Laurann O'Reilly: Top tips for breaking and building new habits

Many of us have built up the good and bad habits over the years, with some of them being a little harder to snap out of.

As Socrates once said “the secret of change is not to focus your energy on the fighting of the old but the building of the new”.

Here nutritionist Laurann O’Reilly and owner of Nutrition By Laurann guides us through everything we need to know about habits, including what they are, how they are created, how to break old habits that don’t serve us and create new healthy habits which benefit our overall health.

1) What Is A Habit?: The Cambridge dictionary defines a habit as “something that you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing that you are doing it”.

2) The Advantages of Habits: When behaviours become automatic, it gives us an advantage, because the brain “does not have to use conscious thought to perform the activity.

This frees up our brains to focus on different things”.

Psychologist Russell Poldrack describes habits as “an adaptive feature of how the brain works.” So, if our habit is beneficial to our health, such as going to bed on time or brushing our teeth twice a day then this is definitely an advantage.

3) The Disadvantages of Habits: Unfortunately, it’s not just the good habits that we learn and of course nobody is perfect. These include our driving behaviours such as not using our mirrors in the car as well as negative health behaviours such as smoking, reaching for sugar or convenience foods when we’re stressed or feeling low and overuse of technology such as our phones and television to name a few.

4) What Makes A Bad Habit?: Whilst the brain is complex and habits can very easily become ingrained, by understanding how they are made this in turn can help us figure out how to break them.

- The Three R’s: There are a few theories around how habits develop, the concept of the 3 Rs is one of the main ones:
Reminder.

This is a trigger, or cue, that could be a conscious behaviour, such as filling your car with fuel at a petrol station, or a feeling, such as stress or boredom.

Routine. This is the behaviour associated with the trigger. For example, paying for the fuel cues you to buy a chocolate bar, whilst feeling nervous triggers biting your nails.

Doing something over and over can make the behaviour routine. Each time you repeat this behaviour pattern it becomes hard wired in our brain until it eventually becomes automatic, in turn turning into a habit

Reward. The reward associated with a behaviour also helps make a habit stick. If you do something that causes enjoyment or relieves stress, this can prompt your brain to release a reward or ‘feel good’ chemical called dopamine, making you want to do it again.

So “if you do something over and over and releasing dopamine, that strengthens the habit even more”, making the pleasure-based habits so much harder to break (Dr Russell Poldrack, neurobiologist).

5) How Long Does It Take To Break A Habit?: The jury is very much out on this one!
- The 21 Day Theory: In Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book ‘Psycho-Cybernetics’ he theorises that it takes 21 days to break a habit. Purely through Dr. Maltz’s personal observation he found that “it requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to gel”, however this is yet to be proven.

- The Research: A study carried out by University College London found that the average amount of time it takes for a habit to stick is 66 days, but that this can range from anywhere in between 18 to 254 days.

- Other Factors: Everyone is different, so how long it takes you to break the habit can depend on 1) how long you’ve had the habit 2) the emotional, physical, or social needs the habit fulfils: The reason why it can be so hard to break a bad habit, is because there are parts of your brain that associate your cravings with the bad habits, 3) whether you have support or help breaking the habit 4) the physical or emotional reward the habit provides.

6) How To Break A Habit/Establish Healthy Habits:

- Create Awareness: In many cases we often don’t realise when we are in the act of the particular habit as we are subconsciously doing it. For this reason it’s important to bring awareness to it.

Tip: It may help to keep a diary of the following to help create awareness about the habit itself and what led to it. This may help you to begin to take control of your actions and make better decisions over the long term, 1) When does your bad habit actually happen? 2) How many times do you do it each day? 3) How do you feel? 4) Where are you?

- Set Realistic Goals: We all know that Rome wasn’t built in day, and we can often put pressure on ourselves. For example, if your goal is to lose weight, setting yourself a goal of cutting sugar (such as chocolate, biscuits, sweets and fizzy drinks) from your diet is great place to start.

Or if you wish to quit smoking, some are happy to go ‘cold turkey’ but you may need the assistance of nicotine replacement therapy to begin your journey and eventually wean off them. Tip: For assistance with quitting smoking, the HSE have a great online resource https://www2.hse.ie/quit-smoking/

- Find Your Triggers or Cues: According to psychologist Elliot Berkman “cues are the context where you tend to engage in the behaviour” for example “if you’re a smoker, the cue might be work breaks” whilst other food related examples include the watching the TV and eating biscuits or getting petrol for your car and buying a chocolate bar. Remember, your goal is to become conscious of when you are being triggered.

