Habit loop and use

Creating habits are truly the baseline of success or failure in changing your life to a healthy lifestyle. This is because when you form a new habit, it can make your resolutions that much easier (or harder) to achieve.

Generally there are 4 steps to habits. These include a cue to act on something. The next is a craving, something you want. Then an action is created in response to the craving. the final step is the reward, how you feel about the response. To put it into a good example of building a healthy habit, it would look like this:

You may see an apple on the counter as your cue. This would create a craving to eat the apple. You then would take the apple as a response to the craving and eat the apple. The reward is the taste of the apple.

In order to decrease snacking on unhealthy foods, remove the cue first! take the chips you snack on off the counter so you cannot just grab them when you want to munch on something. Put the chips on the top shelf so they are not as accessible. Then you will only grab them if you really want to put the work into getting them. This is the first step into ending bad habits! More on habits to come in the near future.