Our brains are so miraculous that it’s easy to forget they have limitations. After all, our brains give rise to our minds – our aware and self-aware, conscious subjective experience – and to our selves – our internal, stable, and consistent point of view. Our brains allow us to discriminate between hundreds of wavelengths of light, which we perceive as different colors; and thousands of varying air pressure waves, which we perceive as different pitches and timbres of sound. We can do calculus and read minds by the expression on a friend’s face.

As wonderful as they are, our brains make it easy to forget that they have dramatic limitations. Most obviously, they can only process incoming stimuli for about two-thirds to three-quarters of the time. The rest of the time, we’re sleeping. And if we don’t sleep, we quickly perform worse, become irritable, eventually psychotic, and then die.

Our brain’s limitations are wide-ranging, even when awake. So, mother nature, through evolution, has led to all kinds of shortcuts our brains take, while compromising our survival abilities as little as possible. We have limited decision-making abilities; that’s why Steve Jobs always wore the same outfit, so he didn’t waste his limited daily allotment of decision-making capacity on something of little importance to him. These limits also arise within the functions of attention, processing new information, engaging in purposeful action, and so forth.

One trick our brains developed to conserve limited resources is the use of habits. A habit is defined as an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary through repetition. Habits are never completely erased, however, and even after years of not engaging in a habitual behavior, a habit can come back to life under the right circumstances. Despite this, we can develop new habits that will tend to keep old habits at bay.

I’ll use dieting as an example of a health behavior you may be engaging in. When you first change your diet, you remain ever vigilant. You may count calories, deny yourself snacks, weigh yourself daily, remain hungry, and drastically change what and when you eat.

This is for the good, but it’s important to make these behavioral changes in a way that maximizes the probability that you will establish new habits. You want to convert the effortful, fully aware, and vigilant approach to eating with a habitual involuntary approach that meets your goals.

Habits can develop more quickly and resist disruption if they are consistently applied. You can optimize this consistency by developing rules and routines. When you add all your techniques together you have developed your own weight loss system. Here are some tips to do so effectively.

  • Develop eating rules: an easy rule to make is to decide that you will drink only calorie-free beverages. Now, you can decide on a different rule, one with some built-in exceptions, such as allowing yourself one coffee a day with cream and sugar, the way you enjoy it most.
  • Develop new routines: this approach entails making changes in your life that go beyond changing an eating rule. For example, most people have a habit of eating in certain situations or times of day. For me, there are two times of day during which I eat mindlessly – that is, I eat not because I’m hungry but rather because I have an urge to eat – when I arrive home from work and right before bed. To break the connection, for example, of stepping into the house after work and eating right away, I’ve had to change my routine. Now, I come in, go upstairs, change my clothes, wash my face, and do some push-ups. The physical activity suppresses my eating urge.
  • Step-wise approach: some people find that making a dramatic change in every aspect of their eating habits all at once is the way that works for them. The drastic change approach often works only as long as the person remains vigilant and fights their urges on an almost full-time basis. If you’ve ever tried this drastic change approach and failed soon enough, don’t blame yourself: it’s an approach that fails for most people. An approach that has a higher chance of being sustainable, is through one change at a time: establish a circumscribed healthier new routine and avoid introducing another one until the first one becomes habitual.

OK. Now it’s your turn. Tell me what you do that works when you are establishing healthy habits.

Until next time,

Dr. Jack

LanguageBrief

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.” ― Erasmus

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” ― Mark Twain

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” ― Jim Ryun

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” ― Will Durant