Habit Change Mechanisms and Speed
“Argue with reality? Welcome to hell."
-Unknown
The science of habit change is a continually growing field that has morphed many times over since its inception in the late 1800s. While the community first looked at the function of "automaticity" and how behaviors become automatic, it has grown to explore functions of motivation, drive, attitude, interference, and goal-setting. Essentially, its the science of why people do the things that they do and how people can achieve whatever they'd like to. Habits have also been defined in many different contours. Some scientists have explained them as repeated behaviors that reflect internal representations and maps. Other have defined them as automatic behaviors crafted from procedural memory and attitudes that are executed regardless of outcome (aka habits don't care about our goals). Interestingly, regions of the brain have been identified that are related to habit, and they are not more sophisticated in humans than in other mammalian species. In other words, habits are so automated that they can be enacted at no higher levels of sophistication than a mouse! However, some studies have found that habits can be intercepted by goal-oriented logical control from other human brain regions. Which indicates that we do have the power to change them--it just takes a lot of work.
So how do habits interface with what we want to achieve?
A schematic representing habit formation with goal-setting was formulated by researchers Wood and Runger. A summary of their map is as follows:
Clear goals energize a direct action by defining the desired end state
Goals create initial motivation that should expose someone to a cue for a new behavior that they need to enact in order to get their desired outcome
Context cues that surround the new behavior will eventually help to trigger the behavior once it becomes more automated
With either activation or inhibition, people must act on the habit goal by keeping their larger goals in mind
Factors such as stress or distraction can influence whether step 4 occurs or not
If someone is not deliberately pursuing the new goal, old habits will overcome the process and habit change will not form. If someone is maintaining deliberate action, their new behaviors will eventually become more automatic and the context cues will help trigger the new habit with time
Step 6 could take several months for some people, and several years for others--timelines of habit change vary widely depending on the person and the goal
This is why habits can feel so darn hard to break. In their natural state, they are automatic, below conscious control, and unrelated to any goals. Say it again with me: our habits are unrelated to our goals--so they will be acted out regardless of we want to achieve. Until we intercept them! So in order to change habits, we must make them highly conscious and deliberate, and hold the behavior in the context of our goals--for a long time, over and over again. Whew, exhausting to a human brain!!
You might be thinking: Ok Erin. So you want me to build my new habits by thinking of my goals constantly and repeating the new behavior? Sounds simple. Why doesn't it happen though?!
Good question. One of the things I hear most often in my practice is "Why am I doing this thing that is sabotaging my goals? Why aren't I just new doing the new behavior if that's what I want?"
Thankfully, there are answers to this, too. Its called friction.
How do we understand our friction to habits?
First we have to define the many presentations of habits. Habits are not just physical behaviors--like reaching for a handful of M&Ms when we answer emails. They also can be automatic thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. One of the key findings of more recent habit research is that underlying many habits is actually the mechanism of attitude.
So let's say we have a client who wants to stop emotional eating. She thinks about her goal of improved metabolic health and it sounds great. But then one night she's at home and her husband drives her nuts in a conversation about one of the kids, so she paces through the kitchen looking for a bag of chocolate chips. She pauses and thinks "Ugh I'm not suppose to emotionally eat. But it shouldn't be this hard! I've been good all day and I deserve a little treat. Plenty of my friends are skinny and I know that they eat chocolate too" (note that some of these might be barely articulated conscious thoughts, but they're happening lightening fast underneath the surface). So she finds the chocolate chips and digs in. But the next morning, she wonders why she did that. She feels ashamed that she's not working towards her goal. She feels frustrated in hindsight.
What happened here? Notice the key language in her thoughts (which, by the way, are real thoughts I hear all the time from people!). She has an attitude that habit change shouldn't be so hard. She has an attitude that food is an important reward. She has an attitude that eating healthy is "good" and therefore earns her the right to be "bad" later. She also has an attitude that she 'should be able to do what others do,' which suggests that self-care decisions are based on comparison and other people. Her attitude towards food, change, her own emotions, and her own body needs is out of alignment with her goals. This is why at the core of many people's habit change is a need for attitude change.
If we have a negative attitude towards something--such as waking up early, journaling, mindfulness, or even something taking time and not happening instantly--we will have friction towards it. I call it "deep friction." Its the resistance, the inner protesting, and that feeling of dragging that can make us negotiate our way out of the new behavior. It sabotages the doing part of habits by convincing us that somehow we shouldn't have to. This is where attitude and habit change intersect.
So how do we change our attitude?
I believe that it can serve any human being quite well to remember and acknowledge that literally everything we think is perception. For example,
Skipping breakfast might feel good to one person because they don't like breakfast foods but they love lunch, and it could make the next person think they'd starve to death
Hunger can feel comfortable and like a positive sign that its time to eat for one person, and it could feel like an anxiety-provoking emergency to the next
One couple might feel comfortable crying on each other's shoulders when they need to share and connect, and to the next couple it could feel awkward, silly, and like its never going to happen
Cooking dinner at home might be the absolute best part of the day to one person and like torture to the next
Everything is perception. Our brain views everything through our unique lens that shapes, morphs, and distorts whatever it is we are viewing or experiencing. This is what our attitude does. It takes in information, puts it through an attitude filter, and spits out an emotional response as if it is "fact."
