2 Ways Women Sabotage Their New Habits

A positive mindset is not enough to add a healthy habit to your routine.

A good mood isn’t enough to make you return each day to your workout regimen. 

Habit forming is all about context and the actions preceding the habit.

What Matters for Habit Forming

1. Physical Location

2. Actions right before the habit

As you enter Prep Week, you’ll be exploring the FASTer Way app and its collection of tracking tools. 

You might be thinking, OK, I’ve gotta start a BUNCH of new habits. How do I MANAGE that?

Here’s how you manage to start new habits without getting overwhelmed.

Start by getting curious. Notice how your daily life may be fostering unhealthy habits.

For example, notice where you are when you crave something sugary/fatty/fried/starchy. Notice what you are doing at that moment. . . . 

 Do you like to stop at a coffee shop to buy a donut and coffee on the way to work? The location for your craving is your vehicle at 7 am driving on Main Street where That Coffee Shop is located. What you are doing at the moment is driving the route toward the shop.

How to tweak this habit? Take a different route to work, bypassing said coffee shop; make a coffee at home and bring it with you in the car.

Next, create a visual cue for a new habit. If you would like to drink coffee at home instead of at a coffee place, make the coffee at night and set out your favorite mug. Maybe you set your water container next to your toothbrush. Maybe you wake up wearing your sports bra, ready to get dressed and crush that HIT workout!

You can do this.  I know because I’ve been there.

Sometimes I go to bed wearing my workout socks. The moment my feet hit the ground in the morning, I’m already in the process of getting dressed for the activity I want to conquer immediately: my workout.

Other times I find turning down a fried app during cocktail hour with friends is my challenging habit to break. Instead of arriving at cocktail hour hungry, I drink water and grab a healthy snack en route (changing my actions before the troublesome habit). I also try to take a smart location while I’m socializing–which is not close to the waitress who would be eager to take my order.