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.

In the nutrition world, sometimes 1 equals 5

Have you ever wondered why it can be so hard to accomplish one small goal you've set for yourself? It's supposed to be easy, right?. Just one thing to do to be a little healthier...but it never gets done!

For starters, aim to make the smallest slice of change that is consistent with your long term goal. For example, try introducing one serving of vegetables when you normally would have eaten none. This is much more doable than aiming to eat 4 servings per day if you currently eat only 1. Making small changes allows us to make more changes over time and to make big changes with less willpower. You'll feel less of a sense of a struggle and be motivated to make more changes in the future.

Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life - tweet this!

Making a change to your eating or lifestyle can be tough because one change usually requires 5 steps (or more!), a fact that is often overlooked. The trick to overcoming the challenges is to know what those steps are and to tackle them one at a time. It sounds obvious, but without some practice, it is easy to forget how much work can go into changing.

Let's continue with the example of vegetables. Most people want to eat more vegetables and the goal of "eating more" sounds simple enough, right? But wait, this means buying vegetables, having a recipe in mind, preparing them, cooking them, and eating them. If any of these steps are not completed, the whole plan is at risk of failing.

Some of these steps may come easy to you, while others may be harder. The fact is, if you aren't able to make that so called "simple change" to your lifestyle, you may want to break down all the steps required to get it done and figure out where you are getting hung up. For example,

• Is it getting to the store that's so tough?
• or is it that you buy vegetables you don't know how to prepare them?
• are you waiting to find the perfect recipe but never find the time to search for one?

Find what is tripping you up and swash it! For example, buy only veggies you like or only ones you know how to prepare. If getting to the store is the problem, buy canned and frozen versions so you don't have to trek to the store every time you want to eat a veggie. Forget complicated recipes & focus on one simple one. Use the easiest cooking method you know (for me its the microwave so sometimes I splurge and buy the steamable veggie bags). If you gotta add some salt or dressing to make those vegetables appealing- then do it! Once you get into the rhythm of buying, preparing, making and eating more veggies you can start to forgo the dressings and salt and dressing. But for now keep it simple and yummy.

Don't aim to be perfect all at once. Setting many small goals will give you many more jolts of motivation and more senses of accomplishments than one big goals. And who doesn't deserve more pats on the back!?

One last tip- willpower is finite so relying on it when it is in short supply can set you up to fail. We all have natural high and lows of energy during the day so plan to chose high energy times to tackle goals or face temptation.

How to make eating healthier easy!

Healthy eating is a challenge for many reasons. For a start, we make over 200 food choices a day which gives us many opportunities to make unwise or unintended decisions. Having a treat once in a while is fine (and recommended!) but when we start feeling guilty about the less healthy choices we've made, the thought that “I’ve blown it, I might as well go nuts” can arise. Rather than making healthier choices at the next meal or snack, people who think this way may feel that getting “back on track” that day is pointless. 

Another reason that it can be challenging is lack of time set aside to plan out meals and snacks. This includes having a rough idea of the meals you want to cook over the week, making a grocery list and preparing some of the ingredients beforehand. All of these things take time- which most of us are short on. However, practicing one or all of these things can make them easier to accomplish every week and help you feel in charge of what you eat. You could recruit some family members to help you draft out the meals they want to eat or even have a set of recipes you make every week (like chicken Mondays and beef Tuesdays). 
Gathering your favorite recipes together in the same spot (like in a box or a list that’s kept on the fridge) and choosing from them can help make meal planning easy. 
Also, starting new habits like washing and chopping celery or marinating meat before putting it away can help save time in the long run. 

Keep changes small and easy enough to carry out. Also, when deciding what changes you want to make, tackle temptations at the time of the day when energy is high (rather than low, like at the end of the day). Remembering that healthy eating is not an all or nothing goal is important too! It’s important to find what works for you and your family. So if you dislike kale or can’t eat supper before 7pm, don’t worry! There are plenty of other things you can do to eat healthy.