Habits have an important influence on long-term weight loss success.
Our habits are made up of little things we do as part of our daily lives, often without noticing or thinking much about them. These daily habits can add up to have a major effect on our weight loss goals, and more importantly, in maintaining the weight loss results.
What is a habit?
A habit can be anything that we do often enough for the activity to become practically automatic. It can be either a benefit or a challenge, depending on what the habit is and how it fits with our goals. For example, repeating healthy lifestyle choices until they become habit can help make weight maintenance nearly effortless. On the other hand, unhealthful habits can sabotage success over time. Because a habit is something we do without much thought, it can be hard to notice when habits are getting in the way of our weight wellness goals.
Habits are the core of everything we do. It's important to understand how these habits impact our life in order to be able to change them or use them to our advantage.
The Power of Habits
Research suggests that any strategy that relies on the power of habits in daily life can be effective for supporting long-term weight loss success and overall wellness goals.
Roughly 40% of everything we do happens on autopilot, like brushing teeth before bed. Pulitzer-prize winning author of 'Power Of Habits' Charles Duhigg writes that at the root of all habits, lies a simple 3-part loop.
The cue is what triggers us to do the habit, for example having a cup of coffee every morning at 6 AM.
The routine is the behavior we then automatically engage in, which, for drinking coffee, might be to go over to the coffeemaker, turn it on, and press the “espresso” button.
Lastly, we receive a reward for completing the routine, such as the rich smell of the coffee, its hearty taste and getting to watch the steam rise from the cup as it sits on the kitchen counter.
The interesting part is that our brain’s activity only spikes twice during this loop. At the beginning, to figure out which habit to engage in, and at the end, when the link between cue and routine is reinforced. Reinforced you ask? Yes, reinforced! That’s how habits are built and the stronger this link gets, the harder it becomes to change them. Naturally, the more often we reinforce a habit, the more 'embedded' in our brain it gets.
In case of the coffee, we crave it the second we get up, and when we can’t have it in the morning for whatever reason, most probably we get very grumpy and irritable.
Changing Habits Leads to Long-Term Success
Whether we aim to break old habits, create new habits, or a little of both, we should keep in mind that our habits are a key part of creating a lifestyle that supports lasting weight wellness.
But can we really break old habits? The answer is no. No, I don't believe we can.
Too often we think about habit change in terms of “breaking” a habit, and that’s exactly the wrong way of thinking it. Once we have the neurological pathway associated with a habit, or as Duhigg says, from cue to routine to reward, that pathway is always going to exist. If we simply try to suppress the habit, I believe we are fighting a losing battle. I am not saying it's impossible to exercise willpower and suppress the habit—I know people who quit eating carbs that way—in moments of stress we relapse because the willpower just simply doesn't always endure.
The question then becomes what is a healthier, more sustainable way of changing that habit? The answer is to actually change it—to come up with a new behavior that corresponds to an old cue to deliver something similar to an old reward.
The next step is to insert that into your life.
The trick to changing a habit is to switch the routine and leave everything else in tact.
Charles Duhigg calls this the Golden Rule of Habit Change.
Most of our habits have occurred for so long that we don’t pay attention to what causes it anymore. Often, we don’t really understand the cues driving our behaviors until we look for them.
Let's say we want to stop snacking aimlessly at night while watching Netflix.
Is the reward we are seeking to satisfy hunger? (Highly unlikely as most probably we just finished dinner a little while ago). Is it to interrupt boredom? (Highly unlikely too since Netflix should be entertaining.) If we snack to keep our hands occupied, we can easily find another routine, such as making a cup of tea that provides the same reward without adding to our waistline. If we identify the cues and rewards, we can change the routine.
The type of habits that get in the way of achieving weight loss goals can be hard to identify because habits are the things we do without much conscious thought. Habits have an important influence on long-term weight loss success. Whether we aim to change old habits, create new habits, or a little of both, we should keep in mind that our habits are a key part of creating a lifestyle that supports lasting weight wellness.
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