Brian Gorman, Life Coach explains how this “allows you to decide each time: Do you want to respond as you have in the past, or do you want to offer a different response? The new response is your new habit”

- Find Your Stress Reduction Strategies: When we’re stressed we often reach for something to make us feel good, for some this may be healthy such as going for a brisk walk or swim, whilst for others it could be damaging behaviours such as sugar or cigarettes. This goes back to the Three R’s (reward).

Tip: Why not find your own healthy stress reduction strategy for example exercise, meditation, having a nap, reading a book, drawing, painting or taking a bath.

- Buddy Up: If you have a friend who is going through the same journey, it can help to enjoy your progress and victories together. Having someone else there going through the same thing also provides non-judgemental accountability.

- Change Your Environment: According to behavioural psychologist Dr. James Clear “our environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour”. Your environment can make your bad habit easier and good habits harder and visa vera.

For example, this could be replacing high sugar processed foods with pre-prepared and accessible healthy snacks whether at home, on the road or at work.

- Remove Temptation: If you are genuinely looking to make the change such as reducing sugar for instance, then removing the temptation is the best way. Remember you are in control of your environment and if it’s not there it helps to strengthen your self-control.

Psychologist Dr. Roy Baumeister describes how “self-control like a muscle, once you’ve exerted some self-control, it can get tired” but equally “any regular act of self-control will gradually exercise your ‘muscle’ and make you stronger”. So eventually it may come to a stage where the strength of temptation is a little less due to well-practised self-control.

- Swap Habits: Research has shown that replacing unwanted behaviours with other activities is an effective way to break a bad habit. Psychologist Dr Timothy Pychyl explains how “breaking a habit really means establishing a new habit, a new pre-potent response” The new habits will create their own neural networks and muscle memory over time, replacing the old ones.

Examples: These include 1) swapping the phone or social media for a book before going to bed or 2) If you usually drive or take the bus to work why not walk or cycle instead, where it’s practical and safe to do so of course.

- Remove/Reduce Technology: If your habit is too much screen time, which so many of us are guilty of, then it may be time to make the conscious effort to reduce your exposure to it. Tip: Try a ‘technological sundown’, by putting down the phone, laptop, iPad at a certain time in the evening and perhaps go for a bath or pick up a book instead.

- Up The Sleep: We all know that we need enough sleep to function and I always say ‘food is our fuel and sleep is our battery’. However when we haven’t had enough sleep we can get into the habit of using stimulants such as caffeine or sugar to keep us awake, leaving us crashing and craving.

Tip: Where possible, aim for a minimum of 7-9 hours of sleep per night.

- Set Reminders or Schedule it: Sometimes we need a reminder or trigger for our new habits, for example a reminder to drink more water or scheduling in that walk or workout.

- Repeat, Repeat: “Since habits take practice and repetition to form, the same is true when it comes to breaking them” says Elliot Berkman, director of the University of Oregon’s Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab.

Whilst consistency is key to altering habits, know that it's not a straight process, you may revert to old habits and have to start the process over again and that’s okay.

- Remember The End Goal: Many of us know that certain habits such as smoking or eating lots of sugar aren’t good for our health, but this may not be quite enough to inspire us to quit. If we apply our personal reasons and long term benefits to our behaviour change such as having more energy, being healthier, being able to breathe better and self-confidence this can help to motivate us to achieve our habit change goals.

- Believe In Yourself: As Theodore Roosevelt said, “believe that you can and your halfway there”, you really are stronger than you think. Try not to give up if you don’t succeed the first time. Remember people who end up breaking bad habits try and fail multiple times before they make it work so you’ve got this!

- Get Support: Whether you’re looking to change some habits, big or small be sure to ask you friends, family and co-workers to support your efforts to change. You can also contact local support groups or request information from your pharmacist or GP.

For further information contact Laurann at info@nutritionbylaurann.ie or see nutritionbylaurann.ie

Laurann O’Reilly is a qualified and experienced Nutritionist with a BSc. Degree in Human Nutrition from University of Nottingham and a Master’s in Public Health Nutrition from University College Dublin.