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Habit Building for Long Term Results

Your guide to building habits to achieve your goals and make them stick.




Habits are defined as actions that are triggered automatically in response to cues associated with their performance Gardner et al., 2012

The quote above is taken from an interesting study on habit-building and its role in a healthy diet and lifestyle. Gardner and colleagues talk about why habits can be so effective in helping you to achieve your long-term goals.


Habits are initiated by something within our environment. When we're exposed to a certain cue with repetition, they become engrained or 'learned', to a point where we carry them out unconsciously.


Why is this important?

We all know that motivation is a finite recourse. We've all kicked off a training plan or diet change at the turn of a new year, charged with motivation. As the weeks roll on we tend to find that the motivation wears off. This is why we cannot rely on motivation to take us through to our long-term goals. But we can rely on our habits, once they've been established.


 

Building Habits

"Isn't a habit when I just keep doing the action over and over again?"


In a perfect world, Yes. In a world without temptation, human emotion and unforeseen circumstances, it would be possible to practice an action you want to habituate over and over again. But this ain't a perfect world. We need a more effective, realistic approach.



How many days are required to form a habit?

Reading online articles and scrolling social media posts will quickly give you the illusion that it takes 21, 44 or 66 days to engrain a new habit. We love to hear that there's a defined number. The reality, however, is that this number changes from person to person and habit to habit.


One study found that the average time for people to engrain a habit was 66 days, however the range of the timeframe for habit development was 18 days to 154 days. A smaller, less significant habit will often take a lot less time and effort than a more complex, broad lifestyle habit.


Therefore, rather than focusing in grinding through "X" amount of days with the perfect actions, selecting smaller actions that can be achieved each and every day, over the long term, may be a better approach.


Break the goal down

Building a habit can seem quite black and white at times, but developing one that lasts a lifetime may require a tailored approach.


Here's a way you could break down the goal of having a nutritious breakfast:




1. Start by identifying the goal action you want to habituate. eg. Eat a nutritious breakfast every morning.

2. Break the goal action into a series of progressive stages. eg. Eat something regularly >> Add something healthy >> Eat a healthy breakfast

3. Start as small as needed to make the habit as easy as possible. The habit should take no effort what so ever. This is critical eg. Add in some berries to your Coco Pops every day.


4. Once automatic, progress it. eg. Add a sprinkle of coco pops, to your low-fat yoghurt bowl with fruit everyday


5. Be consistent & play the long game Don't expect any results from completing this habit once, twice or even ten times. But after months to a year, the benefits will come through. It will just be what you do.


 

Progressing your habit

A crucial mistake in building long-lasting habits, is to progress too quickly. We're playing the long game here, and the long game is the only way for the results to stick.


Another mistake is to push the goal too far. In our breakfast example above, this might involve someone switching out the healthy morning yoghurt and cereal mix with fruit and honey for a bland greek yoghurt & banana.


In reality, the small drizzle of honey may be the thing needed to keep the consistent intake of the other healthy ingredients. A bland breakfast with zero enjoyment may be okay for a few days or weeks, but eventually will fall apart. At the back of this may be feeling like a failure.


The key is that we're trying to avoid a habit that you feel you need to take a break from. Then it's no longer a habit.

 

Habit Linking

Sometimes you'll have an important habit goal that you just can't seem to remember every day. It just doesn't seem to come naturally, and therefore doesn't become a consistent behaviour.


Habit Linking is a concept in an excellent book, Atomic Habits by James Clear. In his book, and blog articles, James talks about the art of linking new habits that you want to become routine to old habits that yo've been doing for as long as you can remember.


Here are some very typical daily habits that you can link new ones to -





Summing up

Habits are formed by the repetition of very small actions that require as little conscious and physical effort as possible. Changing from a diet of highly processed food to a completely whole food diet is unlikely to be successful by overhauling everything on day one and grinding through for a set number of days.


Starting with the "lowest hanging fruit" - maybe a literal piece of fruit, linked to your coco-pops each morning - is the best place to start. Once solidified, adding incremental small changes is the key to habit change success.


This is not the sexy way to do it, and I know it may not seem like you're moving forward fast enough, but trust in the process. It's better to move forward slowly and SURELY, rather than over committing & feeling like a failure.


The reality is, you you didn't fail in achieving your goal, you failed in setting your goal.





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