Healthy Habits
HEALTHY HABITS
“First you build your habits, then they build you.” - John Dryden
What you become is made up of the little things that you do each and every day. Being consistent is so important to your happiness, success, and growth. Habits or rituals are very important to start developing in your life because if you don't start developing habits that serve you, your body and mind will automatically create ones for convenience. Successfully integrating habits that serve you builds confidence and trust in yourself.
Habits play a very important role, we don't want to use every ounce of our brain power each day just to get through daily routine! That's why our brain begins to form subconscious habit loops based on routines we repeat regularly to leave more energy for tasks like self-development, work, growth, and enthusiasm. I believe it is important to take the time to consciously wire in high-quality habits so that they will serve you when stress is up or energy is down, rather than defaulting to destructive habits.
A habit is usually a loop based around a:
Trigger: A cue that triggers the brain to initiate a behaviour. It’s a piece of information or a thought that predicts a reward. This is a key to human survival, our ancestors were paying attention to cues that signalled the location of primary rewards like food, water, and sex. Today, we spend most of our time learning cues that predict secondary rewards like money, fame, status, praise and approval, love and friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction. Which actually are the modern ways we perceive ourselves to be able to survive and reproduce.
Craving: Cravings are the motivational driving force to do the action. Without desire, there is no reason to act. You don’t crave the habit itself, but the change in state it delivers. In theory, any trigger could activate a craving, but this only occurs in people who have associated it with a certain change in state.
Routine: This is the actual response or habit that you do, which can be a thought or an action. Whether a response occurs or not depends on how much resistance there is associated with the behaviour. If a particular action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, then you won’t do it. This is why when you become depleted of willpower it becomes very hard to uphold habits you are trying to develop and slide back into old and easy habits. This is why we change only a few habits at a time, and by doing steps that are possible. Your response also depends on your ability. It sounds simple, but a habit can occur only if you are capable of doing it.
Reward: Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about getting the reward. We chase rewards because they serve two purposes: they satisfy us and they teach us.
The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving. Yes, rewards provide benefits on their own. Food and water deliver the energy you need to survive. Getting in shape improves your health and happiness. But the more immediate benefit is that rewards satisfy your craving to eat or to gain status or to win approval. At least for a moment, rewards deliver contentment and relief from craving.
Second, rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Your brain is a reward detector. As you go about your life, your sensory nervous system is continuously monitoring which actions satisfy your desires and deliver pleasure. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment are part of the feedback mechanism that helps your brain distinguish useful actions from useless ones. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.
If a behaviour is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behaviour difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. Without the first three steps, a behaviour will not occur. Without all four, a behaviour will not be repeated.
EXAMPLES
Trigger: Your phone buzzes
Craving: You really want to know what the message says
Routine: You grab your phone and read the text
Reward: You satisfy your craving by reading the text. Grabbing your phone becomes associated with a phone notification.
By the time we become adults, we rarely notice the habits that are running our lives. Most of us never give a second thought to the fact that we tie the same shoe first each morning, always change into comfortable clothes after getting home from work. After decades of mental wiring, we automatically slip into these patterns of thinking and acting if we are unconscious.
FORMING AN EFFECTIVE HABIT
Forming a habit takes consciousness, focus and perseverance. This is why we recommend on only introducing a few habits at a time until they are established, not trying to overhaul everything overnight. Establishing a keystone habit will help you to develop other habits naturally.
A habit can be worked into your life by repetition, by being tacked onto an existing habit or replacing a habit that you already have. The most effective way is to establish the Trigger, Craving, Routine Reward.
Trigger: Make it obvious
Craving: Make it attractive
Routine: Make it easy
Reward: Make it satisfying
To begin with you may need to break down a bigger habit into smaller chunks that you can begin to establish. The key is to make it seem so small you cannot say no. So if you want to get to the gym, just make the routine about getting to the gym and doing one set of exercises. It’s so small, you can’t say no and will not drain as much willpower as saying it’s not worth going unless you destroy a huge workout. Then you can build on it because you’re already there you are likely to do your workout, gain the reward and make it a habit to exercise!
BREAKING A BAD HABIT
The key to breaking a bad habit is to effectively swap it. This takes conscious effort to begin, but will help you make better choices when the trigger occurs. The key is finding a behaviour that gives a similar reward to the prior habit. For example if you have and energy slump after lunch that would usually have you reaching for a sugary snack or coffee, you could instead go for a brief walk to gain the same reward of an energy boost.
Remember to start small, and you may even need to sequentially change the behaviour associated with the trigger until it is one that works in your favour.
Alternatively you can use discipline to eliminate a habit, by reversing the habit loop.
