Yeah. Eating is a habit. Probably a good habit. After all, you need to eat to live. Right?

Of course, overeating is not a good habit.  Yet, some ginormous number of the US population, if not the world, overeat. Overeating leads to, well, fatness or, as te medical community likes to cal it, obesity. so overeating equals bad habit.

Yet, we all have habits of eating. We eat certain foods over and over and we tend to eat at the same time every day.

This “epiphany” recently came to me (this morning, actually) when I sat at the dining table, as I usually do, with the morning paper. Yes, I actually still get a real paper copy of the newspaper.

The difference this morning was that I knew I was also meeting some friends for breakfast later. Not 6:00am when I normally eat breakfast but about 9:00 when everyone else had a chance to get up, get dressed and drive to the diner where we were all meeting.

I made a cup of coffee (ya gotta love those Keurig coffee makers) and sat down. My next step would normally be to make myself a bowl of cereal (carbs and sugar with dairy in a bowl). But, I knew I was going to be eating just a few hours later. I knew it. It was in the front of my brain.

Yet, after a few minutes of reading the paper and drinking my coffee I decided to make myself that bowl of cereal. It was almost automatic pilot. Almost. The only difference this morning is that I knew I was going to eat  later and I was trying to make a rational and conscious decision not to eat.

Of course, there are times I’m successful with this.  The other day when I was getting my blood tested, I was able to abstain.  I was able to go to the lab much earlier, though.  9:00am is a long ways from 6:00. Isn’t it?

I guess my point is that breaking the habit and re-establishing a new habit isn’t as easy as it looks. It’s the same with everything, I suppose. Do you shower before or after breakfast? What time of the day do you exercise? (exercise?). Do you check your e-mail and Facebook first thing or wait until mid-morning?

Most of the things we do in our life is a habit. I’m told that habits, no matter how deeply ingrained, can be changed. Bad habits replaced by good ones.

I wish I could find the secret key to changing the eating habits.