In my experience, all addictions and harmful habits are very similar in terms of the psychological reason we do them, and so are defeated similarly. Video games, gluten, carbs, television, etc, all fill a "need", whether it is physiological or psychological, and this "need" never goes away if you keep giving it what it wants. For food, I found cold turkey is best - just stop eating the bad/addictive thing and soldier through a few days (sometimes weeks) of pain, but then never have cravings again. Slow weaning is if you're older or have a health condition, but if you're relatively young and healthy, it's easier to jump into a cold swimming pool than try to walk in slowly while getting used to it, prolonging your suffering and possibly changing your mind along the way.
For psychological addictions, you still have to stop feeding it, but often it won't go away just from a period of cold turkey abstinence alone. You often have to replace the habit with something positive, while you work to understand the "need" behind it. For me, I replaced video games with reading the forum, sott, other websites, and books on the recommended reading list. Much like with procrastination, you don't even realize how fun/fascinating/awesome these books are until you pick pick one up, open it, and start reading it. So while right now video games seem like way more fun than a "boring" book, if you just force yourself to, at least, give it a shot - just begin reading, you may find that you can't put it down. And now instead of anticipating the game, you'll be anticipating the book. Right now I'm at work and I can't wait to get home and continue reading the Vegetarian Myth, it's a real page turner!
And you know, these harmful habits and addictions, and the resistance to change them to something positive, are actually often caused by procrastination. The need behind them isn't always a bad thing - it may be simply a desire to enjoy life. The bad part is that we were programmed to enjoy the wrong things for the wrong reasons. We do what our predator and ultimately body/physiology enjoys, not our heart, mind, and soul. So it's not that we just have to stop doing fun things and just "study" and do boring/painful things instead. That mentality is the failing of the public education system and our Western pathocratic society at large. Instead, we have to find in ourselves the joy and fun of those things that grow our being, and once we can see them as fun, nothing will ever compare. Learning IS fun, networking is really fun, reading fascinating books can be downright ecstatic, and eating lots of good fats is nutritious, delicious, and satisfying.
Hell, even the esoteric concept of "conscious suffering" is done because a higher part of you recognizes the benefits, which far outweigh the suffering. Nobody would do it if suffering was all there was to it. Nobody ever does anything that they hate at every level, where there is no part of them that sees a positive in what they are doing. For "conscious suffering" it's only the predator who suffers, but the higher part of us is rejoicing, and if we can just tap into that, even a little bit, it will give us the motivation to go through it, we honestly won't mind the suffering.
So yeah there is some reprogramming involved to switch out of negative habits into positive and more conscious ones, and mainly it is about what we like, why we like it, and what part of us likes it. Negative/destructive habits are NEVER a result of the higher part of ourselves - it's always a result of either our body, emotions, or intellect being damaged, and like a broken machine, it seeks solace in the wrong fuel, thinking it is the right fuel. I mean think about it, a healthy body does not want drugs, alcohol, fast food, etc. A healthy emotional center does not seek destructive relationships, emotional abuse (or to be abused), manipulation of self and others, does not throw fits at minor things, and does not ignore the suffering of others, even those far away. And a healthy intellect does not lie to itself, does not embrace subjectivity, and most definitely does not seek to deactivate itself and instead mash a few buttons for hours while getting mindless visual stimulation that adds nothing to your life, that has no purpose, does not grow you in any way, and is simply a way to "burn time".
So if we do any of those things, if we ENJOY any of those things, we're broken. You can't just say "Oh, I like <insert damaging activity here>" because it's not really true, *you* do not enjoy it, some broken part of your body/mind/emotions is hung up on this destructive activity, but most certainly it is not *you* in any real sense. It is a foreign installation, and there are various causes like narcissistic wounding in childhood, or simply because it stimulates some "pleasure center" of the brain in a chemical way. This is not what humans, what conscious beings, should ever do, or be.
A monkey in a cage, at the mercy of humans, can be made to push a button over and over because the button is hooked up to a pleasure center of its brain and it gets a good feeling from pushing it. And in such experiments the monkeys often pushed the button until they died. They did not realize that this addiction was overriding their instinct of survival, that they were hurting themselves, and ultimately killing themselves. All they knew is that they "liked" to do it, and they "wanted" to do it, so they did. But those monkeys were broken, and in precisely the same way, so are we. And we too are killing ourselves if we allow the broken machine to dictate what we find enjoyable and fun, to dictate what we do, because broken machines don't know what is healthy, what is beneficial, and what truly IS fun and enjoyable in a much more profound way. Broken machines do not get fixed by catering to their broken desires, this will only wear them down til they don't run at all.
And realizing that your likes/dislikes and what you "enjoy" is a result of being broken, is the first and crucial step to fixing yourself, and averting your own doom.
I haven't read it, but I heard that this the best book on procrastination:
http://www.amazon.com/Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination-Guilt-Free/dp/0874775043
Just don't procrastinate on reading it (assuming procrastination is even your issue) :P
