How To Create Better Habits That Last

If we are what we eat, does that logic apply to everything we do?

– My 30-something brain

This is the question I asked myself a few years back. If you eat potato chips every day you’ll likely become a stodgy potato yourself. So if you do 300 push-ups a week for months on end, will you eventually have a more defined chest, right?

Eating three bags of potato chips for a few days isn’t going to make you flabby but continuing that habit over months eventually will.

The result of small habits over time accumulate and often without you noticing.

The kinds of old sayings like “you are what you eat” have stood the test of time because they are undoubtedly true. I’d reached a point where a bad eating cycle and a desk job had given me a few extra pounds that I had somehow been unaware of as they covertly crept onto my flanks and chest. Being someone that had always prided themselves on being in reasonably good shape, that day I finally realised wasn’t very pleasant.

It seemed I had become a new person that had slowly formed over a matter of days, weeks, months and years. I’d become overweight because of unconscious habits I had formed and the scary thing was, I hadn’t even noticed them forming. Where I would go and hit the gym after work three times a week in my early twenties, I’d reach a point where a barbell had been replaced by a beer in my hand in my thirties.

My bad habits had turned me into something that I resented and I wanted to do something about it. I was anxious and depressed and didn’t like looking at the person in the mirror.

I had become the embodiment of years of bad habits accumulating.

I felt lost. Not only was I unhealthy and unhappy but I was also bouncing around to different jobs that gave me no sense of satisfaction or a sense of purpose. I realised that in order to grasp any kind of direction in life, I’d have to create better habits. That’s when I started this blog, talked about my anxiety and depression in the hopes of improving the way I felt.

For some people, it takes a lot to get them in that mindset. They may try their hand at different things to help them through, for example, if fitness and health is their goals, taking supplements each evening to energise them may be their best bet or preferred choice. However, it would be wise to research them first, for instance, looking into something like Morning Complete reviews online will offer them the benefits and drawbacks to help them come to a reasonable conclusion. After all, small steps make big changes.

As I started writing every day, it quickly became a habit. When I started eating a better breakfast every day, it quickly became a habit. I started small. Now, these habits are second nature and wavering from these habits doesn’t seem realistic.

It soon became apparent to me that the best way to change how you feel is to create small, better habits that compound over time instead of wild, unrealistic ones that are doomed to fail.

The hurdles with creating habits that last

The problem with creating better habits is that they’re hard to stick to. We all set out with the right intentions when creating better habits only to fall short after a couple of days of trying to follow them.

The busiest time for habit forming seems to be around the new year. With grand ideas about how we can improve our lives, most of us set out with the idea to start new habits on January 1st. I myself have lost count of the number of times I have fallen flat after only a week or so of trying to stick to a new healthy habit. For example, I’d eat a high-protein meal but then have six beers in the evening. My habit-forming was always half-baked.

Habits are often hard to stick to because we try and take on too much too soon and we don’t have a plan in the first place. We often make our new habits so hard for ourselves that we’re more than likely to fail every time we try.

For example, you may tell yourself you’ll create a habit of going to the gym every day to get fit at the start of the new year. After a couple of days, you find yourself feeling sore and tired so you take a day off. This causes you to feel as if you’ve failed early on in the process so you give up completely.

However, going to the gym every day, especially if you’re a newbie is a very aggressive and unrealistic ambition.

A more realistic way to create a better habit would be planning to hit the gym two or three times a week and see how your body reacts and then work up from there. You’re more likely to go each time you need to if you begin by dipping your toe in.

You don’t want to create difficult tasks for yourself, you want to create realistic habits that last, that’s the whole point.

Getting stuck in the habit loop

The reason any habit sticks is due to the habit loop, a concept made popular by journalist Charles Duhigg. The habit loop has three core components, the cue, routine and reward.

The cue – the cue is the thing that triggers your initial habit. Your cue could be a billion different things like walking downstairs in the morning, going to the bathroom, seeing your phone on your dresser etc, etc.

The routine – the routine is the behaviour that follows the cue. For example, you walk into the kitchen and see your kettle. You fill it up with water and turn it on.

The reward – The reward is what you get from performing your routine. After all, we don’t perform habits unless we get something out of them. For example, a caffeine hit is a reward for pouring yourself a coffee.

To break bad habits you may have, you need to break the habit loop. If you want to create better habits, you need to create a better habit loop.

Creating better habits with a simple formula

When I finally managed to stick to healthy habits over the course of weeks, months and years I realised I had developed a simple formula for sticking to them. This formula helped me to create new habit loops and stick to them.

