Habit of the Day: Eat Breakfast
Think about what it would take to lose 1/5 of your bodyweight. You’d have to starve yourself, give up carbs forever, or hit the gym everyday, right?
Actually, it can be as simple as eating your breakfast:
I decided to live a more conscious and healthy life. I started back in August/October of last year weighing 225 lbs. I have lost 42 lbs and counting since then. I feel energetic and in control!
My new habit ‘Eat breakfast’ played a large part in [the weight loss]. The first 100-day streak is under the belt on that one. ~ Jan-Willem, Lift User
How can a simple habit like eating breakfast daily help you lose weight?
Easy diet habits overcome the biggest obstacle in weight loss: giving up quickly
Most diets set you up for failure because they ask you to build or break multiple hard habits at once: stop eating sugary foods you enjoy, start eating healthy foods you don’t, and then learn to cook because you’ll grow tired of the few healthy lunch options near work.
Those are hard changes. Behavior research by Stanford Professor Dr. BJ Fogg tells us that hard behaviors require a lot of motivation. Since motivation fluctuates, you stop following diet habits and then diets fail.
The B=MAT behavior framework: in order to perform a behavior you need to have enough motivation & ability plus experience a trigger to do it
Research by Dr. Brian Wansink at the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University confirms that “small, consistent changes” are key to long-term success. You can set yourself up for weight loss wins by building healthy habits that require little motivation or ability, like Jan did by eating his breakfast.
How to start building an easy healthy eating habit:
Right Now: Think of the easiest healthy eating habit you could build. Some examples from our most popular habit list: Eat Breakfast, Drink More Water, Eat Vegetables.
Then: Add the habit on Lift and set a goal of doing it every day for a week. Easy, right?
IMAGE© CC Paul Keller on Flickr
