How To Create Habits That Actually Stick

Creating daily habits to live a healthier lifestyle can be tricky - but I've got a technique using just your smartphone that's guaranteed to start changing your life

Before getting stuck into this post, make sure you read yesterdays post about How to destroy bad habits

What Good Habits Mean To Your Health

Eating high amounts of fruit, veg and protein, drinking plenty of water, exercising regularly and getting 8 hours of sleep are all habits

You brush your teeth twice a day right? That's a habit

Now image if you forgot to brush your teeth before work tomorrow

Apart from feeling self conscious about your bed-breath, it would also feel really weird right?

That's because the habit of you brushing your teeth has been so heavily ingrained into your daily routine

So let's make exercise and healthy eating a habit

How I Create New Habits

Before you continue reading it's really important to me that you understand the method I teach you next involves you putting in the leg work

You must hold yourself accountable for your actions and your results

If you do, I can 100% promise you that this technique will change everything for you

Step 1: Decide what habits you want to introduce

I can help here. If you've just started getting into exercise and healthy eating, or perhaps you haven't picked up these habits, I'd highly recommend you start here;

• Drink 2L of water

• Eat 5 vegetables and 1-2 fruit portions

• Move for at least 20 minutes a day

• Perform some form of resistance work 3 x week for 28 minutes

• Aim to eat protein with every meal

I'd pick 1-2 and then add an extra habit a week

Obviously if you're more advanced you could be more specific and your habits could be things like:

• Eat 2g of protein per KG of body weight

• Track everything in MyFitnessPal

• Run for 10k a week

I mean, they could literally be anything, There your goals not mine

Step 2: Add your habits to a reminder app on your phone

We all use smartphones right? We're never really that far from it

So add your new habit into your phone

This is what mine currently looks like

But I also use "Reminders" as I'm an Iphone user (as should you!)

The most important part of this technique is to add a time and a notification to the set habit

Every morning I get a silent notification popup on my phone

In this case it just reads "Morning" and lists my 4 habits pictured above

When I use Apples reminder app I just get a notification saying "Take vitamins" or whatever it is

Conclusion - Why It Works

As I mentioned before, this technique will completely change your life for the better. As long as you hold yourself accountable and don't just ignore the notifications haha

I read that it takes about 66 days to create a long lasting habit

So by being reminded every single day to complete that task you're rewiring your brain to create a habit

The goal is in 66 days that you can happily delete the notification, safely knowing that your set habit has stuck

Then you can think about adding your next one!

If you're looking at setting healthy habits I've put together a very basic guide to getting started. It's completely Free and yours to download if you think it will help

Free 7-Day Fat Loss Guide

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(It's also worth me mentioning that I use this same technique with my business to remind myself to check in with clients, to write this blog or whatever)

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Have a good one!

Ben