Build a Better You, One Habit at a Time                             

              

Let’s say you want to get in better shape. Of course, you’re smart, informed, and know exactly what to do. So you’ve listed the changes you need to make, pinning them to the fridge next to the vision board and inspirational photos. Here’s the only problem: You haven’t actually done anything on the list. You’re struggling with the getting started part.

Or maybe that’s not you at all.                send them workout plans, links to the best websites and apps, meal plans, and lots of encouragement.

Yet it’s always the same story. They can’t seem to follow through. What’s going on here?

After all, it’s not that difficult to eat more veggies and lean protein. Not thatimpossible to cut out the diet soda and drink more water or green tea. Not thatoverwhelming to lift weights several times a week, add some high intensity interval training, and get more sleep. That’s because it isn’t difficult. Providing you’re already doing that stuff.

What is difficult is trying to do all those things at once. Especially if the practices are brand-new and none of them are daily habits. That’s because getting fit — or learning any new skill — is a bit like juggling. If you begin by randomly throwing a dozen balls in the air, what’s going to happen?

Splat.                                                         Yet it’s always the same story. They can’t seem to follow through. What’s going on here?

After all, it’s not that difficult to eat more veggies and lean protein. Not thatimpossible to cut out the diet soda and drink more water or green tea. Not thatoverwhelming to lift weights several times a week, add some high intensity interval training, and get more sleep. That’s because it isn’t difficult. Providing you’re already doing that stuff.

What is difficult is trying to do all those things at once. Especially if the practices are brand-new and none of them are daily habits. That’s because getting fit — or learning any new skill — is a bit like juggling. If you begin by randomly throwing a dozen balls in the air, what’s going to happen?

Splat.

The solution to this problem? Start practicing with one ball. When you’ve got that one under control, add another. Get that one under control, and add another. And so on. Soon, you’ll be running off to join the circus.

One Habit at a Time

To support this analogy, bestselling author estimates that when people focus on changing a single behavior at a time, the likelihood that they’ll retain their new habit for a year or more is around 80 per cent.

But what about those who try to change two or more behaviors at once? In them, he asserts, success rates drop as low as 20 per cent.

Of course, there’s nothing new in the idea that focusing on less helps you achieve more. Experts in all walks of life have recognized it for years. As Guelph University psychology professor Ian Newby-Clark explains:

“Habits are highly ingrained behaviors. They are almost automatic. Changing one habit is hard enough. Trying to change more than one at a time is often a recipe for disaster. So, despite the occasional example to the contrary, my advice is to focus on one habit at a time.”

Here’s the only problem: In the world of fitness, we still haven’t caught on. So when people decide they want to get into shape, they feel as if they have to do everything at once. Join the gym, check. Buy some new running shoes, check. Set the alarm for 4:30am, check. Cut out all the junk food, check. Eat more broccoli, check.

They mentally prepare themselves for an all-out assault on fitness and, after a few short days or weeks… splat!

Maybe this is why so many people who lose weight put it all back on. Instead of making fitness and weight loss a long-term, sustainable practice, they made it a short-term, inconvenient project. But surely, if someone hires a fitness trainer, the trainer will help prevent this problem. Right?

Unfortunately, some fitness trainers aren’t too great at helping their clients prioritize and build from where they are. Rather, most of them focus on the top 10 percent of clients who, endowed with superhuman genetic gifts, can juggle dozens of habits right from the start.

The other 90 percent? They give up and head back home to their couches, all of them forgotten by the fitness industry.

“A high percentage of people stop exercising within six months,”* says Kris Berg, Ed.D., an exercise physiologist at the University of Nebraska. Overwhelmed by the task of trying to build new exercise and nutrition plans into their already overly busy lives, they give up.

Habits for Life

Fortunately, there’s a small segment of the fitness industry doing things differently. These fitness professionals (and their clients) realize that harnessing the power of less can be accomplished through something called “habit based coaching.” Instead of counting calories, trying to follow rigid meal plans, and trying to adopt the perfect exercise program from day one, habit based coaching starts with a simple daily practice.

Based on your starting point, that practice might be to go for a 15-minute walk every day. It might be to take fish oil and a multivitamin each day. It might be to start the day with breakfast. (Of course, these practices can be scaled up or down).

Then, every two weeks, once the previous practice has become a habit, you can add another one. Each habit builds on the last until 6 or 12 months later, you’ve been transformed. And not just physically.

By using the one habit at a time approach, you don’t just lose fat. You also internalize a new way of being and that lasts longer than willpower or discipline, which are both finite resources.

As just one example, at Precision Nutrition, we’ve put habit or practice-based coaching to work in our Lean Eating coaching program, which has been called the largest body transformation project in the world. To date, nearly 10,000 clients have lost over 200,000 pounds — one simple practice at a time.

What we’re proudest of is the fact that our clients do what we ask them to do a whopping 75 percent of the time. This high compliance rate is a testament to the effectiveness of simplifying the health and fitness process. Admittedly, at first this feels too slow to many clients. They come in expecting pain, misery, and impossible sacrifice. But none of that is necessary. In fact, this approach is untenable if you want to maintain life-long leanness, health, and fitness. And isn’t that what we all want?

Following Through

So, how can you use the principles of habit-based coaching to get in shape yourself? Or to help friends, family or clients?  Here are a few examples: