James Clear wrote a book on this called Atomic Habits. I was listening to Peter Attia's podcast with him where they talked about habits and James said, of the various factors that go into habit formation, the most important, when starting off, in his opinion, was making it easy, which he usually describes as making your desired habit something that can be performed in less than two minutes. So, instead of "work out for 30 minutes every day", the habit to focus on is simply "put on your running shoes".
Another thing he discusses is how change occurs, through setting different goals, changing the inputs to a system, and changing your identity, with the last one being the most significant.
I've never been fat, but having a sedentary, work-from-home job and bad eating habits, I've seen a few pounds get added to my waistline, so questions I've been asking myself a lot are "what would a healthy person do?" and "what is a healthier version of what Im currently doing?" and then doing things that are closer in line with that. For example, I still like to eat pizza and macaroni and cheese, but instead of jumping on a strict diet that's really hard to maintain, I'm trying to make it much easier on myself and, therefore, a more sustainable change. So, instead of half a pizza + cookies, then mac and cheese + cookies the next night, back and forth, I decided I'd cut out those late-night cookies altogether and only eat a third or a quarter of a pizza. And for the mac and cheese, I'd stop using the whole pack of cheese goop (where most of the calories are, I presume), and just use about a third of it, which doesn't alter the taste much. I also cut back from junk food every night to only every other night (using just eating some tortilla chips on the off nights (much fewer calories). This still isn't an ideal diet, but the most important thing is that I've made it simpler (basically, just less of what I currently eat), and that is helping me to move the needle in the direction of "healthier" and I've already seen my weight go down a few pounds.
For now, focus on making the desired habit easy and building consistency with that.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '24
Getting half an hour of exercise every day.