The Establishment of Habits

It only takes 21 days to establish a habit right? Or now is it 66 days? Or 2 weeks? Whats the rule? How long do I have to force myself to do something I hate before I will learn to love it and do it naturally?

These are questions that I hear regularly and I also ask myself. But I think sometimes, if we look at our experience, we already have the answers.

Take a habit that hopefully we all do regularly, like brushing our teeth. Although when we were younger, we may have been forced to do this by our parents, as adults most of us just naturally do this at least twice a day, if not more. Do we make those decisions twice per day to avoid gum disease or cavities? Probably not. We do it probably because our mouth feels gross or we wouldn't want to worry about bad breath if we didn't. We do it for the immediate gains we get, not the long-term impacts of the habit. 

What about exercise? As I've posted, over the past 10 months, I've been exercising at least 5 days per week for 30 minutes, in the mornings. What keeps me doing this? Well, at first, I was just trying to get through the program for the feeling of accomplishment it brought. I was able to stop associating it with weight loss, which was very helpful for me and I just felt good and proud of myself for getting it done each morning, I felt strong. But I'm getting up at 5:30am, which is not at ALL natural for me. I could sleep until 8-9am on pretty much any day, even if I go to bed early. So getting up has never been easy. Well this past week for the first time in 10 months, I just chose not to get up. I reset my alarm and convinced myself that I needed a break. I had also been eating poorly, like a lot of ice cream and Digiorno pizza. I even had Garrett go get it for me Thurs night and I made and ate it at like 9:30pm. Oh yeah, and I made him get me cookie dough ice cream. This was after a week of eating things such as salami and cheese for dinner since he was out of town. Who said women can't eat like they are bachelorettes when their husbands are gone?!

It didn't feel out of control, but I felt a little guilt for a few reasons. I knew the more I ate like this day after day (I did this for about 5 days, although I typically still had healthy-ish breakfasts and lunches) my body wouldn't feel good and I would just generally feel worse energy wise. But I still did it. I sort of enjoyed it I guess, but not totally, at least not after the first bowl and first few pizza slices... 

Anyway, the point of all this is that I think it would be excellent if we could just do a habit for 9 months and then it would become natural for the rest of our life. But I don't think that is real life. I think no matter what, unless the habit is SO reinforcing naturally, or the person is SO good at remembering their reasons for doing it (if I were able to remind myself EVERY DAY at 5:30am that its important I get up because I feel so accomplished and more productive and healthy after my workouts), then there will be days when its hard still, and when its tempting to just go back to our old ways. So essentially, in my experience, it isn't about the length of time you do a habit, but learning to really focus on the immediate benefits you can get in terms of mood improvement, sense of accomplishment and pride, or other more short-term benefits. That being said, I also think some days, its just about keeping yourself accountable and doing it even when you don't 100% feel like it. Side note: I still feel this way about brushing my teeth sometimes! Anyone else??

Part of this is important for me to write down, because I need to understand it for myself. However, I feel fairly good about my ability to get back on track. I have excellent support, and I already had a healthy breakfast and worked out this morning (Saturday). But I also work with people on these exact issues. I am very cautious to not assume that my experience is other's experience. But at the same time, we are all human and have similar struggles. I used to have significant disordered eating, but I've been free of that (with minor lapses) for essentially 4 years now. Yet, behavior change and health can still be a struggle in our modern world. I would love if we all had ways to make it easier on us. And I think we can do that by making our environment more healthy, and subsidizing healthy foods instead of junk, etc etc. I also think that we can focus on health instead of just the number on the scale. But I think regardless, healthy eating and exercise will always take some work and dedication to forming different habits. 

For me, the way I'm going to continue to work on this, is to use my support system to keep me accountable. I'm going to keep sharing my goals and focus on improvements in ways I can cook at home, make healthy tasty meals, and continue to make time for exercise, and ideally make all of these things as enjoyable as possible. For me, that support comes from my husband and also my Beachbody community, but I think there are lots of places you can get this type of support. I also think that social communities and social change are essential and intimately related to our health improvement goals. Its just about finding the place or places where you feel safe to show up, be seen, and continue to work on your goals without judgment, but also without being able to slink away into the background.

Just my two cents on this fine Sat morning.