Every year on December 31st, millions of people worldwide commit to a doomed journey to regain their health and fitness. You will have all overheard the conversations ‘My New Years resolution is to do this (insert diet name)!’ or ‘This year I’m going to go running every day and not eat anymore junk food‘. Within a couple of weeks, a month if they’re lucky everything is derailed and the the promise they made themselves is long forgotten, until December 31st rolls around again. Why these resolutions ultimately fail is that people are trying to change a lifetime of habits overnight. So for those of you who have entered the New Year with a lifestyle overhaul planned, how can you ensure success?

Habits & Behaviour
Physcologists define habits (or wants) as ‘routines of behaviour that are repeated regularly and tend to occur subconsciously. Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks.’

It is widely shown that those who try and implement single new behaviours (as opposed to multiple new behaviours like in trying a new diet) achieve far higher rates of success. In the beginning putting new behaviours into practice is a conscious decision that requires both a willingness to implement them and a determination to do so in a regular basis. In time maintaining these behaviours becomes easier and easier as they become unconscious habits that require no thinking or effort, its part of your psyche. When trying a new diet plan (apart from the fact the plans are usually crazy diets that are unhealthy and unsustainable!) they require you to change practically every habit you have had ingrained in you since your childhood that relates to nutrition and eating, all in one ‘easy’ sweep. The majority of the time this is to overwhelming to handle as it requires far too much conscious effort which causes lots of stress and thus failure. Its like getting out to the middle of a lake and realising you cant swim!

How long does it take to form a new habit?
A study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology was by researchers from University College London, where they recruited 96 people who were interested in forming a new habit such as eating a piece of fruit with lunch or doing a 15 minute run each day. Participants were then asked daily how automatic their chosen behaviours felt. These questions included things like whether the behaviour was ‘hard not to do’ and could be done ‘without thinking’. When the researchers examined the different habits ‘many of the participants showed a curved relationship between practice and automaticity. On average a plateau in automaticity was reached after 66 days. In other words it had become as much of a habit as it was ever going to become. Although the average was 66 days, there was marked variation in how long habits took to form, anywhere from 18 days up to 254 days in the habits examined in this study. As you’d imagine, drinking a daily glass of water became automatic very quickly but doing 50 sit-ups before breakfast required more dedication.’

Whilst this particular study shows a big variance in length of time to form a habit, it is commonly accepted that around 1 month of consistant, daily practice can form a new habit.

New-trition
So how can we apply this to improve our nutrition? The first step to take is to form a list of any areas which you want to improve upon or new habits you wish to form, for example:
- Eat 2-3 servings of vegetables at each meal
- Have breakfast everyday
- Give up the daily evening night-cap!

Now pick one of these behaviours that you intend to focus on for the next month, however this alone will not guarantee success. You many have chosen the new habit you wish to create but do you have any idea how you are going to get there? Next up write out three things you need to do to ensure you are consistently making the behaviour happen. Here is an example, if I  chose ‘have breakfast everyday‘, here are three things I may need to do to get me there:
- Plan my weeks worth of breakfasts at the weekend
- Shop for all needed ingredients every Sunday
- Spend 1 hour on Sunday cooking my breakfasts for the week (breakfast fritata anyone?)

Tips on creating new habits

Commit to 30 days: Sounds like a paleo challenge right? Well that is because thats how long it takes to create new habits! Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic.
Make it daily: Consistency is of the upmost importance if you want to turn a new behaviour into a habit. Dont choose something you will only do once every week, it has to be done every day!
Form a trigger: A trigger is a ritual you use right before executing your habit, this does not mean some kind of rain dance or prancing around your living room half dressed with the neighbours watching. If you wanted to give up coffee you could try drinking a large glass of water with a slice of lemon, or go for a 5min walk, each time you felt the need for a caffeine kick.
Remind yourself: At the end of each week remind yourself of what your trying to achieve. Place reminders to execute your habit each day or you might miss a few days. Everytime you miss out on executing your behaviour you’re failing on creating a new habit.
Swish: This technique is used by many physiologists. Visualize yourself performing the bad habit, then visualize yourself pushing aside the bad habit and performing your new behaviour. Finally, end that sequence with an image of yourself in a highly positive state.

Finally, don’t let a missed event or set-back completely derail what you’re working towards. If you can make the 30 days with a 100% record that’s brilliant. If you slip up a couple of times its not the end of the world, just get back on track at the next opportunity. Of course implementing new habits does not have to be nutrition based, if you have one area of your life you want to change for the better then do it. Make a habit and get to it!…If you made one new habit each month for the next year you would end up changing your life, your health and your fitness in 12 different ways! Just remember to take them one at a time…Each new habit is a stepping stone, don’t try and clear the lake in one go!

Workout of the day
In 20mins establish 3RM in Deadlift