Building & Breaking Habits

“Your health and fitness are simply a delayed reflection of your daily habits.”

By focusing on building positive habits and breaking negative ones, we can create lasting improvements for our well-being. For the sake of this writing, let’s assume consistent exercise, nutrient dense foods, 7-9 hours of sleep, and stress management are all considered positive habits for our health and fitness. On the contrary, sedentary lifestyle, excessive consumption of energy (calorie) dense foods, alcohol & drug abuse, extreme screen time, and inconsistent sleep patterns are negative habits for our health and fitness.

Now, let’s classify the anatomy of a habit, which is composed of 3 subcomponents. I got this anatomy breakdown from Dr. Joey Munoz, who is a fitness profile I follow on Instagram (I love his content).

The Anatomy of a Habit:

Cue: Triggers that initiate a habit, which can be internal feelings or external environments (ie specific time, location, emotion, or preceding event).

Craving: The feeling or motivation that drives the desired behavior.

Routine: The habitual action performed in response to the cue (the actual behavior).

Reward: The benefit received from the routine, reinforcing the habit (often satisfaction).

Reminder, this goes for both positive & negative habits.

Understanding this cycle helps us intentionally modify our habits for our desired health related outcomes. If you can identify the cue associated with negative habits, you can work on replacing them with other, positive habits. Conversely, you can construct cues and rewards to help positive habits stick.

Creating Positive Habits:

● SMART Goals: SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. It’s important to define clear, achievable, and time-bound goals to focus your habit formation efforts. This is often overlooked and sometimes labeled as cliche, and while I agree that yes, it is cliche, it is pretty dang helpful and many people underestimate the importance of setting good goals.

● Start Small and Build: Begin with manageable steps, naturally increasing complexity and intensity overtime to avoid burnout. This is often the most misunderstood concept when building habits. It takes time & repetition for something to become ingrained in our daily lives. A lot more than we realize.

● Habit Stacking: Attach new habits to existing ones to improve adherence and create a seamless routine. Ie. first create the habit of having a glass of water first thing in the morning. Once that becomes a habitual part of your life, work towards creating another habit of adding creatine monohydrate to your water each morning.

● Supportive Environment: Modify your surroundings to facilitate your habits. Ie. preparing workout clothing in advance, stocking nutrient dense foods in your kitchen, writing reminders or positive notes throughout common areas for accountability/motivation.

● Track and Celebrate Progress: Use apps, calendars, friends, and other tools to monitor your habits and celebrate milestones along the way.

Breaking Negative Habits:

Removing negative habits from your life is arguably more difficult, but more impactful towards improving your health than creating positive habits. The single most useful tip that has helped me reduce negative habits is increasing the friction between me and those habits. Buying less of a certain food or drink, relocating something to a less accessible part of the house, adding a timer to social media apps, increasing multiple steps for online purchases; the slightest bit of extra thought and effort can snap you out of habitual behavior.

An example from my life is the transition from a Keurig to a french press coffee maker. The added time and effort to make a cup of coffee with the french press limits my overall daily consumption, relative to simply pressing a button on the Keurig. This little change allows me to enjoy my coffee for what it is, opposed to just drinking as much as I want out of habit.

● Recognize and Analyze: Identify harmful habits and understand their triggers and impacts on your goals. This is important. What do you consider a negative habit of yours? You can’t improve if you don’t identify!

● Substitute with Positive Behaviors: It is easier to replace, than eliminate. Replace detrimental routines with beneficial ones; choosing alternatives that fulfill the same needs. If you are someone that habitually eats sweets (or any calorically dense food) when you are stressed, substitute the sweet for something more nutritious, like a fruit bar or yogurt with honey. It holds the same purpose in your mind but has a different effect on your health.

● Construct Reward Systems: When you substitute a negative habit for a positive one, ensure that there is some form of reward to reinforce it. The reward can be small, such as enjoying a cup of tea for doing a task instead of going on your phone. It may seem silly, but behavior change is very difficult. Anytime you move towards your desired outcome, take the moment to recognize and reward yourself (plus, it makes it more fun).

Implementing these strategies will help you slowly modify your behaviors in a way that aligns with your health and fitness-related goals. By setting clear goals, starting with small changes, and being patient, you can build a foundation for lasting well-being. Embrace this journey, celebrate your successes, and continually adapt your habits to align with your evolving lifestyle and objectives.

Exercise: Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper. On one side, write down the positive habits you are proud of and recognize are in favor of your health and fitness. On the other side, record negative habits you recognize may pull you away from your desired health and fitness related goals! I would love to see your results; if you are comfortable, please send me a picture of your paper.