How to Build Good Habits While Breaking Bad Habits
Have you ever wondered how some people seem to effortlessly follow through with their workout routines or nutrition? Maybe you have been struggling with sticking to a nutritional plan or workout plan even though you know it will deliver the results you want??
We’ve all had our own struggles along with our nutrition and fitness journey and wished it was easier to implement those healthy habits into our lives.
Why is it so difficult to follow through on our actions when we know it will benefit up in the long term?? Why is it even harder to break those “bad” habits we know aren’t serving us?
If you’re struggling with this, I get your pain. I understand how it feels to struggle to break bad habits while building new habits because I struggled with it for years. I spent years yo-yo dieting, losing and regaining the same weight over and over again.
Changing your behaviors to promote a healthier lifestyle within your daily routine takes time, yet it will allow you to change your behavior bit by bit and repeat healthy behaviors much easier.
So, how do these “successful” people do it?
Through ironclad willpower and motivation?? Nope.
Daily Self-discipline??? Nope.
Removing all their favorite foods and drinks?? Nope.
They create habits and I’ll teach you exactly how within this guide.
The Power of Habits
So, what exactly are habits? According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, a habit is “behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
The pattern of this behavioral repetition flows through a loop like this:
1) Cue - This is usually a behavior trigger and what starts the habit loop. This could be an event, situation, sight, etc.
2) Cravings - Next comes the motivation that drives you to act. This is you interpreting the situation and connecting it with a thought, feeling, and/or emotion. In short, this is the motivation that causes you to act. Without this, you don’t have the reason to act.
3) Response - The response is either the physical or mental action you perform following the cue and craving.
4) Reward - Lastly, the reward is satisfying your craving or completing the action from the previous step. When the reward is satisfying, we begin to associate rewards with particular cues, creating and reinforcing the habit loop.
This is important to understand this habit loop because modifying any part of the process can allow you to either BREAK or Create new, skillful habits.
Here is an example of how to use the habit loop to break a bad habit.
Throughout my life (especially during quarantine) I struggle with binge drinking. Since I know this behavior is destructive to my overall health, lifestyle, and relationships with my friends and family, I wanted to break the cycle and quit those binges for good.
To break this unhealthy habit, I had to figure out what was causing me to binge drink in the first place.
After some self-reflecting, I discovered I would binge drink when I was overly stressed out and/or keeping my emotions bottled up causing me to feel depressed.
To break this habit, I changed my actions so when I was overly stressed out I would go workout or simply walk around for 15-20 minutes. For dealing with my emotions, I would either respectfully tell the person what was bugging me or journal my feelings/thoughts so it doesn’t stay within my head. I also chose to only enjoy drinks socially or having 1 glasses of wine with my girlfriend, which helped me create structure and be more mindful.
These changes helped me IMMENSELY because I was no longer putting myself into situations that would trigger my binge drinking episodes. I consciously chose to remove that negative habit (dwelling on my emotions and/or being overly stressed) so I wouldn’t binge drink.
We can manipulate the habit loop in the same way to create new skillful habits to achieve a goal. After setting a goal, you can map out the habits necessary to reach your end result while helping you stick to those new habits.
How to exactly build a new habit?
The first step to building a new habit is to get more specific! Have you heard one of your friends say something like, “I will more workout more this year.” Probably not because it’s too vague! How can you measure your progress or even know if you achieve your goal or not?
When you are building a new habit, it’s best to keep it small and simple. There’s no need to try to completely overhaul your diet, workouts, and lifestyle overnight! Pick one of those things to start and get specific with it!
Here’s an example to help you build a new, specific habit to achieve your goal:
I will {Behavior} at {time} in {location}
Here is an example so you’ll know exactly what to do:
I will work out from 5-6 pm Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at my gym.
Or,
I will meal prep from 12-3 pm on Sunday at my house.
Getting specific about what you need to do to achieve your goals will help you more easily say no to distractions. It will be significantly harder to deviate from your plan when you nail it down using the above formula.
