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How Tiny Habits Could Radically Alter Your Behavior And Guarantee Your Success At Keto
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Health disclaimer: The content contained in this post is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice. Health related advice should always be sought from a licensed medical practitioner.
Introduction
You’re probably familiar with the saying “go big or go home”. This stupid notion is a sure fire way to set yourself up for failure and self loathing when things don’t work out as planned. But worst of all, it’s a completely unnecessary approach to take.
There’s a far simpler, much more gentle approach: Use habits that are too small to fail.
In this short article, I’ll give a brief outline of how to start a habit fast (no need to wait 21 days) and give you a few additional examples of habits you might want to try.
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How To Start A Habit
Before we get started, I’d like to address a common myth about habit formation. The myth is that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. Nonsense.
In fact, if done the right way, a new habit can be formed almost immediately. This was a key insight of BJ Fogg, a Stanford based researcher of behavioral science.
All you need is a Cue (an action you already perform throughout the day) a routine (the new behavior) and a reward (a way of celebrating).
Cue
The cue is what “triggers” the habit. It can be anything from an alert on your phone, another person reminding you to perform the habit or an action you already do during the day.
The last one, the action based cue, is what we’ll be using to create new habits. This is because it is by far the most reliable. For example, you probably make a cup of coffee or some other hot beverage a number of times a day.
Using this example, you might construct a habit like the following: “After I pour a cup of Coffee/hot beverage, I will do two pushups”.
Of course, you can use any action you like as the cue and any behavior of your choice for the habit. But the routine, which would be the pushups in the above example, should be performed after the cue, not before.
Routine
The routine is the actual behavior you wish you do. Using the above example again, it’s the pushups you would perform after pouring your hot beverage. BJ Fogg recommends that the routine take no longer than 30 seconds to perform.
It’s important to note that you are not limited to just performing the tiny habit. The idea of a tiny habit is get some momentum behind you so that, ideally, you do more than just the habit — after the two pushups, you could decide to do twenty or more if you felt like it.
But if you decide not to go no further than just the tiny habit, that’s ok.
The most important thing is that you get the new behavior wired in. In time, hopefully, the rest should take care of itself.
Reward
The reward is the celebration you do immediately after performing your routine. For example, after doing the two pushups you might punch the air, or silently say to yourself, “yes, I’ve got this”.
The positive emotion helps wire in the new behavior faster. This step should not be skipped.
And whatever method of celebrating you choose, it’s very important that it’s performed immediately after the routine. For this reason, going to watch a movie, for example, would not be a suitable reward.
Putting It All Together
So now you have a good overview of how to create a tiny habit, you probably have a goal in mind that you would like to create a habit for.
Say, for example, you wanted to read more. To help you achieve this, you could create a habit that goes as follows: “After I finish watching my favorite TV show, I will pick up a book and open it”.
After you complete the routine of opening the book, you would celebrate in a way that best suits you. Simply repeating a short positive phrase silently to yourself, such as “I’ve got this”, is good enough for most people. If you would rather punch the air, feel free to do so. Just make sure no one is standing near you.
And as mentioned earlier, you don’t have to limit yourself to just opening the book. Hopefully you’ll read a few pages, or maybe even a few chapters if you’re feeling up to it.
Talk By BJ Fogg
In this video, BJ Fogg, the creator of the Tiny habit concept, summarizes his work and speaks about the potential for tiny habits to create big changes in people’s lives.
Examples Of Habits To Help You Succeed With Keto
In addition to the habit suggested in the free guide, there are a number of other habits that might help.
These are designed to help you:
- Exercise more
- Drink more water
- Prepare meals in advance
- Cope better with setbacks
Exercise More
Although not strictly part of a diet, physical activity can’t go without a mention.
If you would like to exercise more, it’s as easy as putting on your workout clothes immediately after you arise in the morning. If you don’t like the idea of working out first thing, then you could opt to put on your workout clothes after you open the door when arriving home from work — or any other time of the day.
Whatever type of workout you choose is up to you and beyond the scope of this article. But if you can just take the first step, then you’re far more likely to do a full workout — any type of workout.
Drink More Water
If you’re not drinking enough water and would like to increase your intake, one way to do this is to simply pour a glass of water after you dish up a meal.
You could also establish the habit of drinking a glass of water with every hot beverage. The habit would go as follows: “After I pour a cup of coffee I will take out a glass and fill it with water“. Coffee is a diuretic, meaning it makes your body lose water, so this one in particular might be worth considering.
For when you go out, you could create the habit “after I pick up my keys, I will grab a bottle of water” — or use any other action that you usually do before leaving your house.
Preparing Meals In Advance
One way to make sure you stick to your diet is to prepare meals in advance. But this is often hard to get around to doing. This is where tiny habits come in.
Say you wanted to prepare your lunch for the next day. You could create the habit “after I finish dinner, I will take out all the ingredients for tomorrow’s lunch and lay them out on the kitchen counter top“.
If you were more ambitious, you might decide to prepare your meals for the entire week. Personally, I’ve never done this, but many people find that it saves time and effort during the week.
This leads me to another point.
Some habits aren’t as routine as others. in such cases, you could instead create the habit “after I do x, I will check my to-do list“.
For example, you may not be able to workout at the same time everyday, or you may not wish to work out everyday. In such a scenario, you would instead write “do workout” on your to-do list on the days you decide to workout. Both the writing in and checking of your to-do list would be the habits you would need to create.
But be aware that this may not be suitable if you’re prone to skipping the items on your to-do list.
Cope With Setbacks
We all slip up from time to time. Rather than beating ourselves up, we need to remind ourselves that it isn’t the end of the world and that we can start again where we left off.
One habit to cultivate is the repeating of an affirmation or coping statement whenever you slip up or feel frustrated with your progress. One such statement is “This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon“.
This reminds us that we shouldn’t go too hard on ourselves and that we should just get back on the saddle as soon as we can. So if you slip up, no matter how badly, and eat something you shouldn’t, just silently remind yourself, “This isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon“.
Feel free to use any affirmation that works for you.
Conclusion
So there you have it. You now have a useful toolkit to make your keto diet journey much easier.
If you want to make it even less stressful, would it not be so much easier to have everything planned out for you?