Introduction to the Importance of Healthy Habits
As humans, we often tend to want to accomplish something, whether it is saving money to own a house or a car, getting straight A’s on our report card, or simply wanting to improve our health life. The thing is that the majority of us don’t really like the “hard work” that we have to put into it. I say this because this has something to do with healthy habits. We tend to rely on them for a couple of weeks, we get tired of them, and we stop integrating them into our daily lives. This is the part when the strategies show up. Strategies are crucial for our daily life basis, in simple words, they are the ones that basically help us to keep our lives together. This is why we need them, to develop our healthy habits in the best way possible. Some strategies that can make our healthy habits stick into our daily lives are to escape the all-or-nothing mindset, cut the habit into the smallest pieces and focus on each one, and also establish rewards ever since you do something positive.
Overcoming the All-or-Nothing Mindset
The first strategy that is going to be discussed is to escape the all-or-nothing mindset. To be clearer, this type of mindset is one that forces you to think only about this habit and nothing else, which can be bad when nurturing a habit. According to the website “TheActiveTimes”, they stated that a registered dietitian and the Lead Nutrition Expert at Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating, named Rene Ficek explains the correct way of adopting a healthy habit using this strategy. She says “Healthy eating doesn't require you to cut out your favorite foods once and for all. In fact, telling yourself that you will never have a certain food ever again increases the likeliness of bingeing on that food. It is human nature to want what we are not supposed to have. It is necessary to understand that a healthy diet includes all foods.” Now, Ficek opens with the phrase “Healthy eating doesn't require you to cut out your favorite foods once and for all”, which makes the majority of the audience confuse themselves since the meaning of “healthy” is technically related to only the healthy. Her opinion makes sense by saying that to be healthy you don’t have to cut out the foods that are not really healthy because, for example, let’s say that you are used to eating whatever you want, without applying any type of diet. Then, you decide that you want to improve your health, and therefore you start doing a diet. All of the sudden, you start to get headaches and feel sick. This is because you started a diet without doing the process of changing your previous meal routine periodically, and your body was used to that. She also uses the word “bingeing” to emphasize that if you change your meal routine rapidly by not eating the foods you like, you will most likely think about them and it's going to be more difficult to give up on them. In addition, the website “HuffPost” also says if we rely too much on our motivation or habit, instead of doing a positive thing for us, it can do the opposite. They state that “Motivation is essential when trying to build healthy habits, but we also know that it can wax and wane. You can't always depend on it because some of that initial motivation will wear off and you'll need other systems in place to keep you on track.” The creators of this website use the phrase “wax and wane” to describe that usually, our motivations don’t stay in our mind for too long, and we don’t have to stress about that, since that is how our brain works. They also say that we can’t also rely much upon it, since that takes up all of our systems, and we need parts of our system to make other things work. An example of this is a person that is focused on losing/gaining weight, so they start by going to the gym for one hour each day and increasing the number of hours each week. By the time they get to the 4th week, they are going to have to spend 4 hours working out at the gym. Imagine yourself going 4 hours to the gym every day. You eventually are going to feel exhausted and you will want to sleep every time. You have work to do, or you may have to go to school. Most likely, the systems that you are using to achieve this goal are also needed to complete your other tasks and therefore you may not complete your other tasks fully. This evidence proves why we need this strategy to nurture healthy habits.
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Breaking Habits into Manageable Steps
The second strategy that can help us to nurture healthy habits is that we should break the habit into smaller pieces and focus on each one. The author of “the athlete blog”, states why we should apply this strategy to develop a habit by saying that “Focusing on one thing at a time is the best way to ensure consistency. If possible, make it as easy as possible for yourself by splitting a habit into smaller steps. Big life and behavioral changes can be very intimidating – it’s much less stressful to focus on something small.” He uses the word “intimidating” to explain how the majority of people tend to find big changes very scary. An example of this is finding a new job. Finding a new job requires you to challenge yourself by getting used to a new environment, new people, and also a new structure. All of this combined is a challenge since you are not used to it. This is why we need to take each habit piece by piece. In this case, you should meet your new co-workers first, organize your things in your personal space, and then get to know your new structure. The author of the same blog also states that “Doing all possible activities at once will leave a person tired very quickly. Instead, it’s best to start small, focus on one thing at a time, and ‘build as you go.” He uses the word “quickly” to explain how even though you want to accomplish that habit in a matter of days, and you do it, the consequence of that is that your body is going to be so tired that it won’t be able to keep up with your other tasks or habits. He utilizes the phrase “build as you go” to motivate the audience by mentioning that although you are going to develop the habit little by little, and therefore taking your time, it is going to be worth it; since you will be fully concentrating on each part throughout your journey. Doing this will also boost your confidence when it comes to being healthy. This supports why we should apply this strategy when it comes to nurturing a new healthy habit.
The Power of Rewarding Positive Behavior
The third and last reason that is going to be reviewed is that ever since we do something positive, we should reward ourselves. On the “TheActiveTimes” webpage, they state how a co-founder and CEO of Fitnescity named Laila Zahrani explains the steps of how we can apply this strategy in the right way to nurture healthy habits. She says “First, be specific about the behavior you want to transform (e.g. 'I will go for a run at 7 a.m. three times a week' rather than “I will be more active”). Second, establish triggers that will remind you to act, like calendar reminders or leaving your running shoes near the door. Third, keep it fun and simple—this part involves the reward. “In order to increase your chances of repeating the behavior multiple times, there has to be a reward,” says Zahrani. “This can be physical like, feeling energized after your workout, or emotional, like enjoying your dance-fitness class.” And finally, learn to break your bad habits.” Zahrani explains how we need to reward ourselves so that our habits can last longer. This influences the audience to actually think that now that they know the fact that they can reward themselves, they might actually feel motivated and try to accomplish this habit. Something special that this strategy has, and the other two that are being reviewed don’t, is that this strategy not also helps people to keep up with their habits as much time as possible, but also helps them to break other habits that are currently in their lives. Zahrani explains this habit by giving out steps and examples so that the audience can guide themselves and they could fully understand how to put this strategy into practice. The author of “TheAthleteBlog” also states how this strategy makes you connect to the specific habit in a positive way. He says “Rewarding yourself for a specific behavior links pleasure to it and creates an emotional connection with the habit. That way it has a higher probability of repeating itself.” ‘Attach love to a new habit and you’ll want to do it more.’ The author opens by saying that rewarding yourself “links pleasure” to habit. He uses that phrase to interpret how rewarding ourselves makes us connect to the habit. He also uses the phrase “attach love to a new habit and you’ll want to do it more.” He mentions that in his speech because he wants to inspire the audience by saying that just simply rewarding yourself, you are going to get results, and plus you will want to keep up with the habit more than ever. For example, if you plan to go to the gym for 45 minutes every day, and the first week you only had time to go 2 times, but then the second you got the opportunity of going all week, you might want to reward yourself this time by buying yourself some workout clothes or a pair of running shoes. Doing this will motivate you to keep going all week to the gym, without missing a day. This demonstrates why we should apply this strategy when nurturing our healthy habits.
Conclusion: Integrating Strategies for Lasting Healthy Habits
After reviewing these strategies, we can prove that we really need them for any life situation, whether applying them to save money to own a house or car, to get straight A’s at school, or to improve our health life by nurturing healthy habits. Doing this revision also helped us learn that although habits can sometimes bring us frustration when using these strategies, they can bring us happiness as well as pleasure. We should always remember that if we want to develop a new habit, we also need to think about what strategies should we apply to it.
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