of my problem is ritual eating, especially after supper. My original thought was to completely eliminate the ritual of having something to eat in front of the tv after supper, but then I broke it down to eating one less cookie during the ritual for four days. I will decrease the cookies until there are none, and consider either stopping the hot chocolate or replacing it with decaf tea. I can easily do that. Well, the cookie part anyway.

The problem is the rewards. I am supposed to reward myself each day that I complete the win with a little reward, then after four days a slightly bigger reward. You know, reinforce the good behaviour. I have no idea what to reward myself with. Not a clue. There really is nothing that I deny myself so I don't know how to reward myself. If I want to watch a tv show I will. If I want to play a game on the computer, I will. If I want to shop, I will.

Money could be the reward, but that gets a bit sticky. Right now my boyfriend and I are watching every penny that comes in, in an effort to curb our spending and learn to save. We have a fair bit of debt ($18,000 - mostly credit cards) and are on a payment plan to get rid of it in less than two years. We receive an allowance that we can each spend freely, so I have money to play with whenever I want. To take money out of our strict budget would make me uncomfortable, just because I want to follow our budget plan. We actually have a blog about it, someday I'll link it to this one, but not today :)

The other thing I can do as a reward is to leave work early, but I do anyway when I feel like I want some quiet time in the house. So what can I do to reward myself without using food that I don't do already? I just have no idea. The only thing I could think of to get me started was to mentally pat myself on the back in congratulations of completing the win. So I've been doing that for the last three days when I took one less cookie. I don't even notice the one less cookie, btw. I just eat the other three slower.