Starting off the New Year, we’ll be discussing the Basics of Habit Change. This blog will help you find ways to overcome harmful habits and restructure your mindset so you can stick to the goals you have made for yourself this year. The best place to start is by discovering why you want to change. As James Clear recommended in his book, Atomic Habits, figure out who you want to become, such as, a healthy fit parent and role model for your children. Then decide on a process and habits to change to get you to your desired vision of the future.
List them out: First things first—you have to know what the habit is in order to change it. Make a list of your habits that you would like to gain a better understanding of, or wish to change. It should be a physical list (not a mental one), to help you organize your thoughts and potentially see if there is any overlap. Listing can also help you see if there are any concerns that need to immediately be addressed
Look for patterns: Look at your list and take some time to think—do you notice anything? Think about the emotions you feel during said habit. Are they positive, neutral, or negative? Do these emotions typically occur at a certain time of day (i.e. snacking heavily before dinner) or after a specific event (i.e. had a bad day so you eat a lot of junk food)? When you have a better idea of what the root cause may be, you are better equipped to prevent it from occurring.
Confront the cause: If you know what the cause of the habit is, try addressing it.
- For example, if you know that you tend to snack on unhealthy foods a lot during work, pack a serving size of healthy items like baby carrots or sliced peppers or cucumbers that can be dipped into hummus or eaten as it. You can try dried fruit (with no sugar added), make your own fruit bar (as mentioned in our blog here), make your own parfait with low-fat yogurt, etc. Or if you’re trying to lower how much you snack on in general, develop an eating schedule to help your body learn to expect food at certain times during the day so you don’t get peckish too often.
- Maybe you feel that you eat out too often but don’t have much time during the week to cook. You can try meal prepping during the weekend. If you find yourself low on time during the weekdays as well, try researching healthy, quick, and/or hands-off meals you can try out. Hands-off being that the meal doesn’t require much supervision (i.e.our Warm Winter Healthy Taco Soup Recipe). If the option is applicable to you, you can even try inviting over friends and/or family to help out.
Implementing new habits: Here are some things to consider with the habits you now want to incorporate into your lifestyle:
- Start small: If you try to implement a dramatic change, you may end up experiencing some setbacks and fall into old habits. Also, be realistic with your goals. If you set an outlandish goal and end up being unsuccessful, it can end up doing more harm than good to your mindset and may end up further enforcing the old habits.
- Reward successes: In order to help you stay motivated and encouraged, reward the small steps you take towards your goal.
o Acknowledge mistakes: Just because a setback occurs doesn’t mean you’re a failure! A habit is a habit because it’s an action done to the point of occurring involuntarily or unconsciously. Give yourself some grace and just keep trying your best. Accept the thoughts and emotions you may experience during this time and understand that it is a normal thing that occurs.
Cultivate a growth mindset: Your mindset plays an important role in changing your habits. A growth mindset allows one to believe that they are able to grow, change, and develop accordingly with hard work, time, and dedication. Whereas, a fixed mindset may believe that qualities such as talent and intelligence are fixed and cannot be changed. You want to have a mindset that allows you to believe in change over time.
While this is not an exhaustive list, they can be beneficial in leading you on the right track. Feel free to also take a look at James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.
Feature Photo by Mohamed Hassan from PIxabay
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: Tiny changes, remarkable results: An easy & proven way to build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery.
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Kay Loughrey, MPH, RDN, LDN
Transformational Speaker, Breakthrough Coach, Nutritionist-Dietitian
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