Swapping unhealthy habits for healthy ones can be hard—really hard. Fortunately, you can take advantage of several science-backed strategies to make your habit-changing journey a little less arduous and painful.
Tapping into these self-empowering tools can propel you toward your health goals. They can help guide you and keep your motivation strong. This approach can lead to the kind of lasting habit changes needed for a longer, healthier, and more vibrant life.
Keep reading to learn more about these strategies and how an action plan can help you achieve the changes you want to make—whether that’s getting more active, eating a healthier diet, losing weight, quitting tobacco/nicotine products, or other goals.
1. Make sure you’re ready for a habit change
Before attempting to change any habit, it’s critical to make sure you’re ready to do so. Taking time for self-reflection can help you decide if you have the commitment and motivation to tackle a health goal right now.
If you’ve been thinking about making a change but don’t feel a strong urge to take the first step, this may not be the best time to move forward. You may need to build your resolve first.
If, on the other hand, you find that you’re frequently thinking about a habit you want to change—along with all the reasons why you’ll benefit from changing it—you might be ready.
One tool to help boost your readiness factor? Make a pro/con list. When you can pinpoint and focus on the perks you’ll get from changing a habit, you’ll build your resolve to do so. This resolve is what will help you move onto the next stage of change, cultivating your motivation.
Learn about the 5 stages of change and how they can help you adopt healthy habits.
2. Cultivate your motivation
Finding enough motivation to get started and keep going is key to forming any lasting, healthy habit. Research suggests that there are 2 basic kinds of motivation that can help you reach your goal: intrinsic and extrinsic.
- Intrinsic motivation comes from within. It might be the big boost in mood you feel both during and after your daily workout. Or it might be that inner sense of joy and accomplishment you feel when you lose extra weight.
- Extrinsic motivation comes from outside yourself. It may be the praise you get from your doctor for lower blood pressure thanks to those daily workouts. In other cases, it could be the kudos you get from friends and loved ones after shedding those extra pounds.
While outside motives are also important, intrinsic motivation is what helps you sustain your efforts and moves you closer to your health goal.
Although some findings suggest that intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic motivation, other research says it’s best to use both.
Just keep in mind that those external rewards can take some time to achieve. So, in the meantime, focus on here-and-now rewards. Revel in the success of completing a tough workout. Enjoy the fun of playing basketball with friends. Notice how delicious your morning bowl of fruit is.
3. Create an action plan
Once you’re ready to embark on your journey of change, it’s best to create a well-thought-out action plan.
The first critical step to crafting your action plan is to gather information about changing the habit you want to tackle. Say you want to quit smoking/vaping. You could start by:
- Talking with your doctor about tools to help you quit
- Noticing your cues or triggers for smoking
- Doing some online research on tips for changing your tobacco habit
- Reading self-help books
- Brainstorming actions you can take to cope with nicotine cravings
- Working with a health coach or counselor
- Joining a support group
Once you’ve gathered your information, you’ll want to use it to write out a list of practical steps you’ll need to take to achieve your goal. These steps should be small actions that you can take one at a time. Make sure to celebrate each tiny step you take in your journey.
Learn what a SMART goal is and how it provides a built-in formula for success.
4. Use this 3-step scientific formula to change any habit
Like all humans, you’re most likely a creature of habit. You find a drive-through you like or a social media platform to fill your time, and you tend to return to it. The more you do, the more likely it is to become an ingrained habit.
Once a habit starts to stick, it takes less thought and effort to keep it up. In time, you might even find you engage in it without really thinking about it. That’s great with habits like a healthy meal plan or no-candy rule, which may have been hard-earned and worth keeping.
On the other hand, for those habits you’d like to reshape—or maybe ditch altogether—the task can feel frustrating and, at times, disheartening. Give up that nightly bowl of ice cream, or cut your TV time in half? Sure, those kinds of habits tend to stick, too—but changing them can be a much taller order.
There’s good news, though. Experts who study the science of habits have found that forming any habit—the good, the bad, or the neutral—is the result of the same few steps. The idea is simple, but it packs an empowering punch. The series of steps that helped you form a bad habit can also help you unform the habit. Likewise, those same steps can help you form an altogether new, healthy habit.
The research behind the science of habits suggests that it boils down to 3 basic steps. Author and journalist Charles Duhigg helps untangle these findings in his book, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.”
Duhigg explains that all habits are formed and ingrained due to the repetition of this 3-step process. Here’s an example:
- Cue: Your body signals you that you’re hungry.
- Routine: You eat a meal you really enjoy—maybe a cheeseburger and fries.
- Reward: The reward pathway in your brain gets a little jolt of the feel-good hormone, dopamine.
Then you repeat. But what causes you to repeat this loop over and over? Craving. After just a few cycles, your brain starts to crave the reward. It anticipates it. This craving fuels the repetition of the 3-step loop and cements the habit even more deeply.
Soon, you go on autopilot. When hunger strikes, you’ll hit the drive-through for that burger and fries without really even thinking about it. That meal becomes the path of least resistance that you’re most likely to keep following. In other words, it becomes a deeply ingrained, automatic habit.
Fortunately, you can replace that ingrained habit with a new, healthier habit, using the same 3-step process. You just have to make one small change to it. The cue and reward stay the same, but you change the routine. Here’s how you might do this to replace the burger-and-fries habit described above:
- Cue: You feel hungry.
- Routine: You eat a tasty grilled chicken sandwich with lettuce and tomato on whole grain bread instead of a cheeseburger and fries.
- Reward: You enjoy the new taste and texture of this healthy alternative. You notice how good it feels to try something that’s healthier, yet just as tasty. You mentally pat yourself on the back. Your brain gets a little boost of feel-good dopamine. You repeat. Soon, your brain starts to crave the reward from eating the grilled chicken sandwich instead of the old meal of burgers and fries. This new craving is what keeps you repeating the updated, 3-step habit loop. In turn, this helps vanquish the old habit and establish your new, healthier one in its place.
Here is one other example of habit replacement:
Old habit loop #1:
- Cue: TV time after dinner
- Routine: Bowl of ice cream for dessert
- Reward: Your brain’s reward pathway gets a jolt of dopamine
Rinse & repeat = a deeply ingrained bad habit.
Updated habit loop #1:
- Cue: TV time after dinner
- Routine: Bowl of cut fruit with unsweetened yogurt for dessert
- Reward: You enjoy the sweet taste of this healthy alternative and feel good about choosing it. You mentally pat yourself on the back, and your brain’s reward pathway gets a hit of dopamine.
Rinse & repeat = a deeply ingrained new, healthier habit.
When trying out an updated habit loop, stay flexible about how you change the routine. You might have to experiment until you find a new routine you start to crave. If you’re trying to replace the nightly wine habit, you might want to replace it with another relaxing habit, like taking a warm bath. You can also try mindfulness meditation or deep breathing.
Bringing your 4 habit-changing strategies together
Once you’ve taken the first step and decided you’re ready to change a habit, take each of the other steps described in this article—one at a time—until you’ve reached your goal. Make sure to celebrate your milestones along the way. And don’t hesitate to talk with your doctor, a health coach, or a counselor for support and guidance.
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This information is not intended to take the place of regular medical care or advice. Please check with your doctor before using this information or beginning any self-care program. Images used for this article do not depict any members of the Silver&Fit program.
References
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This article was written by Gail Olson, edited by Celina Johnson, and clinically reviewed by Erin McComack, RN, on December 4, 2024.
