CAN SUCCESSFUL HABITS HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT?
"Your habits will determine your future"
Research shows that more than 40% of our daily behaviors are HABITS.
That's why its worth taking a close look at habits related to your health and whether they are having a positive or negative effect on our lives.
I always tell my clients that it is very hard to change behaviors that you have been used to for so long only through WILL POWER.
Will power will only take you through the good days.
As soon as you have a stressful day at work, or guests arrive at home - your resolutions will fly out the window.
Instead people who succeed in sticking to their resolutions have one thing going for them - they have formed successful routines aka HABITS, which takes away the impulsive behaviors out of the equation.
What are Habits?
Habits are at the foundation of our everyday lives - often without us even noticing. How many times have you ended up ordering the same food at lunch? How many times have you said yes to extra fries? How many times have you ordered coke and popcorn tub at the movies?
Habits are automatic behaviors - you get up in the morning and have a morning coffee with 2tsp sugar because you always take it that way.
Its so automatic, that we do not stop to think about it - unless we become aware of it.
We have performed the same action so many times that it has become automatic.
How do you form habits?
When we enjoy some activity, our brain releases a neurotransmitter called DOPAMINE. This makes you feel good and you get the incentive to repeat the behavior again.
If French-fries tasted like bitter-gourd - not many of us would be addicted to it!
The first step is to IDENTIFY your weight gain TRIGGERS:
- When do you reach out for snacks?
- When do you give excuses for following your diet?
- When do you stop exercising?
The second step is to IDENTIFY your derailing BEHAVIORS:
- Do you always have a chocolate after a stressful meeting?
The last step is to get the same REWARD through a HEALTHY habit:
- Can you replace a chocolate with a fruit and still get the same high?
- Can you choose to play with your kid instead of reaching out for a snack when you are stressed?
Bad Habits:
- Choosing to eat dessert first in a buffet
- Skipping breakfast and lunch due to work and eating heavy dinners
- Staying up late at night as a habit because of which you don't wake up in time to exercise
- Choosing to exercise or stick to a diet only when it is convenient
- Late night eating or weekend partying
Why do some people succeed in weight loss?
"The only way to change a habit is to replace it with a new one."
This means - you create a new set of behaviors and complete it to get a dopamine high enough number of times until it become a habit.
One day you will wake up and grab your coffee without sugar - that means you have made the habit STICK.
Your brain likes efficiency and forming habits to complete tasks without thinking about them is faster and efficient.
What can help you in this process?
1. Helpful environment :
Create an environment that makes the new behavior easy to do. If healthy eating is your goal, stack your fridge with enough vegetables to make easy salads. Do not forget to remove the junk food too!
Your environment should help you to reduce the friction in creating the new habit.
2. Easy to implement : If you want to exercise daily but if your gym is really out of the way, then chances are you will be missing many days.
3. Incremental habits:
Small daily changes can add up incredibly fast. Rather than trying to accomplish something really big, start small and gradually improve.
If you want to build an exercise routine from scratch, start with 15min of walking instead of 1hr of jogging!
4. Go easy on yourself:
We will make mistakes during this journey and miss on our commitments. Its best to plan for it and get back on track quickly.
 |
5. Be patient:
We want results yesterday - but learning to be patient might be just the mindset that sets apart people who accomplish anything whereas people who give up too soon.
6. Sustainability:
Focus on sustainability rather than quick results - Build healthy eating habits rather than skip meals to lose weight!
Right time to build habits:
Sadly a lot of adults stop building healthy habits unless there is a medical emergency.
The right time for you to incorporate healthy eating habits, exercise routines etc. is BEFORE you have a need for it.
Good habits can help you make the right decisions when you have stressful situations in your life. It might be too late to start at that time.
You will never get lasting changes in your life, until you change something which you do DAILY.
Start somewhere. Keep going until you reach your goal.
Comments
Post a Comment