"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle
I’m definitely a creature of habit and I certainly have my fair share of ‘bad habits’ and for many years, I really didn’t I could change them whatsoever.
Losing weight and changing your lifestyle requires a lot of work on creating new habits and losing old ones that don’t serve your new way of eating and living and it can seem quite daunting and even impossible to get rid of something that you’ve done for years and years. But all of our habits are learned behaviours – some of them stem from very early childhood and others we’ve developed over the years but we weren’t born with a lot of our habits and they are things we can change, shed or create brand new.
One of the simplest habits to look at is brushing your teeth – something that we do twice or even more every day without even thinking of it or having to plan it into our day.
But this didn’t happen overnight – I remember my mum having to remind me constantly ‘have you brushed your teeth today?’, standing over me in the bathroom before going to school or to bed and checking I was doing it and even smelling my breath to make sure I’d done it. It certainly wasn’t an automatic behaviour but after daily repetition, reminders and checking up on me, it soon became an instinctive part of my day and something I did without thinking, without needing to be reminded about and a completely ingrained behaviour. It’s a daily habit that is just part of my life as I am sure it’s yours too.
And that’s how habits are formed – doing things, even the things you don’t really want to, over and over again until they become ingrained and just a part of your daily or weekly routine.
Sounds easy and straightforward? Unfortunately if it was, we’d all be full of brilliant healthy habits living our best lives day after day with everything running smoothly and nothing getting in the way of us reaching our goals. Building new habits can be challenging, it takes time, there’s often little immediate reward or satisfaction and often, even a small hurdle in the way can derail our best efforts.
There are lots of techniques, strategies and tips out there about how to build new habits, the one I’m focussing on in this blog is a really simple and practical technique that I’ve used for several years and had a lot of success with.
Habit Stacking
The term ‘habit stacking’ was coined by author S.J.Scott in his book Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less. In essence, he suggests that you build new habits into existing routine behaviour that you already do every day or week. By doing this you are using your existing habit as a ‘trigger’ or reminder to do your new habit and building a chain of good habits.
So, how does it work?
1
identify the new habit you want to start and be very specific (just saying ‘exercise every day’ is too general – exactly what sort of exercise do you want to start doing and for how long)
2
Take a bit of time to think about your current day – make a really detailed list of everything you do on a ‘normal’ day – starting with waking up and getting out of bed.
For example: alarm goes off at 7am, snooze until 7.15am, get up, go to the bathroom, have a wee, wash hands, wash face, brush teeth, go downstairs into the kitchen, put the kettle on, make a coffee, check social media, check diary for the day, drink coffee, put the news on, wake up family, make breakfast, eat breakfast in the kitchen, sort out packed lunches, get dressed, etc etc etc
3
Check through your list of daily behaviours and find one that you can ‘stack’ your new habit onto.
Examples:
– when I am waiting for the kettle to boil for my morning coffee, I’ll do 5 minutes of squats / arm weights
– before I take my medication at night, I’ll check my meal plan for tomorrow to see if I need to take anything out of the freezer
– after I do the school run, I will prepare today’s lunch and healthy snacks
Use these sentences to help ‘stack’ your habits
4
Be consistent – building a new habit takes time equally, breaking a bad habit takes time. Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day or think you’ve ruined it! Just go again the next day, and the next day, and the next – at some point, your new habit will become ingrained in the same way as brushing your teeth in the morning does!
Building new habits (as well as letting go of old ones) is a huge subject and one that really fascinates me. I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject and these two books are really helpful and full of practical and insightful tips which you can put into practice right away.
I’d definitely recommend a read if this subject interests you.
I love helping people discover the best ways to work on their mindsets and habits to help them reach their weight loss goals and if you would like to find out more about my 1-2-1 coaching programme or how I can help you, please do get in touch.
Email me or phone/message: 07834 442607
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I’d love to hear any thoughts or comments on this post and if there’s anything that really works for you to help keep you on track or how to keep the motivation going strong!
Thank you, habits especially the bad ones are definitely something I need to address, putting foods in my mouth is something I do without thought? Most rimes I don’t even register what I’ve eaten!! So taking time to stop think and try to change is something I’m going to do, cheers
That’s a great spot straight away – identifying the problem is the first step in finding the solution! Let me know how you get on
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