Keep it simple and make it specific!
Make your new habit obvious and attractive
Since every new habit is initiated by a cue, we are more likely to notice cues that stand out. This means that if you are trying to build a new habit, you want it to be as obvious and attractive as possible. The more attractive the habit is, the more likely we will follow through with the action.
Mack Tip: Making a cue as obvious as possible is the exact opposite of the saying “out of sight, out of mind.”
If you are struggling to turn something you dislike into a habit, pair it with a reward or something you already enjoy doing to make it more attractive.
For example, it’s Sunday. The only thing you want to do is lie on the couch and watch the Seahawks play, yet you need to meal prep.
Solution: try watching the game as you meal prep. I’d still have my drink because meal prepping is much less terrible with quality buzz and the Seahawks winning.
How to break bad habits
We can use almost the same strategy to break bad habits as you would for building new skillful habits, like how I mentioned for my binge drinking for example.
What is the cue of the habit you want to break? By doing some self-reflection, you can remove that cue from your daily life. We want to do the opposite of building good habits, we want to make the habit as difficult and unattractive as possible. Highlight the benefits of avoiding that habit and make the bad habit difficult to act upon by creating more friction between you and the habit.
The more fiction the habit has, the less likely you are to perform it.
Let’s use my example of using alcohol to de-stressed and cope. We know the cue is having a drink after work. You think having a drink is relaxing and a way to unwind from the work stress. You keep several nice bottles of wine after your fridge and on the counter.
First, change the cue of getting home from work = drink time.
-----> While you cannot change the cue of coming home, you can change the next action you associate with it. Instead of getting home and pouring yourself a drink, try taking 10 big breathes when you step into your house or playing fetch with the dog. After repeating this a few times, you’ll begin to associate getting home from work with destressing by playing fetch with the dog
Next, you need to shift your mindset.
-----> the booze isn’t truly relieving your stress. It’s actually causing more stress to your body and inhibiting you from achieving your goals. While you may be feeling better within the moment, it’s only temporary at best and the stress is only festering.
-----> you can replace the habit of pouring yourself a drink with journaling, playing fetch with the dog, spending time with your significant other or kids, taking away, or really anything that truly does help relax the body and mind.
Lastly, we are going to make the act of drinking more difficult to occur.
-----> Move the wine from the counter to the top shelf completely out of sight and blocked, or in the basement, or remove it altogether. Put a post-it note on the bottle to remind yourself not to drink. Anything you can do to make it require more effort to drink will work in your favor!
Again, just like you want to make new habits to be very easy, obvious, and attractive, make your bad habits difficult to follow through with, unattractive in your mind, and change the circumstances that sue the action.
Another way to break bad habits is to make them painful.
One of the easiest ways is to get an accountability partner or coach.
Letting someone else down, and showing them that we are unreliable and/or untrustworthy is extremely painful. Investing money increasing the pain even more.
However, what’s even more painful is repeatedly letting yourself down.
By having skin in the game by repeatedly paying someone, admitting when you didn’t do what you said you’ll do, is extremely painful. By putting yourself into this situation makes failure or not following through on what you said you’ll do is much less likely.
“Bad habits repeat themselves not because you don’t want change, but because you have the wrong system to create change.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Summary:
When motivation is present, take advantage of it and run with it.
When motivation is missing, look at your habits.
Remember, habits are the automatic actions that we repeatedly do when prompted by a cue. You can use that habit loop to change cues and/or rewards to build new habits or break bad habits.
When your building new habits, keep them simple, specific, and as obvious and attractive as possible.
To break bad habits, remove any cues to that negative behavior, change your mindset, and make the action very difficult to follow through with.
If you’re unsure where to begin, invest in coaching. You’ll work with me to figure out what habits you should add to help get you to your end goal. We’ll use this guide to seamlessly integrate those skillful changes into your lifestyle and you’ll be able to make those healthy habits last a lifetime!