Science-Backed Tips to Making a Health Behavior Change that Sticks
The reality is that change is difficult and complex. Change is a nonlinear process, not an event.
Lasting change rarely takes place due to a single ongoing resolve to act. More often than not, change develops from a downplayed, multifaceted, and at times, agonizing progression.
Every single one of us has tried to change our behavior in some way. Your goal might be to lose weight, quit drinking, start saving money, etc. Sometimes these types of behavior changes happen slowly, sometimes abruptly. Whether they occur quickly, or over time, change usually happens through a series of stages. Prochaska and DiClemente’s Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TMM) presumes that at any given time, a person is in one of five stages of change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, or maintenance.
We rarely, if ever, progress through the stages of change in a straightforward way. Lapses and recycling through stages are common, perhaps even inevitable. Want to make a healthy behavior change that sticks? Follow the tips below, based on social science research and health behavior theory.
Assess your readiness to change
Identify your motivation (aka your reason why)
Make one small change at a time
Pick a behavior you have full control over
Generate an action plan
Build on what’s working
Trust yourself
Give it time
Celebrate success
Assess Your Readiness to Change
Where you are in the change process can inform how you go about it. If you’re unsure of where you are in the process, listen to the way you talk about your plans.
When thinking about making a change if you find yourself saying “I don’t want to” you might benefit from writing out the pros and cons of the changes you want to make. Ask yourself, “What are my concerns about making a change?” “What are my concerns about staying the same?” What are the benefits of making a change?”
If you are saying “I can’t,” building your confidence is key to overcoming the cons. Ask yourself, “what past successes or experiences could I draw on to help?” “What do I know about myself that will help me be successful?” As you think about the change you want to make ask yourself, “What ways of achieving it have I already thought about? What else?”
If you are saying “I need to...” or “I’m thinking about it”, you need to get in touch with your core values and motivators. Need to identify barriers and come up with possible solutions. Ask yourself “Why do I want to make this change?” “Is there anything preventing me from changing?” “What are some things that could help me make this change?”
When you start saying “I’m going to” or “I’m ready,” you should have already established strong motivators, knowledge of barriers and possible strategies for those barriers. You can now go into the planning stages and designing action steps.
Things to note.
You can be at a different stage of readiness for different behaviors that you want to change.
Rushing right into planning when you find yourself saying “I know I need to but...” or when your cons outweigh your pros, or your confidence is low, will most likely lead you to dropping off quickly and feeling leave your feeling discouraged.
It’s a process, and the more you understand and are able to recognize the stages, the easier it can be to work through it to make your desired changes.
Identify your motivation (aka your reason why) to adopt a particular behavior?
Why did you pick that specific behavior?
Are you just randomly picking a healthy behavior that you think you should adopt? Do you have a strong reason for picking that particular behavior that you want to change?
Without a strong personal motivation backing up a health behavior change, we want to make, we may end up consistently contemplating changing or tirelessly trying but never successfully making the change.
What’s the real reason behind you deciding to walk 10k steps a day? I’ve heard many times from clients, “I’m going to drink a gallon of water a day,” “starting tomorrow I’m not going to eliminate gluten from my diet,” or “I’m not eating after 8pm”…
You have a reason, what is it? And is that particular habit the one to start with? Why that behavior for your end goal and is that particular behavior important enough for you to have work to adapt to?
Before starting a new nutrition plan, exercise program, sleep schedule, or intermittent fasting regimen, ask yourself 𝘸𝘩𝘺 you want to engage in this particular health behavior, what you expect to gain, and what stands in your way.
If the reason for change isn’t important enough to you, or if you find that you can think of more things that stand in your way than things you expect to gain, pick a different behavior goal for now. And be honest. It could save you a lot of trouble. Maybe it’s not that you’re unable to change, maybe the behavior change that you are trying to make right now isn’t the right one.
Make One Small Behavior Change Goal at a Time.
It’s difficult to make one long-term lifestyle or behavior change, much less multiple at a time.
Changing a behavior, like going to bed earlier or starting a new exercise program, is a multi-step process that requires deliberation, action and maintenance.
It sounds like common sense. But we’re all guilty of getting overly enthusiastic or being impatient and wanting to see our lifestyle turn around right away. This leads to making multiple goals at once or behavior goals like “I’m going to meditate 5x this week” (even though I haven’t meditated before in my life).
You may be tempted to change multiple health-related behaviors at a time — like undertaking a daily meditation practice, sleeping at least 8 hours each night and eating a salad every day for lunch — but by trying to change too many things at once, you may get overwhelmed and fall quickly back into old habits and behaviors.
Trying to change too many of your behaviors at once, especially going “cold turkey” on bad health habits, can lead to fatigue and can leave you feeling discouraged with low confidence that you are capable of making changes.
Focus on one small or attainable change at a time. Even trying to do that one new behavior change every day may be too much to start with. Maybe pick meditating 1x a week instead of 5x and maintain that for a couple weeks and then bump it up to 2x.
Pick a Behavior You Have Full Control Over
Go for low hanging fruit.
It can be good to set goals that are a little stretch, but you need to set ones that you know you have full control over - i.e. you have complete confidence that you can achieve it. Make sure it’s both attainable and realistic.
Picking a goal to workout 6x a week when you only have childcare 3 days a week may make it hard for you to achieve your goal. What are your barriers? What do you know that you can START with and build on as you succeed with achieving the lowest hanging?
You may be able to get to working out 6x a week eventually, but set yourself up for success in the beginning to keep your motivation going.
The Theory of Planned Behavior defines four main psychological factors affecting behavior change: attitude (positive or negative evaluation of performing a behavior), intention (willingness), subjective norms (perceived social pressure) and perceived behavioral control (what control we have or think we have over the behavior).
Two of the strongest behavior predictors are intention (willingness, ie importance) and perceived behavioral control (perceived ease or difficulty).
Break that down even more, it’s the twin engines of change, importance and self-confidence. And both engines need to be fully powered up to move forward.
Generate an Action Plan & Build on What’s Working
So you made a plan and set a few intentions/action steps for the week. Now it’s time to assess. Our brain likes to focus on the negative, how our plan didn’t go as expected or what we didn’t succeed at. But take a moment to think about this past week, what did work for you? What were you successful at?
If you partially completed what you had said you would do, draw distinctions between the days you were successful and the days you were not. What was the difference and what did you learn from the experience?
As you progress through your action plan and experiment with different steps and approaches, pay special attention to your successes. Building on what’s working will help you to continue forward what a stronger plan than before and will help to keep you motivated and engaged in the process.