26. The Truth About Habits And Willpower

What are your habits?

It’s possible that your routine is composed of habits that are either good or bad for your health. 

In this episode, I'll be talking about the truth about habits and willpower that will help you realize how developing the right habits is essential for your health, and how battling with willpower drains you mentally and physically.

Here’s a sneak peek of what’s in this episode:

• [[2:49] Habits are practices that you engage in regularly.
• [3:17] Habits eliminate the need for willpower and self-control. 
• [3:29] It does take self-control to establish that habit, but once that habit is in place, you’re good to go.
• [3:43] Habits make change easier by freeing you from decision making and exerting self-control.
• [4:12] You are what you repeatedly do, whether these things hurt you or help you.
• [4:20] With some effort and simple mind shifts, you can develop the right habits to achieve anything that you want.
• [4:33] You need to understand how habits are formed. So, you need to understand the habit loop and how to make it work for you.
• [5:00] In The Power of Habit, Duhigg calls the habit-forming process the habit loop, and it consists of three things. Number one, the trigger, which triggers the habit and tells your brain it’s time to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Number two, the routine, which is the behavior itself or the action that you take. Number three, the reward, which is the benefit you gain from the behavior and the thing that makes you want to repeat the habit.
• [5:35] Most people obsess about breaking bad habits when the focus should be on replacing bad habits.
• [6:21] Forget about the silver bullet.
• [6:31] The silver bullet is consistency. 
• [6:40] Small things done consistently every day over time will help you to achieve your goal.
• [7:05] It was when I broke down my weight loss goal into small daily actions that the weight started to fall off.
• [7:28] We get so caught up in quick results, not realizing that the process, routines, and habits towards achieving these goals are more important.
• [8:28] There are going to be days where you veer off course when it comes to losing weight or eating healthier, but if you develop a good foundation with habits, it will make it a whole lot easier to course correct.
• [9:05] Habits help you to overcome a lack of motivation and willpower.
• [9:23] Willpower isn’t just a skill; it’s a muscle.
• [10:16] There’s growing research that shows that repeatedly resisting temptation takes a mental beating.
• [10:45] Constantly drawing on willpower to resist your favorite treats has been proven to drain your self-control when faced with future similar situations. 
• [11:24] Your environment is stronger than your willpower.
• [12:29] I replaced my bad habit instead of trying to completely break it.
• [12:47] Environment or your location is the most explosive trigger of mindless habits.
• [13:07] To be successful at replacing your bad eating habits, you first need to minimize the steps required to replace that habit.
• [13:34] Having health-promoting ingredients in a well-organized kitchen will remove willpower from the equation and take the stress out of staying in track with achieving your health as well as your weight loss goals.

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