How to Solidify Healthy Habits

By TimoTopp | June 5, 2024 |

Have you ever felt it’s hard to stick to healthy habits you know you should do? Skip a workout when you planned to go the gym? Crack open a bottle of wine when you planned not to drink? Eat a block of chocolate after giving up carbs?

Sound familiar?

Don’t worry, you don’t need to feel bad, after all you are not alone, in fact it’s perfectly human. It is hard wired into our DNA to eat food, avoid unnecessary movement and be a bit pessimistic. These qualities kept our ancestors alive: eat food when it’s available, don’t waste unnecessary calories and be cautious to stay safe.

Times have changed but our core drivers haven’t.

So how do we bridge the gap between knowing what to and doing it consistently?

In this article you will learn simple behavioural science techniques from Stanford University Professor BJ Fogg, summarised from his book TINY HABITS, blended with my own wisdom and experiences – so you can put healthy habits on steroids, stick to them and be successful.

And the good news is, it’s all remarkably simple…

The gap

In my career, I have shared tips and articles to help people improve their health and a common response I have received many times is ‘I know that already’.

Everyone knows they need to eat well, drink less and exercise more – after all it’s not rocket science.

Knowing is not enough.

And nor is motivation.

When we start anything, a new eating regime or exercise program, we are highly motivated but motivation will only carry us so far. After a while, there is a point where one slips with our best intentions.

“People wrongly believe that motivating themselves towards their aspirations will lead to lasting change but it doesn’t”
BJ Fogg

Did you know: Motivation decreases throughout the day which is why exercising in the morning is going to be more successful: not only does it set you up for a healthy positive day, you are less likely to get distracted later in the day by other commitments, tiredness and dwindling motivation.

Then there is ability…

I have heard many people embark on overly ambitious plans such as exercising every day or attempting exercise that doesn’t suit them or committing to strict eating plans such as giving up carbs, alcohol and sugar- that is too difficult to sustain.

Change must be within our ability. Being realistic about our self and what we can feasible fit into an already busy schedule is an important consideration for mapping out what habits, actions and behaviours we can consistently do.

Change is a skill that can be learnt

Creating successful change is a process and when you follow some proven key principles you can make change far more successfully. You don’t have to charge blindly into change with over inflated expectations, a reliance on will power and then let feelings of failure come crashing down when it all goes wrong.

Follow the steps outlined in this article and you are going to make establishing healthy habits far more successful.

Successful change starts small

In his book ‘TINY HABITS’ Stanford Behavioural Scientist BJ Fogg says:

‘Tiny leads to transformation.’

And I could not agree more! Long term changes starts simple and small.

Fogg says: Tiny is easier, tiny is doable, tiny takes less time, tiny doesn’t need motivation, it’s the first place to start and the easiest to do – especially when your mind is already overloaded with things you need to do and you are stressed.

That’s why I have always loved simple healthy habits like drinking plenty of water, taking deep breathes and increasing steps. They are simple, easy to do and from the foundation of living a healthy life.

And simple grows over time: The mighty oak starts as a humble acorn and the journey to the summit of a mountain starts with a single step and the mighty Grand Canyon was carved simply by flowing water.

‘Simple is sustainable and sustainable leads to success.’
Timo Topp

Simple isn’t sexy

Humans want what’s new and sexy: What is the latest trend, there must be something new that is easier?

In doing so we overlook the timeless and the successful. Simple isn’t sexy, it’s boring, we have heard it all before – but it works and forms the foundation of success.

In the desire and quest for new, we create one of the biggest errors to successful change:

Dismissing the simple over what’s new, sexy and in vogue.

Stanford Strategy One: Focus mapping

Your first step to successful behavioural change is to come up to 10 ideas for achieving a healthy habit or new behaviour. Then prioritise what’s the easiest and most realistic first.

Pick a maximum of 3 and start with the easiest.

Overcoming obstacles

To be more successful at any habit, we need to ask ourselves some key questions:

Do I have the skill to do the behaviour?
Do have the time required?
Does it require a lot of mental energy?
Does it fit easily into my schedule?
What barriers are coming up that are stopping me?

To make a healthy habit more successful we need to:

Increase our ability and skill – learn or practise skills.
Scale back the behaviour to make it simpler.
Modify our environment to make the habit easier to do.
Reduce expectations to be more realistic and sustainable.

Environment

When it comes to eating well, everyone essentially knows what they should and should not eat. One of my foundational philosophies for healthy eating success has always been:

Food planning and preparation

Consider your meal tonight:

Do you know what you are having?
Have you got all the ingredients to cook it?
Have you already prepared it and you just need to warm it up?
Do you have no idea, no food in the house and you are going to order in?

We eat what food is in the fridge or cupboard.

If you don’t have it, you won’t be able to cook a healthy meal and if you have crisps or chocolate in the cupboard there is a high probability you are going to eat one or the other or both watching Netflix, sound familiar? (Don’t worry I have done it too!)

