Replacing unhealthy habits with healthy habits seems incredibly difficult for the majority of us. After all, just knowing what to do isn’t enough to actually change much.
Being able to memorize carb grams, or calorie tables, or the latest exercise routine doesn’t often change what we do when it’s time for a hurried breakfast or a got-home-late-from-work dinner or workout.
Those particulars have more to do with what’s and who’s around us — meaning our environment.
For most of us, changing how we think and feel can seem overwhelming complexed. However, by understanding that real change has more to do with reshaping our environment than trying to white-knuckle willpower gives us the best chance at permanently changing our unhealthy habits.
Research has shown that most of our decisions are automatic, based on patterns and brain shortcuts
Instead of slowly deciding, step by step, our brains quickly process a handful of grab-n-go inputs and pick from a recognizable menu of options. We ignore stuff we don’t like or want to see, and we’re easily compelled by shiny distractions.
Sound familiar?
Basically, our brains like the thinking version of fast, easy — go to the place that’s most convenient, like speed through the drive-thru, pick the favorite combo from the menu, slam the decision, move on to the next choice.
So we don’t actually think much when we think we’re thinking.
We follow patterns, physical cues that bubble beneath our awareness, and what’s around us.
In essence, what this means is our environment powerfully shapes our decisions, more than we realize.
But why does everything seem so hard all the time? Look, there’s no need to white-knuckle the willpower. You can actually make change much easier by simply reshaping your environment.
In general, when it comes to engineering new healthy habits there are two really important factors that must be in place in order to reshape your environment:
- Make healthy behaviors convenient.
- Make other behaviors less convenient.
Just changing what’s around you in small ways, you can make big changes without even thinking about them.
Here are 9 awesome tips to help YOU reshape your environment – Hard Work and Willpower not required
1. Keep trigger foods like ice cream, cookies, and chocolates out of the house
Make “laziness” work in your favor by making it harder and more inconvenient to reach for unhealthy, low nutrient based, easy-to-overeat foods.
If you want sweets, you have to go get them. At night, when you’re snuggled into your sofa binge-watching your favorite TV show, it’s going to be a lot harder to motivate yourself to get up and go to the grocery store.
Tip: Keep a colorful assortment of fresh fruits around for dessert instead.
2. Plan your meals in advance
Don’t make fresh decisions every day, or keep meal choices totally open-ended all the time.
Instead, stay ahead of the curve ball by making decisions in advance, working from a template.
Tip: Every few days, sketch out the meals you’ll eat for the next few days. Check the list daily so you know:
- What to buy at the grocery store
- What to pre-prep
- What meal you’ll eat at what time (or when you’re really hungry).
3. Keep chopped, ready-to-eat vegetables in the fridge
Put them front-and-center so you see them and can get to them easily.
Tip: To make your favorite salad veggies even easier, store them “restaurant style”. Clean and sterilize one of your refrigerator’s crispers, dump chopped veggies (loose) into it, and cover them with a damp paper towel and a couple of ice cubes.
4. Don’t go to the grocery store hungry
Treat grocery shopping like a strategic surgical operation: Have a plan (like your meal list from Tip 2). Get in and get out efficiently. (See if you can make a game of it.)
Tip: Focus on the perimeter — the produce, meat, and dairy sections. Don’t even go down the processed food aisles, so you won’t be tempted.
5. Keep shake-ready ingredients in the freezer
Frozen or fresh veggies and fruit can be dumped straight into the blender and will make your protein or meal replacement shakes extra thick and tasty.
Tip: Are there any greens in your fridge “on their way out”? Stick them in a gallon bag in your freezer. Once frozen, crush them to make flakes. This reduces the space they take up and makes them simple to add to shakes.
6. Keep workout gear in plain sight
Have a kettlebell, resistance bands, a dumbbell or two, a pull-up bar, and/or a suspension trainer in your home or office so you’re more tempted to use them.
Tip: Do “trigger training”: Leave the gear in various places throughout your house, and whenever you pass one of them, do a few reps. Over the day this adds up quickly without eating up too much time or leaving you wiped out.
7. Schedule workouts like you schedule meetings
Put them on your calendar and treat them like any other appointment.
Tip: Put everything from workouts, to laundry, to work meetings, to rest and recovery on your calendar so that very few things are “unexpected.” Most of our routines are pretty predictable.
8. Combine walking and working
Moving while you brainstorm or take a work call helps you focus and avoid the I-sat-at-a-desk-all-day soreness.
Tip: Get a used treadmill for a couple hundred bucks off Craigslist and fit it with a SurfShelf for your laptop. Now you can write, edit, fire off emails…all while you walk.
9. Turn family and friends into coaches
To create a supportive environment you need to be upfront with your friends and family that you’re trying to eat better and get fit. They don’t have to participate, but ask them to help. That takes the pressure off them to do what you’re doing, and most people, especially kids, like helping in some way.
Tip: Involve your family in goal-related activities, such as menu planning, meal prep, and rep counting. This reduces resistance by giving them ownership, meaning you won’t feel you’re the “other”.
