Ditch Habits if You Want to Create Lasting Changes in 2023
I’ll get right to the point: If we want to create sustainable change in our (and our patients’, clients’, and 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” reaching 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 a simple, easy, and 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:
- Everyone can form habits.
- Our internal conflicts about eating and exercise do not affect our ability to form automatic habits for healthy eating and exercise.
- It’s possible to form an automatic habit for any behavior.
- The automatic nature of habit is the ideal for creating lasting changes in healthy eating and exercise.
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.
What if instead of “going rote,” we learn how to support our identities and values through making healthy choices?
A compelling candidate for creating sustainable health behaviors comes out of work on identity and values, suggesting that they are potent drivers of healthy choices.
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 self-sustaining and sustainable.
Curious to learn more about this different perspective? Check out my brief 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.
And as always, I welcome your reactions to my thinking (including pushback!).