Ditch Habits if You Want to Create Lasting Changes in Exercise and Eating in 2023
Michelle Segar
Sustainable-behavior-change scientist, speaker, train-the-trainer, consultant, and bestselling author.
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:
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.
Why might identity and values be more adaptive for complex behaviors than habit formation?
Sustainability is the result of a lifetime of decisions that consistently favor our greater eating and exercise goals. So, the strategies we use need to be nimble and able to withstand the winds of shifting priorities. But they need to do more than that. They also need to cultivate the most meaningful parts of being human. Consider how compelling an in-the-moment choice becomes when we are conscious about how it helps us actualize who we are and how that helps us better support our values?
When we mindfully aim to be ourselves and of service through making healthy choices, instead of trying to automate it or get it precisely right, it's game changing. The stakes go from high to low when there is no need to be subservient to the rote and rigid. Then, we can celebrate picking the perfect imperfect option that works best for us, right now as we give ourselves grace and foster the flexibility in healthy eating and exercise that science suggests is adaptive. Any how could it not be? When we harmonize our healthy choices within the dynamic ecosystem of our daily needs and roles these choices reflect and affirm who we are at our very core, becoming sustainable because it's inherently self-sustaining.
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 newsletter with others who share your interest in the science-based how-to's of creating lasting changes that can survive in the real?world.
And as always, I welcome your reactions to my thinking (including pushback!).
Sustainable-behavior-change scientist, speaker, train-the-trainer, consultant, and bestselling author.
2 年Thanks to everyone for your comments about this provocative post. The subject line aimed to get attention. When our behavior change strategies are broad and vague their usefulness is diminished. I believe that behavior change is a reflection of self-change. So while tactics are important, they are the tip of the behavior change iceberg. My greater goal of these newsletters is to get us all to think more critically about not just the strategies we use for our own change (and the work we do with others) but also the language/terms we choose to use. Behavior change language creates the behavior change mental model. So let's get curious about how our preferred terms influence our mental models! Happy holidays!
Passionate about capturing the stories of individuals, families, and small businesses
2 年Yet another thought provoking article. I remember your article on "stop promoting health" that grabbed my attention years ago. I certainly think that identity is core to decision-making. I still think that habit formation plays a huge role in our success, but we need to be flexible with it. Establishing our identity will uncover the choices and priorities that we want in our lives. Being mindful of our daily priorities may be the best habit of all.
Health Promotion professional with a focus in stress management, resilience, mindfulness, and human flourishing
2 年As a health coach who works with clients on exercise and nutrition, I can attest to what Michelle speaks of. Habits are complicated and people's ability to be successful with creating habits is complex and varies a lot from person-to-person. I try to focus on making small shifts with clients--and I don't really talk about habit formation since I realize this is setting people up for expectations that may never happen--where they can build 1)awareness around their behaviors, 2) experiment with small shifts, 3)notice results. I treat it like a science experiment--inviting curiosity and that way people feel like they have more freedom in testing and are can be less attached to results and expectations. In addition, the focus on developing mindful awareness of behavior also helps remove the self-judging aspect which many people suffer from, and usually shows its ugly head in negative self talk.
Councillor for Casuarina Ward, City of Casey
2 年Unless you change the way you see yourself, maintaining complex behaviour change is extremely difficult. Habit creation, identity change and the fortune of personal circumstances are a powerful combination. Creating a behaviour like daily walking, is driven by an extrinsic or intrinsic motivator. This motivator may be enough to get a behaviour started, however maintaining this behaviour necessitates a change in identity and an establishment of habit. Additionally, creating and maintaining an exercise behaviour, is facilitated by an intrinsic enjoyment of the activity. And of course, external factors such as level of support, personal health and access to community resources are also important. The books you mention Michelle are fascinating, but like in most cases where complex behavioural change is needed or desired, no substitute for professional guidance tailored to individual circumstances. There is a risk, as with any self-help books,the reader will experience disappointment and an unfair sense of failure when the marketing promises do not work for them
Now that's a provocative headline!