4 Helpful Habits for Weight Loss: A Behavioral Jump-Start

The Importance of Habits in Your Weight Loss Journey

Habits are How

Habits: the way we tend to respond to everyday situations.

Tendencies and patterns for how to respond to the signals in our environment is a hardwired part of being a person. Without habits, we are required to think-through every situation as if it was the first time we were encountering it. Consider, for example, starting a new job, or even going on a vacation. The new context will create questions that need to be addressed – Where is the bathroom? Where can I get water? How should I eat lunch?, or more generally, What do I need to do to get what I need right now? This is why doing anything new, even if it is exciting like a new job, or intended to be relaxing like a vacation, will be a bit of adjustment as you create a new pattern of responses that fits with the new context you are in.

Habits are Adaptive

Know this—all habits, even the unhelpful ones, were created to solve a problem. They are adaptive in this way. While your responses are trying to solve the problems you encounter, they are not always consistent with other intentions you might have. For example, not knowing what to have for lunch in the new job or vacation context might lead to purchasing lunch from a street vendor. This solution solves the problem because it provides a warm delicious lunch. However, purchasing lunch this way each day might not work with your plans to save money. So while the solution solved the problem for today it has the potential to create new problems if it continues as a daily habit. Understanding habits in this way begins with identifying which habits in your life are definitely helpful and which ones require some attention.

4 Helpful Habits for Behavioral Jump-Start to Weight Loss

Below are some helpful habits that for leveraging a behavior analysis approach to weight loss. As you review them, consider how each would work in your own life. It may be the case that some adjusting or additional support makes sense with regard to the specific arrangements in your daily life.

Helpful Habit 1: Water First Thing

The No Weigh approach to weight loss empowers users to initiate and maintain their own motivation. Drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning is good for your body. It is also an easy self-care response that will create behavioral momentum that may be applied to responses that are more difficult to grow or change (like cupcakes for breakfast, taken from my own morning tendencies).

NEXT-LEVEL BEHAVIORAL JUMP-START FOR WEIGHT LOSS: If you don’t already, consider carrying a water bottle with you when you leave the house. It is helpful for many reasons, including addressing tiredness, which can lead to snacking.

Helpful Habit 2: Stretching

Stretching is an opportunity that is readily accessible at most times in your day. The power of stretching is its ability to create a new context. Just like that, a 2-min stretch transforms tension, unhelpful thoughts, and a tired body into something powerful. It a fresh start, right from where you left off.

Intend to stretch tomorrow and see if you can do it three times, for just 2-min each time. You will be amazed.

NEXT-LEVEL BEHAVIORAL JUMP-START FOR WEIGHT LOSS: Leverage the new context that stretching provides by doing it before a meal or at times when unhelpful eating tends to occur. Doing this will change how you eat in these contexts—that is a guarantee.

Helpful Habit 3: Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

There is a behavioral reason for this. Just like the other habits, there is an obvious explanation and there is also a deeper behavioral meaning. Indeed fruits/veggies are healthy and most of us can or should eat more. In addition, the huge behavioral benefit is the way the fruit and vegetables make your body feel. Fresh fruit/veg create a very specific feeling in the belly. Attending to body signals, such as the way your belly feels, is critical to giving yourself what you need and still losing weight.

NEXT-LEVEL BEHAVIORAL JUMP-START FOR WEIGHT LOSS: If you are someone who tends to snack, identify quick and easy fruit/veg that may be eaten first. Beginning the snack with fruit/veg will connect you with your intention to focus on your wellness. You may also decide to just stop there—happy with the way it made your belly feel and ready to move one.

Helpful Habit 4: Brush and Floss After Eating

Back to the value of creating a new context, changing something about a situation creates opportunity for new responses to occur. Brushing/flossing after eating provides a definitive end to the meal (that is, the meal context is gone). It also provides a minty fresh mouth that feels good. You will have a desire to keep your mouth feeling clean, which will make eating less attractive.

NEXT-LEVEL BEHAVIORAL JUMP-START FOR WEIGHT LOSS: Continuing with the power of managing contexts, stay-on-plate is a context-management strategy directly from No Weigh. Rather than wondering if you should eat more when you near the end of the meal, plan this out before you begin. Create a thoughtful plate with all the food groups you need and desire (MyPlate is a great resource for this). If the meal includes dessert, consider it a part of the meal and adjust your plate accordingly. Creating a thoughtful plate will provide reassurance that it was a nourishing meal that will sustain you until the next time to eat.

The No Weigh Approach to Habits

No Weigh takes our tendency to engage in patterns of responding and uses it to create helpful habits. A similar approach is taken when addressing unhelpful habits. There is no fighting or willpower-ing your way through it. Rather, accept that habit behavior is a part of being human and shape those tendencies into something aligned with your weight loss goals. For more on this, see the Change Eating Habits post.

Are you ready for something different?