What’s The Best Way To Build Healthy Habits?
If you’re like most people, making resolutions for your health and fitness is an annual tradition.
Here’s the deal though.
You have an 8% chance of keeping your New Year’s resolution.
That’s not good, and that’s putting it nicely.
As a matter of fact, a 2018 study pinpointed the date that most people give up on those goals to get in shape and eat healthy.
January 12th.
Ouch.
12 days?
Really?
We need a better plan.
I’m not immune to this either. I’m a statistic!
A few years ago my resolution was to “trade webpages for book pages” and read a book every month.
I failed.
Hard.
I read 2 books all year and would be embarrassed to know how much time I wasted staring at my phone.
Why did I fail so miserably at my goal?
I took the wrong approach.
I was going to rely on will-power to put my phone down and pick up a book.
In this article, we will talk about a different approach.
Habits.
Your success lies in habits.
We will talk about:
What habits are
Why we have bad habits and how we can break them
The best way to use new habits to accomplish our goals
What to do when we get off track
So what exactly is a habit?
When you think of a habit what comes to mind? Biting your fingernails? Swearing? Smoking? Drinking?
These would all be considered “bad” habits I’d say. Things that people would want to do LESS of.
But let’s back up and think about the definition of the word.
A habit is a behavior pattern acquired from frequent repetition. It’s an acquired behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.
Did you notice that nowhere did it say that the behavior necessarily had to be “bad”? Interesting, we will come back to that.
Why do we have bad habits?
The fact is, we ALL have “bad” habits. Things that block us from being productive. Things that are holding us back from accomplishing the things that we want to do.
Sometimes bad habits are things that are making us sick, hurting our relationships, and sometimes they’re just things that are wasting our time.
No matter what our bad habits are, they’re typically rooted in, and caused by two different things.
Boredom
Stress Elevation
I think we all know what boredom and stress are.
We’ve probably all felt both pretty recently. But what I want you think about is that maybe they are just SYMPTOMS on the surface of a much deeper issue.
If you turn to the pantry when you’re stressed, what’s causing that stress?
Is there a deeper emotional or relational issue behind it? Do you have a vice that you always end up buried in when you’re bored?
Maybe you’re trying to cope with a deeper issue by distracting yourself.
My point is that you need to pull yourself aside for a heart to heart before starting a journey of change. Dealing with the ROOT issues instead of the surface issues will provide you lasting relief and true change.
How do we break bad habits?
So how do we break these bad habits that are holding us back?
We don’t.
Wait, don’t scroll down… Keep reading.
Bad habits are scratching SOME itch for us. We’re getting something out of them or else we would have stopped them long ago.
A spending spree at the mall is making is FEEL something that we want.
Pulling out a cigarette and taking a drag is relieving something for us.
Deciding to “JUST QUIT” a bad habit almost NEVER works, and here’s why.
You quit the behavior that was “scratching that itch” for you, and you didn’t replace it with another behavior to give you that same feeling.
Let that sink in for a second.
Do you know someone who quit smoking cold turkey and then gained a substantial amount of weight? It’s not uncommon.
If you think about it, smoking was alleviating SOMETHING for them. They liked the feeling they got from doing it. When they stop smoking, they turned to another bad habit (eating excessively) to replace the “thing” that was giving them the feeling that they liked. This doesn’t always happen, but it can, and it makes sense.
There’s got to be a better way.
DON’T JUST TRY TO GO COLD TURKEY
When you decide to break a bad habit, the first step is to plan ahead.
Think about what “itch” that habit is scratching, and brainstorm a new, positive habit that you can adopt that will scratch that same itch. It doesn’t have to be exact, but the closer the better.
So instead of just dropping that bad habit, we’re going to replace it with a new, good habit. That’ll set us up for better success than just trying to go cold turkey with will power alone.
Let’s say that we are trying to break the habit of smoking when we’re stressed. We all know that exercise reduces stress, so next time you feel that urge to smoke, go for a 3-5 minute walk instead. I don’t smoke but I think that’s about how long it takes to smoke a cigarette, so you haven’t lost any time either. Think about things that you’re grateful for, listen to the Digital Barbell Podcast, or take a minute to text a friend to check on them. Double win.
What if we’re trying to stop snacking when we’re bored? When you get that urge to go work on your tan via the light in the fridge, grab a glass and fill it with water instead. Drink the water first and then see if you were really hungry or just wanted something to do.
Not only are you not getting those mindless calories, you’re increasing your water intake which has been linked to weight loss success and general health improvements. BOOM!
Ok cool, so we have an idea about how to BREAK old bad habits by replacing them with new, good habits.
What if we just want to start something NEW, like those New Year's Resolutions that always seem to fail us?
We’re going to rely on habits for those too!
I don’t want to make it sound like you don’t need discipline. You absolutely do. Will power is a real thing. It’s a skill that gets better with practice and you’ll certainly need some if you’re going to succeed.
But let’s start by talking about the best way to use habits to make those resolutions a reality.
USING NEW HABITS TO CRUSH OUR GOALS
This is an incredibly deep and complex topic. I love it. I need to use all of this in my own life. I digress…
So how are we going to best use habits in our lives to keep those promises we make to ourselves?
The first and probably the most critical thing we need to do is:
START SMALL
Yep. Take a step back. Think smaller.
We see this all the time in our coaching. People have a goal to lose weight or start a workout program and they think the answer is to go 100% full throttle - Trying everything within their power right off the bat. I mean if 1% is good, then 100% is better right?
WRONG!
100% isn’t realistic. It’s not sustainable and it’s a recipe to fail pretty quickly.
Instead, we need to start with a much smaller version of our goal that we can make a nice sustainable habit around.
Here’s an example.
We want to improve our health by starting to eat 8 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. That’s a lot and maybe you could sustain it for a few days or a week or two even.
So instead of trying to go straight to our goal, let’s start with a habit that’s much smaller, but more sustainable. Let’s start with 1 apple per day. Yes, you read that right. We went from a goal of 8 all the way down to 1.
Why so low?
See, the thing is that we want to start with something so easy that it’s almost impossible for us to NOT to comply. We want to make it so that our goal doesn’t require much willpower or motivation.
Our motivation goes up and down like feelings. We can’t rely on having a bunch of motivation to help us stick with a lofty goal.
No matter how low your motivation is, you can eat 1 apple per day without having to muster up the strength of Goliath.
Next, we’re going to build on that small habit that we’re already doing amazingly well.
BUILD IT UP SLOWLY
So you’ve got a small “win” by starting small and actually accomplishing this new habit because it didn’t require a lot of will power or motivation. Now what? We’re going to stick with the “small” theme and make tiny additions to that habit that move it in the direction of your larger, original goal.
Why so slow?
The thing about will power and motivation is that they are like a muscle. They get tired and worn out when we try to overuse them. But, just like real muscles, they do get stronger over time when exercised appropriately.
So by starting small, and adding in small amounts, our motivation and will power to stay on track grows WITH us.
Back to our fruit & vegetable goal… If we’re going to build up this habit slowly guess what we’re going to do? We’re going to go up to 2 servings per day. We’ll keep the already established habit of the apple a day, and add in a serving of veggies at dinner.
We only added 1 more thing to the list and that is the key. We don’t want to outpace our motivation and will power. We feel accomplished by our progress and that keeps our “motivation muscle” growing.
You might be rolling your eyes at this slow, gradual approach to actually starting and continuing this new behavior but it works.
Heck, we use it with our clients. When someone comes to us with the goal of getting in shape and they hire us to build them a custom training program we take the slow approach.
We figure out what we believe to be the perfect workout program and then we step back and make SURE that we are setting them up for success by making it sustainable. If we know that "XY&Z" are ultimately what they need to get the results that they want, maybe we start them off with just “X” and then we add in “Y” after a few weeks. You get the picture.
The same goes for making healthy changes in your nutrition. If your goal is to start eating mostly whole, unprocessed foods, maybe the best approach isn’t to go cold turkey on day 1. You’ll probably burn out within a week or two and you’ll be back to buying things in a box or hitting the drive-thru.
Take the small start approach and eat whole unprocessed foods for breakfast each day. Do that for a couple of weeks, and then add in an unprocessed snack. Do that for a couple of weeks and then move on to lunch. Get the point?
Be careful as you add to your new habit. If things are going well, take a step back every month or so and make sure that where you’re at is sustainable. If your habit is getting pretty darn big, think about breaking it up into more manageable chunks.
Let’s say you’re trying to build up the habit of studying a subject that you’re interested in. If you started small and have now built up to where you’re spending a good chunk of time per day studying (maybe 30 minutes), consider breaking that up into 15 minutes twice per day rather than 30 minutes all at once. That may make it more sustainable. Finding 30 minutes in a row per day might be tough to maintain and might lead to you giving up altogether.
What to do when you’re slipping up?
All of this sounds good, right? We started small, we built up slowly and we are crushing these new habits.
But then life happens and we miss a day. One day becomes two, becomes three and we feel like we are off track and are in danger of becoming a statistic.
What do we do?
We can answer that question by talking about what we absolutely positively cannot do if we want long term change and success.
We cannot adopt the “all or nothing” mentality. The one where we feel like if we “messed up” once, we’ve ruined our progress and we just plain give up. We talk about this ALL the time with our clients.
Heck, we recorded an entire podcast episode about overcoming the all or nothing mentality.
Miss a workout? Ok, move on, do the next one today. Eat a couple donuts in a moment of weakness? Aight, go eat your normal lunch.
The worst thing you can do in regard to your new habit is to give up the first time things don’t go perfectly.
It sounds cliched but the thing that separates successful people from average people is that they don’t quit when things don’t go perfectly. Because things NEVER go perfectly.
It’s also your responsibility to do a little planning ahead.
Can you think of something in your life that’s going to make sustaining your habit really difficult? Let’s address it before it’s an issue.
Trying to cut down on sugar? What if we get rid of the candy dish in the kitchen?
Trying to start a workout regimen? Pack your gym bag the night before and set it by the door so that there’s one less thing to do when you get up in the morning.
I think if you look at your routine and your prior experience that you’ll be able to think of a couple “traps” that you can avoid with just a little planning.
Last but not least, the most common advice given when it comes to real-life change: BE PATIENT!
Who cares if this takes longer than want?
If it works, and if it lasts, it’s worth it!
You’re worth it!
So what do you think?
Are you willing to try this approach for 2021?
Instead of just thinking of a resolution and going full tilt on it on January 1 and petering out by January 12, take a step back.
Step 1: Choose a habit instead of a resolution
Step 2: Start small. Smaller than you think
Step 3: Build small. Add to that small habit slowly so that it becomes a bigger habit over time.
Step 4: Don’t fall for the “all or nothing” mentality. It’s a sure-fire recipe for failure. If you slip up, start right back at it TODAY, not tomorrow.
Step 5: Be patient. Be someone who doesn’t give up and knows that they are worth the effort!