The 5 steps to change habits

The physical and mental development of individuals and their health are directly related to the way they eat. Ailments such as anemia, malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and some types of cancer are related to inadequate eating habits.

Many people try to change some of their harmful eating habits for healthy ones, and after some time, they fail to internalize the new habits and go back to the ingrained habits, to the old way of doing things. Changing habits is something really difficult that requires effort, perseverance and many times the help of a specialist.

The coaching process can achieve real and lasting changes in our eating habits, bringing into play cognitive, emotional and volitional aspects, making the client aware of their actions, discovering new ways of looking at life and to face and assume the facts in order to achieve their goals.

What is a habit?

A habit is any behavior learned through repetition that is performed habitually and automatically, without hardly thinking about it. It is an end product of human learning. In other words, a habit is anything that, once learned, has become well established, and therefore has reached a high degree of automaticity.

Habit allows us to do things correctly without thinking, to be able to do a maximum of things with a minimum of effort in order to increase the efficiency of the brain and body.

The amount of habits that exist is unlimited, many times we do not realize all the ones we do in our daily routine, such as going to the bathroom when we get up, having a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette, knotting our tie or taking a piece of cutlery to eat a certain food.

How are habits formed?

Habits are behaviors that begin to be acquired from a very early age, by force of repetition, until they acquire a certain automaticity. Habits appear as the individual is faced with the different stimuli that appear throughout life, thus the child stops urinating diapers when he is taught to go to the bathroom to stay dry and acquires the excellent habit of reading, if after learning to read, he is properly motivated to practice reading.

Eating habits, for example, begin to form from the age of one year, when children eat practically everything. This is the ideal time to instill in the child the correct handling of cutlery, to eat slowly, to prefer variety over quantity, to have complete breakfasts, regularity in eating schedules, to eat together as a family, etc. It is estimated that around the age of four, the child has acquired most of the eating habits that he/she will follow throughout life.

Good habits: They are all those proper behaviors that contribute to raise our physical, mental and social well-being. Examples of good habits are: Maintaining personal hygiene, eating healthy, engaging in frequent physical activity, being polite, listening, being cautious on public roads, using means of safety at work, etc.

Bad habits: Bad habits are those that have negative consequences for life, causing dissatisfaction, illness, fatal accidents, etc. For example, overeating, getting angry about everything, smoking, speeding, using unprotected work tools, not getting enough sleep, not greeting colleagues, etc.

Can our bad habits be eliminated?

Habits are produced by the association of neural networks that have become automatic through physical repetition; neurons are continuously reorganized according to our thoughts, learning and actions. If we manage to transform our thoughts, learning and actions, new neural connections will be created and we will be able to eliminate our bad habits.

How long does it take to form a new habit?

The famous American psychologist William Jame (1842-1910), proposed that the structural changes that occur in the brain through the execution of new actions, require that these are repeated systematically for at least a period of 21 consecutive days. More recently, scholars believe that the period necessary to change a habit varies depending on the type of habit to be achieved and the perseverance and motivation of the person.

5 steps to change habits through coaching

Identify the habits to be changed. To do this, the client can be guided through the following actions:

• Exercises of self-observation in order to make the client more aware of his eating habits; for this, the client is guided to write down all the habits that he manages to identify during a week.

• Subsequently, the client should select each day a different eating habit from the list and evaluate how the practice of this habit influenced him/her.