Week 3- Slow and Steady
Most of us are creatures of habit and don’t like change. At the same time, we are part of a culture that is used to immediate satisfaction or results. If we want to know something, Google or Siri provide an answer in less than one-second. If we want food, we speak an order into a box and a few minutes later, a hot meal is in our hands. “Good things take time,” is no longer the motto in this modern world.
Even so, no matter how fast our world spins, there are still things that we have to wait for. Here’s a short list:
It takes 40 weeks for two cells to create a human.
It takes 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain you are full.
It takes 8-10 introductions to a new food before a child decides if they like it or not.
Christmas.
Our world has made us expect instant results, and we get frustrated when we don't immediately accomplish our goals after we take steps to make a change. Many fad diets claim, “drop 10 lbs in the first week!” but this isn’t a sustainable approach. Healthy living is not a diet. It’s not something we do for a month or two to get to where we want to be, and then go back to the way we were doing things. The journey we’re on is lifelong, so have patience.
Question: When is the last time you had to wait for something and why was the wait worth it?
Healthy weight loss
According to the Center for Disease Control, it’s natural for anyone trying to lose weight to want to lose it quickly. However, evidence shows that people who lose weight gradually (about 1 to 2 pounds per week) are more successful at keeping the weight off. Once you’ve achieved a healthy weight, you are more likely to be successful at keeping the weight off over the long term if you focus on healthful eating and physical activity.
Challenge: Don’t step on a scale this week. Rather, ask yourself how you feel. Also, do something that makes you have to wait (i.e. chose the less convenient option).
Once again, knowing that not all in the challenge are focused on weight loss, we look at changing, quitting, or starting new habits. Just like sustainable weight loss, changing our behaviors takes time too.
How long it takes to break a habit or to start a new habit? It depends.
According to a piece from Harvard Health, experts agree that sustainable change is most likely when it's self-motivated and rooted in positive thinking.
Research on behavior change has produced several models that help outline success and failure and explain why making healthy changes can take so long. The evidence-based behavior change model in health settings is called the Transtheoretical Model (TTM). TTM assumes that at any given time, a person is in one of five stages of change: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, or Maintenance.
Precontemplation- In this stage, you aren't even thinking about making a change. You should be passed this stage, considering you are participating in a challenge to make behavior changes.
Contemplation- Some of you may be here. You know you want or need to make a change, but aren’t sure about the specifics: when you want to make the change, how you want to make the change, or what your end goal is.
Preparation- Here we know what we want to do and how and when we are going to do it, and we’re taking all of the necessary steps to put our goal into action. This may include taking stock of something in our day-to-day life that we need to cut out or avoid in order to make room for whatever we're trying to add.
Action- This is it. We are quitting smoking, we are walking before work, or we are skipping the ice cream after dinner.
Maintenance- Once our goal is accomplished, the work isn’t over. We have to keep on consciously making the decision to make the healthy choice. Hopefully, one day it will become automatic; the action is just part of our lives, and we don’t even have to think about doing it.
It’s important to note that although there are five stages of change, it’s not necessarily a step-by-step process. Research has shown that you will rarely progress through the stages of change in a straightforward, linear way. Relapse and starting over are common. Thankfully, though, you usually don't go back to square one. The spiral model illustrates this concept.
Relapse is common, maybe even unavoidable. However, this doesn’t have to be a negative thing. You learn something about yourself each time you relapse. Maybe the goal you made was too much to tackle at once, or it wasn’t really a priority. When you go to make your next goal or revisit your current goal, you can use what you learned, and make the necessary adjustments.
Christine Whelan is public sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert with AARP’s Life Reimagined Institute who studies happiness, human ecology and habits. Below are her top 10 strategies for behavior change. I encourage you to read the full interview with her from The Washington Post.
Start small. Choose one thing
Make it SMART, specific and measurable
Figure out what you’ll be adding or subtracting to make room for it
Ask why. Make sure it’s really what YOU want, not what you feel you should
Go public, or make a commitment strategy
Get help from your community. Don’t try to do it alone
Automate
Take Small Steps
Celebrate those steps to boost self-efficacy
Stick with it, the longer the better
