Motivation and Developing Healthy Habits

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” –Jim Rohn 

What motivates you to want to lose weight? What is your “why”?

Take a few minutes to think about this and write down all the reasons you can think of. Your reasons could include preventing the development of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers; being able to play with children or grandchildren; looking good for an upcoming event; improving your self-confidence; and/or fitting into certain clothes. It is important to figure out what specifically motivates you. Put the list somewhere where you will see it often and re-read it when you are feeling unmotivated.

While being motivated to lose weight is important for long-term weight loss success, it is impossible to be motivated all of the time. As the above quote says, motivation helps get you started, but the development of healthy habits is what will keep you going especially if your motivation starts to wane. When you have some key habits and routines in place (such as doing meal planning/grocery shopping/food prepping on a certain day(s) of the week or walking in the morning before work 5 days each week), you don’t have to rely solely on motivation to help you to continue to do these things. Habits are behaviors we do regularly and automatically without much conscious thought or effort. Do you have to think about brushing your teeth or taking a shower? I would wager you don’t.

The Basic Principles of the Health Plus program give you a roadmap to follow so that you can develop some new healthier habits such as eating a lot of fiber, eating frequently throughout the day, and focusing on eating more of the “Free Foods”. Developing these habits can help you be more successful with long- term weight loss. According to experts, it takes about 3 weeks of practice and repetition to develop a new habit. Some tips to make it easier to develop new habits include:

• Not making exceptions to your new habit pattern during the first few weeks you are working on it. Don’t make excuses or rationalize why you aren’t going to perform the new behavior. 
• Tell other people about your new habit that you are developing so they can encourage you.
• Visualize yourself performing the desired behavior. This will help the new behavior be accepted by your unconscious mind and help it to become automatic more quickly.
• Persist in practicing the new behavior until it becomes so automatic and easy that it feels uncomfortable when you don’t do it.

Read more about developing new healthy habits in this blog post.