Making Health Your Habit

For the last year I have been acquiring healthy habits. According to psychology, a habit is a behavior that is triggered by an event that has become so ingrained it becomes second nature to you. Some of the habits I’ve gained have been drinking water first thing in the morning, eating every 3 hours, going on my daily walk, breathing deeply when I’m stressed out, and looking for the positive in negative situations. These behaviors didn’t start out naturally; I developed them and did them over and over until they have become part of my nature.

Over the years I have developed bad habits too. I used to grab for food whenever I was tired, angry, sad, frustrated, or in the near vicinity of said chocolate. I used to be very reactionary, letting my emotions take over when I felt threatened. I used to assume that people were judging me whether they were or not. It takes time to break bad habits, time and awareness. It also takes making new habits to replace the old ones.

So, it takes about 2 months for a habit to become automatic. That means that if you are truly trying to form a new habit, and intentional habit that will help you live a better life, you must stick with it for at least 2 months. That means if you mess it up one day, you try again the next day until it becomes a consistent thing. Any good habit will take some time and effort to acquire but it is possible!!! Here is the scary part: breaking a bad habit takes anywhere from 25 to 254 days. For most people it takes at least 66 days, and the trouble is, you can’t just do it by will power. In an article on Insider (https://www.insider.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-break-a-habit) there are some good tips to help you break habits, such as altering your environment, finding an accountability partner, trading undesired habits for something better, and giving yourself rewards.

Over the last year, I have traded bad habits for good ones. One of the first things I did was learn to drink water. So much water. But drinking water is a key factor in weight loss. I’m sorry if this offends you but you literally pee away your fat. Imagine that! So instead of reaching for chocolate, I would drink another bottle of water. Now it is my go-to thing. Am I tired? Water. Am I anxious? Water. Bored? Maybe I’m thirsty. Changing my environment was also a key in changing my behavior. I used to buy those bottles of Dove Chocolate at Sam’s Club … y’know, the ones with milk, dark, and some combo of white and dark chocolate in it? So I would take out all the milk and dark and white chocolates and let my family eat them. The dark chocolate was for ME. I kept the bottle in my closet. When I started my plan, I kept that bottle, figuring that at some point, I would be off the plan and I would reward myself with chocolate. It took a lot of thought work for me to realize that keeping the chocolate was not going to work for me. There is a phrase in the scriptures that goes something like “they returned to their sin like a dog to it’s vomit.” It’s a pretty graphic phrase, but I realize that I would do exactly that if I kept the idea that it was okay for me to go to chocolate for anything other than starvation. Chocolate had become my golden calf.

Dr. Wayne Scott Anderson has said, “When we talk about what we want, it is usually tied to a pleasure principle rather than lasting satisfaction. We confuse the things that bring us immediate pleasure with the things that lead to lasting fulfillment. Most of the things that create pleasure are only present when we are doing them. … Satisfaction-- rather than pleasure—occurs when you create, do, or bring things into your life that have a lasting effect or value.” This really hit home to me. Eating a piece of dark chocolate, while enjoyable in the moment only lasts a moment. I wanted to develop habits that would lead to satisfaction rather than pleasure. So I threw out the chocolate. It was hard, and I had my son come and get the bag immediately so I couldn’t dig it back out, but since then I haven’t looked back.

So what do you want? I chose habits that bring me satisfaction, and let me tell you, my improved health, my lower AIC (I’m almost normal now) my knees and hips and feet that no longer give me lots of pain and satisfying to me. My ability to run up and down my stairs, that’s satisfaction as well. And looking in the mirror without grimacing… That’s just pure joy.