We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when it comes to setting goals, and working towards them, these habits can either help or hinder them.
This is because habits can be so ingrained that it becomes unconscious that we don’t even know that we are acting in a certain way or worse yet, don’t even know that we’ve acted in a certain way until after the action.
Have you got in the car and ended up at your destination like your place of work and completely forgotten about the car journey? The repeated activity of driving the same route to work can be performed with little conscious thought. Such activities like these and brushing your teeth can be helpful. Some other activities like over snacking on sweets and overeating can be harmful.
There is an abundance of resources on weight loss and healthy lifestyle living that can be found online and multiple different diets that can be followed. However, following these will result in limited success if the foundational behaviours of overeating and mindless snacking continue unchecked.
So how does removing temptations help with weight loss success? It helps break the bad habit!
If you’ve had challenges in meeting your health and fitness goals and resisting temptation has been difficult, then it’s time to eliminate it altogether.
By removing tempting unhealthy foods from your environment, you are not only just removing foods that don’t align to your goals, but you are also taking control back of your environment and setting up a behaviour change.
The book Atomic Habits by James Clear is a practical guide in changing your habits and simplifies how to build positive good habits and break bad ones with a framework around four steps. To make the most of these steps it’s best to understand how we end up in ‘the habit loop’ with the diagram below.*
So how do we break a bad habit like mindless snacking and overeating?
- Inversion of the 1st law (Cue): Make it invisible.
- Reduce your exposure to cues by eliminating or hiding tempting foods away from the pantry, cupboards and fridge. Understand the cues that triggers cravings, is it during watching TV or when you get home from work etc.
- Inversion of the 2nd law (Craving): Make it unattractive.
- Reframe your mindset. Highlight the benefits of avoiding your bad habits.
- Inversion of the 3rd law (Response): Make it difficult.
- Increase the number of steps between you and your bad habit.
- Inversion of the 4th law (Reward): Make it unsatisfying.
- Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behaviour.
Now it’s time to create good habits! At RealFit we’ve had so many success stories with our members achieving their goals and have helped so many members build good habits by making helping make your habits easy and satisfying.
Book in a time with the team at RealFit, we are ready to give you the support and reward you need to succeed.
The team at RealFit
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