Have you ever had that moment when you wake up and say I’m going to lose weight? You are thinking that you will exercises 5 days a week, stop smoking, quite drinking pop, and eat perfect at every meal.
Monday starts and you go from a crappy habit life to perfect nutrition and fitness habits. After day 1 you want to stop but you struggle through day 2 and by day 3 you are downing a bag of potato chips and a 20oz pop saying you will never lose weight.
The main issue here was you took on way too much change at once. The body hates changes and you radically changed everything in one day. The only way you’ll form long-lasting habits is by focusing on one habit at a time, one month at a time, so that you’ll be able to focus all your energy on creating that one habit.
Here are some quick tips to change your habits:
- Select one habit…only one habit per month. Start small and conquer little victories at a time.
- Write down your plan. Keep it simple. I am only going to drink 8oz of water every 2 hours today.
- Let someone close to you know your goal. Make sure this person is a supportive person that will help you succeed.
- Write down your progress daily. Either check off how many times you did something, put it in an app or just let you friends know you accomplished that today. Little victories remember!
Some ideas for nutritional habit changes:
- Eating breakfast every day
- Increasing your fruit and veggie intake to 5 servings per day
- Taking 1 gram of fish oil per day
- Eating lean protein with each meal and snack
- Drink one less pop each day
- Don’t shop for groceries hungry
- Drink half your body weight in ounces each day
Actionable Task:
Here is a habit breakdown you can start with today and implement to help you start the first change to your nutritional diet. Drink half you bodyweight in ounces. This is extremely important for many functions in the body and is a game changer.
Example below is for 160lbs person.
Step 1: Take your bodyweight, divide by 2. (80oz of water for this person)
Step 2: Grab a water bottle that easily breaks down this number. For this person I would chose a 20oz water bottle.
Step 3: Put rubber bands on the water bottle that represent one full bottle (20oz for each rubber band). This allows us to keep a tally throughout the day.
Step 4: Since this person needs to drink four of these in a day, they should try to drink 10oz per hour to make sure they stay properly hydrated throughout the day. Drinking it all at once will not be as beneficial.
Step 5: Set a mid-day alarm on your phone to make sure you check to see if by this point you have drank at least 40oz of water (or half your amount).
Step 6: You want to have drank 95% of the water by 2 hours before you go to bed so you don’t have to get up every hour during the night.
Step 7: Wake up and repeat. Do this for at least 21 days before adding a habit.
Is it any surprise that when people try to massively overhaul their lifestyle in short order, the changes simply don’t stick? Of course not. But, let’s be honest. Most of us aren’t known for being patient. And most people who come to us want to be in shape, like, yesterday. So start with these little changes. Let them build on each other every day. When you conquer one, add another. In three months, you’ll have a nice natural habit based diet going and you will have the power to make huge changes to your life.