People who get really, really good at understanding this function in their own brain tend to be really healthy and really happy. Thankfully, that's due to the fact that attitudes are malleable.
There are multiple components to attitude change. The first is to simply explore what our own attitudes even are. Most of us don't slow down and view our own thoughts. We have to really, really listen (and enter our "wise mind" that I mentioned in the last newsletter). We need to become the viewer and get curious about what it is that we think. Then, we can explore where that thought came from. Is it a diet rule that a parent taught us? Is it a coping mechanism that we developed in our family of origin? Is it a lie we're telling ourselves because we hate to look at the truth? Do we have the habit of comparing ourselves to others--where did that come from?
Explore, explore, and explore some more.
Once you see what this attitude sounds like and understand where it may have come from, you can check-in: is this serving me?
We need to know, is that attitude nourishing my goals like Spring rain, or is it like laying ice on top of the garden? If it's not serving your goals, its time to release it.
We can return to that habit goal--say, of shifting emotional eating--and approach it with a new attitude.
Let's revisit our client who is working on this. Let's say she gets activated by a conversation with her husband again and she finds herself heading towards the kitchen, but that morning she journaled about how she will pause and try to meet her needs when she has emotional hunger. So she stops and reflects, "I see that I'm activated here. I'm frustrated because I feel like I'm not being heard. I'm going to take myself on a walk to let my body expel this energy. The chocolate chips won't meet my needs. And its ok that its hard to change the habit in this moment. I know it will take time. But I ate a nutritious dinner and I have no physical hunger, so I don't need fuel right now. After the walk, I will sit down with my husband and I'm going to share my feelings with him." So she takes herself out of the kitchen and to the front door for her walk. She emotionally regulated, she acknowledged her friction (note she didn't pretend her emotions weren't there, she did allow them in), and she met her needs because she approached the moment with a new attitude. Notice she didn't think about food being "good" and "bad" anymore, nor did she think about what other people do. She held her goals and needs in her deliberate thought.
Her new attitude might unlock so many other doors for her as well. She might learn to love to cook, she might start prepping crudite boards for the weekend afternoons, she might fall in love with morning walks, she might journal when she's emotionally activated, and she might even learn to love the process of taking care of herself! And what happens when she does that for months and months and months? Improved metabolic health. Emotional eating habit shift. New habit formation for self-care, eating patterns, and emotional regulation. New body and new mind.
This is exactly what I see when I witness a client transform. Their attitude shifts, which changes their behaviors, which grows new habits, and creates new bodies and minds. It's a beautiful thing!
It sounds wonderful because it is. But it's no small feat.
It would be a terrible misrepresentation of the truth to suggest this is easy. I do see things exactly like that client example on a daily basis. But it also takes months, sometimes years, of attitude adjustments, habit formation, failures, regrouping, and starting again. Clients who achieve this deep transformation are not rare, but they do have some things in common. They are all open, curious, and willing to engage in attitude changes. They're not defensive of their attitudes. They have clear goals. They want to understand themselves and grow. They're sick of being stuck and instead of berating themselves or hating the process and cementing their fate, they look for the bright spots and try to understand themselves and don't give up.
So if you want to explore this part of your health life and dive into true, deep transformation, remember these key takeaways:
Your current habits likely are not related to any specific goals and more so are reflections of old maps and comfort
We have to bring habits to our conscious mind and hold our goals in deliberate thought while we enact new behaviors
Our attitudes drive our ability to execute new behaviors and can cause massive interference towards new behaviors if they're incongruous
Attitudes are malleable but require effort and exploration to change
Revisit your habit change goals once you have an attitude that is ready to approach them
Research has found that habit formation can take anywhere from 80 days to several years, depending on the person and the goal (not the old myth of 30 days!)
I hope this habit analysis provides you with some context for developing a more progressive, realistic, and holistic view of nutrition. Given everything we discussed, I'm sure you can see why quick meal plans and 30-day challenges for rapid weight loss don't work. The nutrition of the future--nutrition that actually works--is a science of food and behavior. Both clinicians and consumers alike must begin to understand that changing one's food relationship is at the core of changing one's health, and such a process will never occur quickly. We've had several decades of research and public health data accumulating showing that knowledge about food science does not alter people's food behavior, and that despite more wellness and health programs than ever, our population has continually increasing rates of metabolic dysregulation across all age groups. I appreciate each and every one of you for being curious about this science and promoting it in your lives and in your communities.
I love the way our brains are capable of so much. They create entire universes within them, and act as world-building machines that give us our reality. That is the beauty and the danger of them--we must consciously create a beautiful world or we will have accidentally built a prison around ourselves. And yet even then, there is always hope. Because brains are always able to change if the operator wishes it.
Don't give up on your habits, or your brain. They are a beautiful thing.