Why do people go to the gym? To exercise, yes, but it’s an environment for exercise. It’s where you do exercise. There is not a strong association with exercise at home, hence people may be less inclined to do it at home.

‘Environment either hinders or aids success’

Stanford Strategy Two: Anchor it.

Evolution has set us up to do behaviours in response to prompts: We feel hungry – we eat. We are cold – put on clothes. The alarm goes off -we get up (or hit snooze!).

Every behaviour needs a prompt.

Here is how you are going to make a desired or new healthy habit far more successful:

You are going to combine the new habit with an existing one that is already well established.

For example, every day we brush our teeth. Brushing your teeth can become a prompt for another behaviour such as doing 10 squats or taking a moment to do 10 deep breathes.

You are going to ‘anchor’ a new healthy habit with a rock solid habit.

The rock solid habit does not have to be health related, for example:

Every day you pick up your phone – attach a habit to it
Every day you open your laptop – attach a habit to it
Every day you probably commute to work – attach a habit to it.

Exercise: Look at your day and all the things you do regularly and consider what habits you can attach to them and complete the following statement:

After I ____________, I will {insert new habit}

Also consider quiet times in your day, when you have less things to think about or do where you could more easily insert a new behaviour, eg, when commuting, waiting in a queue, doing menial chores, etc.

Topp tip: To make a new habit more successful, we need a prompt. Attach the habit to a well established behaviour to act as a prompt.

Emotion not logic

Why do we do most of the stuff we do?

We like to think it’s because we are making educated, informed decisions but human behaviour is driven far more by emotion than logic. For example, neuroscience confirms we buy things on emotion – to make us feel good and then justify it logically afterwards.

Think about your own behaviours….

When have you not felt great and skipped a workout for a bottle of red or chocolate? When we feel good we are more inclined to be motivated to act in alignment with our aspirations.

It’s not about being successful, it’s about feeling successful.

Stanford Strategy Three: Celebrate it

This lead us to our next Stanford habit accelerating tip. Celebrating our wins reinforces the behaviour.

Feeling good reinforces a behaviour.

Think about a baby learning to walk and the parents proudly devoting undivided attention and cheer. Even think about your dog who happily repeats a behaviour to get a treat. Dopamine is released to encode a behaviour, so you repeat it.

‘People who celebrate their behaviours are the most successful in creating new habits quickly’
BJ Fogg

Here is how to hijack your brain’s reward system to get it working in your favour to accelerate the establishment of new healthy habits:

Every time you do a new habit or behaviour – celebrate it.

This does not mean cracking open a bottle of champagne or treating yourself online. It means a simple success gesture such as a little internal ‘YES!’, a clench of the fist, a smile – some physical response that you associate with victory.

You can amplify the whole process by:

Celebrating when you remember to do the habit.
Celebrating during the habit.
Celebrating after the habit.

Once the habit is well established you can dial down on the celebrations or use the process to increase or improve the habit further.

We change by feeling good, so drop the harsh self-talk and guilt trips – it won’t help.

Topp tip: Celebrating positive behaviours is the quickest way to wire in a new habit because feeling successful is significant to successful change.

Stop trying to stop bad habits

Breaking a bad habit is well intentioned but misguided advice that often isn’t successful.

Other more successful ways to change include:

Focus on creating a new healthy habit.
Swap an old habit for a new one.
Scale back rather than aiming to stop cold turkey.

Set up your environment to reduce triggers for the behaviour you want to change such as people, places or events. For example, if you wanted to stop drinking alcohol, you wouldn’t really go the pub and hang out with all your old drinking buddies. You would probably prefer to stay at home or hang out with other non-drinking friends.

Increase the physical or mental effort to make the old habit harder to do. For example don’t have crisps in the house if you want to eat well, don’t have alcohol in the house if you want to drink less.

Rather than focusing on stopping a behaviour, do things that reduce the likelihood of you wanting to that behaviour. For example, if you want to drink less alcohol, you can reduce your urges in the evening by exercising in the day to manage stress and eating a healthy meal so you don’t want to spoil it with alcohol.

Topp tip: Scaling back ‘bad habits is going to be more successful than trying to completely stop.

Other healthy habit success considerations

Here are other key considerations for making healthy habits more successful:

Don’t take on too much change – pick three new habits you are going to focus on and master them first.
Be flexible with your mindset – don’t be rigid about outcomes and expectations, go with the flow more.
You will make mistakes and that’s ok. Learn from them and refine your methods as opposed to throwing in the towel.
Question tradition: just becomes it been done a certain way doesn’t make it the most effective way.
Anticipate obstacles in advance and think about alternative behaviours for difficult days.
Don’t be hard on yourself when it doesn’t go to plan: get up, adjust, keep going.
Lower expectations – setting the bar too high is often a way to not feel successful because you don’t meet the demands placed upon yourself.
Have social support – you need a wingman, even Luke Skywalker had Han to help him blow up the death star.
If you are struggling with a new habit: scale it back to something simpler or try an alternative.