What to expect as you make changes to your lifestyle and eating habits
Changing habits takes time and it is often believed that it takes 21 days to change a habit. However, this belief is not based on any scientific evidence. Research from the University College London showed that the average time to learn a new habit is about 66 days; however, individual times ranged from 18 to 254 days. As you can see, there’s no typical time frame for breaking a habit, and a lot depends on your personality, your motivation, the circumstances, and the habit you want to change.
Habit forming and habit breaking are quite closely linked. However, it has been demonstrated that it is easier to start doing something new than to stop doing an unwanted habit.
It is very useful to use replacement habits or behaviours to change an unwanted habit. For example, instead of drinking sugary drinks with your meals, you replace them with sparkling water, or replacing a midmorning cupcake with a healthy snack made up of fruit and nuts.
As you are making those changes you will also notice changes to your thoughts and feelings. This is completely normal. Many people use food to deal with emotions and when this option is no longer available, sabotaging thoughts and difficult feelings will be more noticeable. However, those thoughts and feelings will decrease as you learn healthy responses throughout this programme to replace them.
It’s really important that you don’t make too many changes all at the same time, as this will be too overwhelming and too difficult to maintain in the long term. Stay away from the “ALL or Nothing” approach. You don’t need to be “all in” or “all out”, sustainable changes are best achieved by taking small steps and small changes at a time.
Don’t worry too much about all of this right now, as you will be taken through the process of change during this programme.
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