It’s all about creating healthy habits.
A little over two weeks ago I wrote a post about being determined to get healthy again. The next week and a half was awesome! I ate well and tracked everything. I went to the gym several times and even restarted my Couch-to-5k program. I could feel the results and was even told my face had thinned out!
And then this last week happened. I ate things I shouldn’t have and then got frustrated when the scale showed the results of my lack of discipline. Instead of redoubling my efforts, I decided to just eat out for every lunch last week. I haven’t worked out all week. I haven’t weighed myself all week. I haven’t tracked anything I’ve eaten.
So…and pardon my French, but…what the hell happened?
Thanks to a confluence of “completely coincidental” circumstances, I started listening to Ben Dempsey’s Defy The Plateau podcast this week, then received an email that my Habit Journal was ready AND started reading Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit again yesterday. Simply put, my current habits suck. So, when I weighed myself last Monday and Tuesday and saw the numbers go up, I fell back into my already established habits and quit putting in the effort to develop the new, healthier ones. Duhigg says, “This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives.”
Those dang inflection points are usually my undoing. I’m sure you can relate.
I’ve seen this pattern in my own life now several times, where I’ll go a week or so and do really well, then “fall off the wagon” because I “screw-up” or see the number on the scale go back up. It’s great that I notice it and now I feel like I even know why it happens, but it’s time to buckle down and do the work of developing the new, healthier habits. And I know I can do it.
The benefits of developing healthier habits are exponential, also. That’s what’s so cool about it! Study after study has shown that “once willpower became strong, it touched everything” (Duhigg). Even in studies where they only focused on one habit – study habits, for instance – participants also “smoked less, drank less, watched less television, exercised more, and ate healthier, even though all those things were never mentioned in the program. Again, as their willpower muscles strengthened, good habits seemed to spill over into other parts of their lives” (Duhigg).
Tomorrow morning I’m going to weigh myself to re-establish my starting point and start again. I’m going to begin my 4-week Habit Journal session and focus on my physical health. I will be prepared for the inflection points that will inevitably rise up against me and I will power through and ask friends for help when I need it.
This is a journey and I refuse to quit.
Have you ever developed new habits? How did that go for you? Share your story in the comments below!
UPDATE: For as horribly as I thought I did this last week, I ended-up only gaining .2 pounds. .2. Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill!
