Making healthy habits stick can be hard! Here are some solutions

In an earlier blog I mentioned that each little change we want to make to our diet can include 5 or more steps to actually accomplish. This can be a real hang up for people who underestimate how much time it takes to make a food change. On the bright side, understanding the steps needed to achieve that goal is very empowering. 

I recently had a conversation with Tommy Schnurmacher from The Tommy Schnurmacher Show on CJAD 800am about this very topic. You can listen to my interview using this player:




If you haven't figured it out yet, psychology plays a HUGE role in why, what, how and how much we eat. So using the principles of psychology to achieve desired changes is key.

Workplace wellness and positive psychology expert Michelle McQuaid has a few tips on how to make changes with less effort and more success. Her suggestion is to use rituals you already are doing and integrate them into the new habits you want to make. 

Michelle says that rituals signal our mind that it’s time for a specific activity. Since they are already part of our daily routine, they can act as triggers to get us ready for what we want to change. By combining rituals with small habits you want to change, you are already on your way to carrying out that change with less effort.


There are 3 components to changing a habit- the cue, the routine (or the ritual) and the reward. Here is an interesting flow chart by Charles Duhigg that shows these 3 components: 

Let's use an example of a 3 p.m. coffee break that includes eating a pastry. Imagine the health goal is to eat fewer pastries. The ritual includes getting the coffee (either at the coffee shop or to the coffee maker), drinking the coffee and eating the pastry. You are also likely socializing a bit, which is also part of the ritual. The cue is that mid-afternoon period where you're craving coffee and something sweet. The reward is perhaps feeling re-energized. 

Harness the power of that coffee ritual to help you eat more of something you are lacking while eating fewer pastries. A great example is fruit. You could try drinking the coffee while avoiding eating all together, but trying to not do something is harder than replacing one food for another. Try placing the fruit near the coffee machine or somewhere along the way to the coffee. 


An important factor in this triad for change is the reward. Michelle states that "whatever reward you use try to make it something you really want... It doesn’t matter what the reward is as long as you’d rather complete your habit than miss out".

If you are trying to start a new habit, say eating breakfast in the morning, match it up with a current routine you have as well as a reward for getting it done. For example, if you are in the habit of grabbing your lunch out of the fridge in the morning, why not also have a breakfast prepared and waiting to be eaten. The reward for eating breakfast could be watching hilarious YouTube cat videos while you eat. 

As I mentioned above, Charles Duhigg has a nifty flow chart that explains the "Golden Rule of Habit Changing". Unfortunately he is not a psychologist, but his "Golden Rule of Habit Change" looks interesting and sounds very similar to Michelle's.

His Golden Rule of Habit Change goes like this:

1) Identify the cue;
2) Identify the reward that you crave for;
3) Identify the routine that you perform to get the reward; and
4) Change the routine when the cue appears so that you get the same reward.

One last tip from Michelle's website is to try to make changes to your habits at a time of day when you are most energized. In other words, waiting for the end of the day when willpower is lowest is not a great strategy. I've mentioned this in previous blog articles such as 
When is your vulnerable hour? and Temptations and the unreliability of willpower.

I want to change! ...I think...

Whether you want to make a change in your eating habits or help someone else do so, it's no secret that having motivation to change is key. What is often not spoken about are the 3 parts of motivation: being ready, willing and able to change.

HOWEVER, wanting to change is not the same as being ready to make that change, being willing to do what it takes to change or having the ability to make concrete changes.

Being able to change or having the ability to change means you have the needed skills, resources, and confidence to make the change. For example, imagine a person who wants to eat more vegetables. Their ability to eat more veggies can be enhanced by knowing where to buy them, having the resources to buy them and how to prepare them. Giving tips on knowledge to help people be able to change used to be the main tasks of dietitians and other health professionals however that role has evolved.

Being willing to change is intertwined with the importance you place on changing—how much a change is wanted or desired. For example, imagine this person knows where to buy veggies, has the budget to purchase them and they have a few good recipes on how to prepare vegetables. They just don't find it worth all the effort to eat more veggies.

Being ready to change is usually the final step in which you decide to change a particular behavior. It involves making this change a priority in your life. Let's continue with the example of our friend who wants to eat more vegetables. They have all the info needed to have vegetables available to them more often. They have decided that its worth the effort to prepare them and eat them more often at meals. Being ready to make the needed changes a priority is the last step. Making this change and the necessary actions a priority such as taking an extra 5min at supper to cook the veggies rather than read the paper or prepare veggies for tomorrow;s lunch rather than watching tv, would be an example of being ready.

Usually, motivation to make a change evolves naturally in the order of ability, willingness and being ready- contrary to the well known saying!

So next time you feel stuck trying to make a change to your habits, remember to explore your ability, willingness and readiness to make that change. If you aren't, why not chose a different habit to change and go back to that one at a later time? It could save you energy and be more efficient.

Get 'er done!

Most of the time we know WHAT we should do to improve our health. It may be to drink less wine, take a walk regularly after dinner or eat more fruit- the point is, we don't need to be told/reminded/finger-pointed at by doctors or dietitians. What most people need is a plan to help them move from thinking about the change, to actually carrying out the change- an action plan! I have spoken about goal setting in the past, but it is so important (and often overlooked) that it warrants another blog.

Most people are familiar with SMART goals. Goals that are specific (eat healthier = eat fruit everyday), measurable (eat 2 fruit per day), attainable (there is a fruit shop just around the corner that I pass on my way home from work), realistic (I said 2 not 4) and timely (for the next 2 weeks, I will eat 2 fruit per day).
This helps people move towards their med-long term goals with a sense of direction. However, there is more to it than SMART goals. The new emerging trend in nutrition counseling is "Implementation Plans". Plans that not only include the goals you want to undertake but the actions you will carry out to "get 'er done".

Implementation plans ask where, when and how you will, for example, eat 2 fruit per day. As the name suggests, answering these 3 questions will help implement the goal or plan. So, where will I eat my two fruit? at work, at my desk. When will I eat them? One at breakfast and one as a snack at 3pm. And how? I will bring 2 fruit in my lunch to work.

What happens if something gets in my way? Planning for barriers can help you over come the problems before they start. For example, if I do not have any fruit in the house to bring in my lunch, I will go to the store at the corner (during lunch) and buy some fruit.
If I don't have time to eat my 3pm snack, I will eat a fruit as dessert after supper.

Making changes to our habits take some effort. Taking a few minutes to plan out the changes we want to make over the next few weeks will increase your chance of actually changing (not just thinking about it!)