Baby steps to success

It's no secret that sticking with good habits for more than a few weeks is key for losing weight.  Behavioral expert B.J. Fogg explains the anatomy of a habit so you can break it down (and down...and down) to maintain your healthy behaviors for life.

You've decided to lose weight, and the first couple of weeks go according to plan.  But by the third, you're back on the couch again, pizza in hand, wondering if your barely used sneakers could score a few bucks on eBay.

So what's the secret behind keeping a healthy habit - not for a month or a year, but for the rest of your life? One day, as I was picking out socks after a shower, it hit me:  The key to forming habits is in the "after."  Think about it:  After I get out of the shower, I get dressed - as if on autopilot.  After I brush, I floss.  These are what I call "anchoring" behaviors, and they are what habits are built on.  After I had this lightbulb moment, everything else fell into place, and I soon figured out three (totally doable) steps to adopting a healthy habit.

Step 1 - Shrink your goal
You know the drill when it comes to being healthier:  You try and fail, try and fail again.  What slips people up is that they usually take a giant leap, like vowing to eat a salad for lunch every day.  But this rarely works. The solution:  Take the first step toward your goal by adopting a small habit.  How small?  I'm talking miniscule, like eating one baby carrot at lunch or just opening a vitamin container - you don't even have to swallow a capsule!  For me, my goal was to improve my upper-body strength, so my mini-habit was to do two push-ups at a time - much easier than aiming to do 20 in one go.

Step 2 - ID your anchor
If you want to create a new habit, you need to have something that prompts, or anchors, it.  Think of an action you perform daily (or several times a day) that could serve as your anchoring behavior - in other words, what will you do just before practicing your new habit?  For example, I decided to perform my two push-ups after using the bathroom.  That happens several times a day, so the number of push-ups I do in 24 hours quickly multiplied.

Step 3 - Celebrate!
This is the fun part:  Every time you complete the habit, reward yourself.  I'm not talking about a new pair of shoes; I mean literally throw your hands in the air and a do a happy dance as soon as you pop open that vitamin jar.  It may seem silly, but if you start by simply acknowledging the act, eventually the habit will naturally evolve into your taking a vitamin each morning or eating a whole handful of baby carrots with your lunch.  Case in point:  My two push-ups soon became five at a time, and now I'm easily doing 70 a day.

If my plan sounds easy, that's because it is.  Sure, you'll have to solve the puzzle of your own behavior (maybe you'll choose the wrong anchor and need to rethink).  But once the habits begin to stick, you'll wonder why you didn't take baby steps sooner.

-Debbie Koenig, Weight Watchers Magazine, May/June 2013