How to develop healthy living habits

Use the minimum startup cost to lower the threshold, rely on scenario binding to reduce decision-making consumption, and leave enough flexibility to avoid breaking the pot. You don’t need to become a self-discipline expert all of a sudden. Ordinary people can achieve long-term results even if they only spend 10 minutes a day.

In the past two years, I followed the trend and made an annual health list: run 5 kilometers every morning, drink 8 glasses of water, go to bed before 11 o'clock, and eat 15 kinds of ingredients every week. At that time, I bought a check-in book with a gold-gilt cover. But on the third day, I worked overtime until 10 o'clock, so I went home and fell asleep. After the check-in was interrupted, I simply gave up. The book later became a place on the corner of the takeout table.

Later, after talking to a friend who does behavioral psychology research, I found out that I had fallen into the misunderstanding that "the more ambitious the goal, the better the effect." There are actually two mainstream schools of habit formation today: one is the goal-oriented school, which advocates setting clear and measurable SMART goals and relying on positive feedback to force persistence. My friends who are Internet operators rely on this method and set themselves "Run 3 kilometers each time three times a week. "Reward yourself with a new pair of socks when you finish." I really reduced my body fat by 3 points in three months, but this method is suitable for people who are familiar with goal management and have sufficient daily willpower reserves. Most office workers have exhausted their energy during the day and really have no energy to compete with themselves after get off work. The other school is the mini-habits school that many practitioners now recommend, which is the method I use myself: if you want to exercise, set the goal of "stand for 30 seconds after changing your sneakers every day." After standing, take off your shoes and lie flat on your back if you don't want to move. Don't worry, you will be standing there most of the time, and you can't help but take two more steps. That's how I went from standing for 30 seconds every day to walking around the neighborhood, and now I can run 3 kilometers twice a week. I don't feel any pain in the whole process, and I don't rely on willpower to hold on.

A low threshold is not enough. Many people always forget to do those little things, such as taking vitamins and drinking warm water. Essentially, you raise the decision-making cost of doing these things too high. I used to have trouble remembering to take multivitamins. I kept them in my drawer for half a month without remembering to touch them. Later, I followed the behavioral design method and put the vitamin bottle next to the toothbrush cup. I just take one after brushing my teeth every day. Now I have been doing this for almost a year, and I don’t need to remember it at all. Oh yes, there are different opinions here. Many self-discipline bloggers will recommend that you put health matters on your to-do list and set an alarm clock to remind you. I have tried it, but there are more than a dozen work tasks piled up in my daily to-do list. When I see health reminders, I always feel like it is an extra burden, and I often cross them off. Of course, if you are used to using a schedule to manage all life matters, then this method will definitely work. In essence, just choose the method that requires the least mental effort.

This is really important. I have seen too many people die from "perfectionism": I couldn't help but drink a cup of milk tea today, and I felt that all my health tasks for today had collapsed. I might as well have hot pot at night and talk about it tomorrow.； After staying up all night this week, I felt that the whole plan was ruined, and the exercise I had insisted on before was stopped. When I was chatting with a registered dietitian before, she said that for ordinary people to develop healthy habits, the margin for error must be at least 20%. There are 365 days in a year. You can eat regularly and exercise moderately for 290 days, and you can drink milk tea, eat fried chicken and stay up late for the remaining 70 days. It will not affect your long-term health at all. You see, people who can stick to healthy habits for several years will never give up just because they make an exception. She herself eats a meal of spicy fried chicken every Saturday. She said that if she completely banned the food, she, a nutritionist, would not last more than three months before overeating. Of course, if you have specific needs to prepare for competitions and lose fat quickly, then strict control is also correct, but most people just want to develop a good habit that can be maintained for a long time, so there is really no need to be too harsh on yourself.

Someone asked me before, does it cost a lot of money to develop healthy habits, such as buying a bunch of wall-breaking machines, yoga mats, and fitness cards? I didn’t spend any money myself. My current habit is to get off the subway two stops before get off work and walk 20 minutes home every day. In the morning, I can grab a cup of warm boiled water when I go out. Cooking vegetables and egg noodles in the evening is much healthier than eating takeout. Most of the equipment I spent a lot of money on ended up becoming clothes drying racks and storage racks at home. Small things that don’t cost money are the easiest things to stick to.

In fact, after all is said and done, there are really not so many fancy ways to develop healthy habits. The core is not to treat it as a chore that requires you to grit your teeth and persevere. The best way is to make it comfortable and do it consistently.