Identify -> Tolerate -> Normalise -> Master

Identify

The first thing I had to do was identify what habit I wanted to create and why. The reward I would get from my new habit would be weight loss, that was the end goal. The habit also had to be something I could easily implement into my week to reach that end goal so it had to be realistic. This meant I needed to start with a small habit that I knew I could easily stick to. After all, the goal was to implement small changes that I could build upon over time. My new habit had to be specific.

My new habit would be changing my diet, specifically my breakfast. The goal was to lose fat, ideally a pound a week.

So, instead of changing my diet completely overnight in the hopes of aggressive fat loss, I opted to first change the way I ate breakfast. This was going to be easier to stick to than changing every typical meal throughout my day.

My typical cue for eating a bad breakfast was simply walking into the kitchen and opening the cupboard. I’d usually find a processed breakfast bar or junk food and go about my usual routine.

To break this cue up, I knew I had to change my environment and make it extremely easy for myself. This meant buying healthy foods at the beginning of the week and putting them in places I could see first thing in the morning. I laid out fruit, protein shakes and eggs in clear view.

Tolerate

Once you’ve identified a new & specific habit that you want to create, you have to then go through a period of tolerating it for a short period of time. Hopefully, this will be easy if you decide upon a small new habit to start with. Starting a new habit can be uncomfortable at first because your new habit is new to you, it’s out of your typical routine. If you’re used to grabbing a sandwich for breakfast, for example, you’ll have to tolerate the discomfort of making your own breakfast for the first few days.

You can tolerate your new habit more easily if you keep your end goal in mind.

I had to give myself enough time in the morning to make my breakfast before I started my day. Whilst it may seem like a small change to make, it was still uncomfortable at first. I had to get the pans and ingredients ready to make an omelette. That meant putting time aside to chop vegetables etc.

I don’t believe in willpower as such. Instead, I believe you wither want to do something badly enough or you don’t. I pushed through those first few days until things became easier.

It’s amazing how quickly you can adapt if you trust the process.

Normalise

Each day I made my healthy breakfast the routine became easier and easier as I formed new pathways in my brain. The routine of making a healthy breakfast soon felt as if it was a normal part of my daily routine. After 3-4 days of performing this new routine, I felt as if I’d pushed through the initial discomfort of trying something new.

However, I also got a reward. I was no longer bloated and groggy in the morning. I was lighter, had more energy and felt as if I was making progress, even if it was only a little. I kept feeling better every day that passed.

It’s important to reward yourself for your new habits, otherwise, what’s the point in doing them if you get nothing out of them? I knew my reward would be weight loss and a better image of myself. Fast forward seven months and I’d lost seven pounds.

The only reason I have got this far is because I made it easy for myself and removed all the obvious hurdles. If you remove all the hurdles when you’re trying to create better habits, you’re left with little excuses.

Your reward will be directly tied to the reason you’re trying to create a better habit. For example, if you’re trying to create a writing habit, your reward will be the continuous improvements in your writing skill.

Master

Once you’ve normalised your new habit you can begin to master it. You do this by performing your new habit consistently without any breaks. Once your new healthy habit becomes a daily chain of subconscious actions, you’ll perform your new habit as if it’s second nature to you. The hurdles are no longer there and it’s not just normal to you, it’s who you now are.

Mastering your habit means you can then begin to build other habits into your daily routine. Once one habit is locked down you can concentrate on creating more habits that compliment each other.

For example, once making a healthy breakfast became second nature, I started to change the way I ate lunch. Once that was mastered I changed the way I ate dinner until my entire daily eating habits were improved. Now I’ve got much better at eating better breakfasts, lunches and dinners, I now have to try and master that over the course of months and years and be consistent.

I created a new habit loop for my diet.

Every small habit has become a building block towards allowing me to feel better as a whole. The reason I wanted to create better habits wasn’t so I could tell people I had or show off, it was to change the way I felt at the time. My new diet habits were a tool for my ultimate reward which was feeling lighter and healthier.

Whilst feeling better about myself was going to be a reward in itself, I managed to create a new habit loop because I felt like I really needed to.

I learned that grouping small habits together leads to a compounding effect very quickly.

The great thing about mastering one habit is, that you can then use that framework you’ve learned and apply it to any new habit.

Create better habits slowly

If you complete your habit once you’ll be 1% better at that thing. If you do it daily for 100 days, you’ll be 100% better and so on (unless it’s rocket science, then you might need more than 100 days to reach 100% mastery!). The most important thing that I’ve found is making sure I make my diet as easy as possible to follow.

I’m lucky that I don’t mind eating the same thing over and over so that removes a lot of diet hurdles. If you have trouble with this you can find plenty of easy and diverse meals online. Whatever your new habit is, there’s always a way to break it down and make it more manageable, smaller habits.

To create better habits, you need to make them realistic and rewarding, easy to achieve and worthwhile.