How To Create Healthy Habits That Help You Loose Weight

As some of you may know I have been working on habit formation for the past few months. I have relied on behavior change books like Tiny Habits and Atomic Habits to help me with this process. In this post, I will discuss the hardest behavior change of all. It’s forming healthy food and exercise habits that would lead to weight loss.

The Pandemic has helped us develop some good and bad habits. It has brought changes in our life that we didn’t anticipate before. The stress from lack of human connection and lack of familiarity due to relocation contributed to my weight gain. My weight increased by 20 pounds during the last two years.

I had always gone through fluctuations during winters which I managed to lose in the summers. It was never 20 pounds though. Even though I managed to exercise, my food habits changed drastically during work from home.

Our new location offered many more choices to eat. As a result, we ordered out multiple times in a week. When you suddenly wake up and want to change you realize it is not a simple task. For people who resort to food for comfort during stressful times, it can be a hard task.

I have been on a rigorous journey of working out with Cross-fit, Boxing, and Personal training sessions. Despite these, I have been struggling to lose weight. My food habits hadn’t changed much. In addition to wanting to fit into my old wardrobe, I am on a journey to make some lasting changes.

In this post, I will share the set of behaviors/habits I am working on that will help me achieve my goal. My goal is to share my journey with you at various stages in hopes that you may benefit from them.

As you read this post please keep in mind that I am not a nutritionist or a personal trainer but am committed to a healthy lifestyle.

Beyond Weight Loss

A big part of my weight loss journey has been about educating myself on good eating habits. I wish the importance of nutrition growing up was the same as getting good grades.

Without proper knowledge of what to eat, it falls upon us as adults to adopt a new mindset toward these things. You have to reprogram your brain and undo what you may have been doing for years.

It’s balancing what you like to eat in portions with what you need in a particular meal. I have been reading a lot about what our body needs in terms of minerals and nutrients. I might turn it into a post one of these days. I am only at the beginning of my journey.

The Habit Creation Process

Step 1 – Exploring Various Behaviors Leading to Weight Loss

My new habits fall under two categories: Eating Well & Exercising. Below you can see how I explored various behaviors that would help me reach my goal. I used the Tiny Habits Swarm of Behaviors technique for this exercise.

Note that some of these behaviors are based on what I already know works for my body. That may be different for you based on what works for you. Your list of behaviors for weight loss might look very different from mine. There is no one standard approach.

Step 2 – Finding The Right Behaviors

According to BJ Fogg, the Author of Tiny Habits, “No matter what kind of change you want to make, matching yourself with the right behaviors is the key to changing your life for good”.

I narrowed it down to 10 behaviors that are easy and have a high impact. Check out the Focus mapping technique from the book for step-by-step instructions on the exercise.

Step 3 – Making the behavior easy to do

Once I had my behaviors I went through each one and asked myself if I can make it easier to do. Can I scale it back? Do I need additional resources to make it easy? This is all part of suggestions from Tiny Habits. I took the ones relevant to each habit and went through the exercise below, to make each habit the right size.

You can see in the diagram below, For Habit #4 I want to start tracking my steps every day. There was a time I did 10-15K steps/day. When my routine was off due to relocation/life, I was beating myself up for not making many steps. This resulted in not wearing my Fitbit altogether.

To get back into it, I made this a starter habit. It’s about just beginning to track steps. Eventually, I can scale it up to 5K and higher as time goes on.

For Habit #5, my goal was to run 2 times a week. I scaled it down to say I will leave the house on specific days for a walk. Changing into workout clothes and leaving is the first step.

I find that I am more motivated when I have group classes as it requires me to reserve my spot. When it’s something I need to do on my own, motivation is low. Especially since there is no accountability.

Step 4 – Designing a Prompt

Both James Clear and BJ Fogg suggest that you have to have a prompt for your habits, or they wouldn’t happen. For my habits, I used implementation intention (specify time/date) for habits that happen occasionally. For every day, I used the anchor prompt to plug the new habit after something I already do.

Below is what one of my habits would look like:

After I unpack groceries on Sunday, I will do meal prep for the week (Cut Veggies, Quinoa, Soak lentils, etc).

Step 5 – Celebrating & Tracking Habits

Each habit of mine has a celebration attached to the end of it. According to BJ Fogg, for a habit to wire into your brain it needs to be celebrated instantly. This can be anything like saying yes, clapping, or marking it complete.

For my celebration, I have decided to mark the habits in the habit journal created by the Atomic Habits author, James Clear. I need a visible tracker to keep me accountable and see my list of habits. In the past when I crafted my habits, without a visual cue it was hard to remember them.

To avoid this, I have placed printed cards of each of my habits and the habit tracker in a spot in a high traffic spot in the house.

Parting Thoughts

Behavior change needs a lot of experimentation. It requires patience and being consistent with your habits. With one small habit at a time, I hope to get back to a healthy weight. Thank you for being a part of my journey.

I will be continuing my habit journey by exploring the book, The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Stay tuned for a summary in the coming weeks.

Are there things that worked for you in your weight loss journey? Please share your wisdom.

Notes/References:

The Tiny Habits book refers to 7 steps in behavior design. I haven’t covered Step 1 & 7 here. Step 1 is to Clarify your aspiration. Step 7 is to Troubleshoot, iterate & expand. Check out my book summary of both Tiny Habits and Atomic Habits for a complete overview: