Theme: How Habits Work

Today’s Challenge: Since sitting is a habit we want to change, today we are going to explore how habits work and the three components of every habit. There's been a revolution the last 20 years in the scientific understanding of habits and below are some key insights from that research. There's a lot of information here, but understanding the fundamentals of habit building will help you both in Boot Camp as well as creating or modifying any other habit you want. I’ve used the habits process many times, most notably to break a very bad Cheez-It® habit.

Why not stand up when you read today’s challenge?


Why Should You Care About Habits?

Charles Duhigg, author of “The Power of Habit”:

“Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. And though each habit means relatively little on its own, over time, the meals we order, what we say to our kids each night, whether we save or spend, how often we exercise, and the way we organize our thoughts and work routines have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, financial security, and happiness.”

Some Interesting Facts About Habits

1. Habits are essential to our daily lives. Think about all the tiny steps involved in the simple habit of brushing your teeth. If each day you had to relearn this sequence of steps, your brain would get tired and overwhelmed very quickly. The brain’s ability to seamlessly move through a sequence of steps on autopilot is what enables us to go through our our day with relative ease. Routine tasks can be automated into habits allowing us to focus on more complex tasks.

2. Roughly half of our daily actions are habits. At some point we made the decision to do a certain habit, but over time and after repeatedly doing the habit, we don’t consciously make the choice anymore, nor are we even usually aware that we are doing our habit. They run on autopilot, which makes them hard to break. Technically, a habit is something we do automatically without being aware we are doing it. When it’s something we do repeatedly that we are consciously aware we’re doing, that’s a practice or routine, not a habit. Practically speaking, these subtle differences in definition aren’t important.

3. No, it doesn’t take 21 days to form a new habit. How long it takes to build a new habit depends mostly on how complex the habit is and how motivated the person is to create it. A very simple habit can be learned in a few days if a person is very motivated. More complex habits, such as stopping smoking, typically take much longer.

4. You can’t force yourself to develop new habits. Human beings are hardwired to do things that they want to do and get rewards from doing. Don’t try to force yourself to learn a new habit if it’s not something you want to do. It won’t work and it won’t be sustainable. Pick a new behavior that you want to do.

5. Think small and then build. The most successful new habits are those that are incredibly small. Since they don’t require much effort or motivation, our naturally resistant to change brains will be far more receptive to sticking with the new action. If your goal is to exercise 30 minutes a day, start with 2 to 5 minutes of walking or another easy-to-do exercise.

6. Good Habit or Bad Habit? Your brain doesn’t care. Our brains make no distinction nor have any preference for Good Habits (those that help us) and Bad Habits (those that set us back).

7. Habits are triggered by our environment. What you see, hear, smell, and feel in your home, office, and other environments are powerful cues that trigger the habits you have. Location, time of day, a series of thoughts, and other people can also be triggers. Want to start a new habit? Take a vacation that gets you out of your usual environment.


The Three Components of a Habit (Called the Habit Loop)

The Trigger: This is the cue that starts the habit in motion. There is always a cue, even if it’s subtle and not something we’re aware of. The trigger can be a visual cue or an auditory cue such as the phone ringing. A habit can also be triggered by the time of day, which is why most of us move through the habit of brushing our teeth every morning and night.

The Routine: This is the habit itself, the series of steps you take quickly and effortlessly when you do the habit.

The Reward: In order for us to keep doing the habit, there has to be some reward or benefit that we derive. Sometimes it’s not obvious what we get from doing the habit and it can take some digging to figure it out. But we now know that rewards are a fundamental part of creating and maintaining habits.

Cues and Rewards are Connected

Cues also trigger the brain to remember the reward from doing the habit, setting off a craving for the reward. Even if we are not aware of it, our cravings for rewards drive the habit loop. Yes, donut shops really stack the odds against you.

You Can Visualize the Habit Loop This Way





Once you understand the components of every habit, you can start fiddling with and adjusting the three parts to create new habits or modify an existing habit.


The Most Effective Way to Create New Habits

The best way to create a new habit and have it stick is to anchor the new behavior to an existing habit that you already do. That existing habit becomes the cue that triggers you to do the new habit. The anchor needs to be something that you do every day or several times a day. Alternatively, it can be something that happens to you during the day such as the phone ringing. Pouring yourself that first cup of coffee or tea, checking your phone, powering up your laptop or tablet, or sending an email are just a few examples of anchors that make good triggers for new habits.

Practice and Repetition Leads to Success

In order to make your new action a habit, you’re going to have to do it repeatedly until it becomes automatic for you. It’s impossible to make something a habit when you only do it occasionally. Choose a new habit that you can practice daily, or better yet several times a day, and it will be easier to keep doing.

This critical step is the breakdown point for most wannabe habits. People will practice their new habit for awhile and then stop doing it and wonder why the habit didn’t stick. Because it wasn’t truly a habit and wasn’t given enough time, effort, practice, or rewards to become a habit. Whatever small sit-less habit you select to work for Boot Camp (more on this tomorrow), plan on working on it daily into the foreseeable future, if you want to have it stick.

Don’t Skip the Reward

Cues start the habit and rewards keep us wanting to do the habit again. It can be tough to think of an appropriate reward for a new sit-less habit, since the rewards tend to accrue years from now. Simple verbal positive reinforcements can be an effective reward. “Way to go, me!” or something similar, may seem a little silly, but it’s an effective response to completing a new action that we want to become a habit.

Rewards are a critical step in habit building because they help your brain decide if a particular series of steps is worth automating into a habit so that it can be recalled in the future.

Don’t skip the reward. :-)

Want to Change an Existing Habit? Change the Routine

Since all habits have a Cue-Routine-Reward component, a recommended strategy for modifying an existing habit is to keep the same cue and reward but change the routine. Almost any habit can be changed given enough time and focus if the cue and reward stay the same and only the routine is changed.

You’ve Got to Believe that Change is Possible

Belief is also an essential ingredient in habit formation. We have to believe that the rewards from creating new habits will be great enough to be worth taking the time and trouble to create the new habit.

We see this on My Fitness Pal. There are lots of success stories posted on the community forum and seeing our MFP friends succeed at their health and wellness goals makes our own success more real, tangible, and likely. Communities like MFP are terrific incubators for habit change since belief, support, and encouragement make the difficult process of personal change much easier.




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That's a lot of ground to cover! Tomorrow we'll be applying this information to selecting our sit-less actions.

And if you have a little more time, below are a short video by author Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) and a TED talk by noted habits expert Dr. BJ Fogg. Both are excellent. Or head out for a walk today!