Day 8 of 30: Habit Change Basics

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #71CCD5;”] W[/dropcap]elcome to week 2 of our 30-day Simple Kitchen Reboot.

This week we’re focusing on one of my all time favourite topics…

Habits!

If you’ve struggled to change to a healthier lifestyle in the past it was probably because you were relying on willpower.

The problem with willpower is we only have a finite amount of it.

It’s a limited resource.

For everyone.

So if you’ve been using your willpower all day to get through your work, your willpower supply is low when it’s time for dinner.

Which is why it can be so difficult to exert self control at times.

Especially when we’re tired.

So what’s the alternative?

In a word. Habits.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN TODAY:

• Why habits
• How habits work
• Ideas for healthy food habits.

Why Habits?

I LOVE habits.

Why?

Because habits allow us to automate our decisions by making healthy habits a part of everyday life.

This way eating healthy isn’t something we battle with every meal.

It’s on autopilot so healthy choices become effortless.

So much better than setting ourselves up to fail by relying on will power.

Plus habits allow us to save our limited will power for other situations. When we really need to exert self control.

How Habits Work

There are three parts to any habit:
i. The ‘trigger’ or ‘cue’ that starts the process.
ii. The actions you take.
iii. The reward you get.

In order to change your habit you need to identify the trigger and reward.

Then you need to develop a plan so that when you feel the urge or trigger, you do a different set of (healthier) actions to get your reward.

It will take some conscious effort or willpower in the beginning but with time you’ll reprogram yourself and a new habit will be born.

Charles Duhigg used this process to kick a daily cookie habit and lose 12 pounds.

I recommend watching this short video to give you a great practical example of how habits work.

Healthy Habit Ideas

This is just a list of habits you might want to consider working on. It’s by no means exhaustive!

If you have another idea for a habit you’d like to change share in the comments below so we can all be inspired!

• Cook dinner a certain number of nights per week
• Use Simple Meal Plans or another meal planning system.
• Take your lunch to work
• Shop at your local farmers market
• Do a regular food shop
• Mindful Eating (more on this later in the week)
• Eating at a table instead of the TV
• Eating proper meals instead of grazing
• Chewing thoroughly
• Switching to healthy snacks
• Cut out snacks
• Eating vegetables at every meal
• Not drinking your calories. Sticking to water, tea or coffee.
• Replace dessert on week nights with fresh fruit
• Replace dessert on week nights with herbal tea
• Testing your fasting blood glucose every morning
• Measuring your waist circumference every week
• Weigh yourself every day
• Meditating every morning
• Deep breathing every day
• Exercise

SUMMARY

Here’s what we’ve covered:

• Why habits are so powerful.
• Habits involve 3 parts. A trigger (or cue), the action and a reward.
• Ideas for healthy habits to get you started.

ACTIVITY

Create your habit list.
Brainstorm a list of all the habits you want to change (see above for ideas).

If you want to really geek out on habits, you could actually do a proper audit. Take a whole day to write down all your habits as you go through the day.

LEARN MORE

The best book I’ve read on habits is ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. If you’d like to go deeper into in the fascinating world of habits, I can’t recommend it enough!

Tomorrow we’re going to go more in-depth on how to create good habits.

This is just the beginning!

With love,
Jules x

ps. For bonus points, share your habits list in the comments below. I’d love to see what you come up with.