Trigger: Make it invisible
Craving: Make it unattractive
Routine: Make it difficult
Reward: Make it unsatisfying
Unwanted habit: Buying chocolate from the supermarket when you buy groceries
Trigger: Make it invisible: Don’t go through the aisle with chocolate
Craving: Make it unattractive: Make sure you aren’t hungry and have healthy treats for cravings
Routine: Make it difficult: Don’t buy the chocolate and it’s pretty hard to eat it!
Reward: Make it unsatisfying: Associate healthy treats with satisfaction, not the sugar rush and crash of sugary snacks
Remember the biggest way to establish your habits is repetition and routine. We use the habit tracker every week in the Journal for this very reason. Setting the intention, completing habits and then they will create the person that you want to become.
HEALTHY MUNCH HABITS
Planning and Preparation - Make sure to take the time before the week begins to plan your week’s worth of food, meal prep, or order meals or just spend some time being ontop of the week. A bit of preparation saves a whole lot of rushing and stress later in the week
Eat Balanced Meals - Keep in mind your portion sizing and macro balance at each meal
Eat to a Regular Schedule - Try to eat at similar times each day, which helps to regulate your appetite hormones and blood sugar. Make it suit your life, for example if you can’t eat first thing in the morning, don’t force yourself to eat, wait until you are hungry a while later. Try to make sure you eat a meal around the middle of the day to keep your blood sugar regulated, and don’t wait until you are staving every afternoon and are more likely to eat low quality foods!
Track Daily - Stay accountable and aware of your food is very important to seeing results. Plus you need data to see how your body is responding to food
Eat Mindfully - Eating mindfully, and paying full attention to your food when you eat it is important. It stops mindless snacking, emotional eating and boredom eating. Try to have no distractions when you eat
Focus on the Quality/Quantity of Food rather than “Good/Bad” - Labelling food as Good or Bad is setting you up for an unhealthy relationship with food. Instead look back on the Quality and Quantity lesson and place foods on a Quality Vs Quantity spectrum. Choose foods that are of high quality and fit into your daily quantity more than foods of low quality, but you can of course still incorporate treat foods
Drink 2+L of water - Keep your fluids up, and make sure to drink at least 2L of water. If you are training and sweating, you will need to drink at least 1L more of water per day.
Incorporate Healthy Treats for Cravings - Choosing treats with higher quality ingredients will have a better hormonal response in the body than incorporating high sugar, processed fats.
80/20 Rule - Maintain a healthy balance of food in your week. Either keep room for a treat each day, or keep your meals very high quality through the week and allow for a meal out on the weekend. I prefer to find healthy alternatives for foods that I enjoy.
HEALTHY MIND HABITS
Sleep 8 hours a night - Getting rest and recovery is crucial to seeing the best results in every area of your life. Getting sleep helps your body to recover and rejuvenate, helps your brain to replenish, helps your mood, appetite, healing and stress. Have an effective wind-down routine to prepare you for bed, get to bed on time and.
Set aside time every week to Plan and Reflect - Planning is the key to setting up your week for success, but reflection is equally as important for making sure you followed through on your intentions
Practice Meditation - Meditation is so valuable for releasing stress, getting into a rest and digest state and helping you before more calm and centred. I do 10-15 minutes in the morning and either in the mid-afternoon or before bed.
Have a Calendar - Booking your schedule into a calendar takes it out of your head and into existence. Put everything of importance in and block out that time to do a specific task. Multitasking is the enemy of progress, you must apply yourself fully, whether it is training, work, meditating or even time off.
Practise emotional Intelligence - Take check ins during your day to monitor your emotional state
Take breaks - Going with blocking out time, make sure to schedule breaks that are effective. Take rest, meditate, go for a walk, prioritise your rest time as well as your work time.
HEALTHY MOVE HABITS
Train Build at least 2x a week - Make sure to complete your strength training each week. Strength training is where you build muscle, strength, confidence, ability and
Train Blitz at least 1x a Week - Cardio is important for your fitness, stamina, heart, circulation. Doing a form of HIIT at least 1x a week is a healthy habit for keeping your fitness up
Practise weekly Recovery - Make time to do recovery. Foam Rolling, Bend sessions, a massage, yoga, sauna or epsom salt bath, make sure you are giving your body rest and relaxation.
Schedule your Workouts - If it’s in your calendar it will get done. Make the time to workout and make it regular every week.
Track Your Strength Progress - Make sure you are improving in your strength. Track Your Workouts in a book or and app. The Powherful Journal has plenty of space to track your progress.
Always Warm Up and Cool Down - Always set time before and after your workout to thoroughly prepare and recovery from your workout
Take Rest Days - Overtraining can be detrimental to your progress. Keep the quality of your workouts high and make sure to take at least one day off to rest.
Move Daily - Make sure to move your body daily, if it’s not a day you have a scheduled workout, make sure to get in a walk