Day 4

Week 0 – Day 4

You made it to Day 4! Congratulations! If no one has told you they are proud of you, let me be the first to say it! I’m so proud of the effort you are putting into yourself, and we haven’t even started the 45 days! Today’s topic is perhaps the most important one to address: habit formation!!!

A habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. A usual way of behaving. Something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way.”

This is our ultimate goal. We want to automate our health and wellness. Think about the definition above: “A settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” Remember, the goal is consistency. We are done with the up-and-down inconsistent diet and exercise plans that don’t work. We need to implement something that will work long-term and radically change our lifestyle for the better. Once we have finally implemented this and get to the point where this habit is hard to give up, this is where we will see change and feel different. Easier said than done, right?! Maybe not.

We have been told for so long that it’s hard to implement a new healthy lifestyle. We are done telling ourselves this. While it requires work to change your life, there are steps and measures we can take to implement new habits into our life that make them stick. Again, I will hat tip James Clear’s *Atomic Habits* for the following. Let’s break down the science of how habits work.

Habit formation proceeds in four simple steps:

1. Cue – Triggers in your brain to initiate a behavior that predicts a reward.

2. Craving – The motivational force of the habit.

3. Response – The action or thought that is performed or occurs.

4. Reward – The end goal of the habit.

The cue occurs first and is where our brain processes our surroundings to predict a reward. It’s almost as if our brain is running in the background and looking for rewards. This leads to the second step, the craving.

The craving is where we have some form of strong desire or motivation that makes us act. We don’t crave the habit itself but the reward it delivers, e.g., you don’t crave smoking a cigarette but the relief you feel afterward. This obviously varies from person to person, and the intensity and draw we feel towards this craving are also different. However, it has to be learned. You will not crave a cigarette if you have never smoked.

The third step is the response. This is simply you taking action to perform the habit. If the motivation is high or the response is easy, you are more likely to perform the response.

The final step is the reward after the action is performed. This is the delivery and end goal, the satisfying of the craving.

To summarize, the cue notices the potential reward, the craving is the motivation to get the reward, the response is the action to obtain the reward. We want the reward because it satisfies or teaches us something. This cycle creates the habit loop and allows us to automate them if implemented properly.

We can further split our habit loop into two categories: the problem phase and the solution phase. The first two steps are the problem phase, which includes the cue and the craving. This is an alert to your body that something needs to change. Naturally, this leads to the solution phase where we implement this change with the response and reward.

Breaking everything down like this allows us to understand why we perform certain behaviors. We want to solve a problem. We need to now make sure that the problem is a healthy one!

Implementing New Habits

If the behavior is not sufficient in one of the stages, it won’t become a habit. For example, if we eliminate the cue, the habit won’t start. Reduce the craving, and it will likely remove the motivation to act. So how do we incorporate and make it easier to implement healthy habits into the day? We follow the steps below!

Cue: MAKE IT OBVIOUS!

Craving: Make it attractive.

Response: Make it easy.

Reward: Make it satisfying.

Making it obvious!

To make something obvious, we need to set ourselves up for success. When it comes to fitness, this could mean setting our workout clothes and shoes out the night before so we are ready to go! For nutrition, it could be putting out a bowl of fruit on the counter so you walk by it more frequently. We need to work on steps and measures to make it easier to incorporate healthy habits.

Make it attractive!

The next step is to make it attractive. For our bowl of fruit example, this wouldn’t work if it’s fruit that you don’t like. You need to make this something that is appealing to you! This is critical! For our fitness example, you can create your favorite playlist but make a deal that you can only listen when you work out.

Make it easy!

This is perhaps the most important lesson to learn here. As you will learn during the program, we start out simple and get progressively harder as we go. Life-altering change will occur over an extended period with consistent effort. No one gets in shape by doing six hours of workouts and then nothing for a month. To make it easy, start with a small change. For our fitness example, start with a small amount of time. Even five minutes. Something is better than nothing. We need to start somewhere and continue to show up.

Make it satisfying!

For our last step, we need to reward ourselves afterward but do it in a healthy manner. We don’t want to reward ourselves with another bad habit. For example, we don’t want to exercise and then reward ourselves with a cupcake. We won’t get anywhere. For the exercise example, once we are done, we can reward ourselves with a healthy smoothie or some time watching our favorite TV show with some relaxation time. As long as the reward doesn’t move us in the opposite direction and we look forward to it, it will help the habit stick.

Below are examples of a habit for each of our three pillars.

I hope you are still with me! Today is crucial to understand. Take some time to absorb all this information and reflect on each step and aspect of a habit.

Homework: Write out all your positive habits. Over the next few days and the remainder of this week, list all your positive habits. Be thorough and specific, including your morning routine, nighttime routine, and any daily food or drink habits, like coffee. Also, include any exercise routines.

Next, try to break some of these habits down into the four stages (Cue, Craving, Response, Reward). This exercise will help you understand the motivations behind performing some of your routine behaviors. What do you notice?

Tomorrow, we will discuss the bad habits that fill our day and how to gradually eliminate them, transforming them into positive habits.

For today, fantastic job! I’m so excited for the days and weeks ahead. Keep moving forward, keep showing up! I’ll talk to you tomorrow!

Dr. Brock Brady, PhD