Ditch Habits if You Want to Create Lasting Changes in Exercise and Eating

Habits, Sustainble Behavior Change

I’ll get right to the point: If we want to create sustainable change in our (and our patients’, clients’, employees’) healthy eating, exercise, and self-care choices (and why wouldn’t we?), we need to move beyond fads, conventional thinking, and pop culture and take a clear-eyed look at our assumptions.
 
Yes, I’m talking about habit formation.
 
It’s time to jump off the habit bandwagon and think more critically about its actual value for helping people create sustainable changes in complex behaviors like exercise and healthy eating.
 
The topic of habits couldn’t be more popular right now. The Google Trends Interest Over Time graph shows a general upward trend since 2009, with online searches for “habit” reached an all-time high this past fall.
 
Thanks to popular bestsellers like Atomic Habits and The Power of Habit, forming automatic habits has become our cure-all for changing diet, exercise, and any behavior in between. Honestly, I’m not surprised. Popular approaches to habits are touted as simple, easy, and a quick corrective for anything we want to change.
 
But what if it isn’t true?
 
Pulling back the curtain on habits
 
Successful habit formation is built on some familiar assumptions:

  1. Everyone can form habits.
  2. Our internal conflicts about eating and exercise do not affect our ability to form automatic habits for healthy eating and exercise.
  3. It’s possible to form an automatic habit for any behavior.
  4. The automatic nature of habit is the ideal for creating lasting changes in healthy eating and exercise.

 
But when we pull back the curtain and examine these assumptions, we very quickly discover that when it comes to producing sustainable changes in complex behaviors like exercise and healthy eating, the power of habit isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

The reality is, more of us can become successful with sticking with complex health-promoting behaviors if we unhabit.
 
Curious? Check out my brief, hot-off-the-press commentary about why learning the exact opposite of habit formation – to unhabit – is a more strategic way to bring healthy eating and exercise into our real lives for the long-term.
 
Feel free to share this post with others who share your interest in the science-based how-to’s of creating lasting changes that can survive in the real world.

Copyright © Segar, Michelle.