3 Steps to Breaking Bad Habits

Here are three steps to form a new habit, according to science: If you are having trouble viewing this email, [click here.]( You are receiving this email because you have expressed an interest in quality health and lifestyle tips. You can remove your email by clicking [unsubscribe]( at any time, or simply reply back to this email asking to be removed.  Here's Your Tip... Break those habits. As humans, we often give ourselves more credit than we deserve. We like to think we have total control over our actions -- especially when we can point the finger at someone else. For instance, if someone’s always late, we might call them lazy or accuse them of poor time management. If someone has trouble with their weight, we blame them for not moving more and eating less. The reality is that we actually have far less control over our behavior than we like to think. Research suggests, believe it or not, that about 43% of our daily actions are habitual, conducted on autopilot without much conscious thought or effort. While we like to think that we’re in charge and take responsibility for everything we do, the truth is that performance reflects habits -- not desires and goals. In order the make or break habits that stick, changing your environment is much more effective than attempting to will change into being. Said differently, if you’ve struggled to make changes in the past, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You’re not a failure. It’s not so much about you as it is about the environment that you’re in and how you control it. If you want to form new habits (or break bad ones) and make change that lasts, you need to first understand habit memory. Habits are a learning system that we don’t have a conscious awareness or access to. They’re relatively slow to form or break, and habit memory tends to last for years. We develop habits as we repeatedly do the same thing in a given context and get some reward for it. Because of the reward, we do it again, and again and again. But unfortunately, habits that may have benefited you in the past don’t necessarily benefit you today. Habits are a sort of shortcut based on past learning about what to do, but they’re not necessarily the right thing to do today. If you’ve tried using will power to change your habits in the past, you already know that’s not a very reliable system. Because as soon as things start to get difficult, we talk ourselves out of the commitment we made. That’s because the very act of inhibiting a desire makes the desire “loom really large” in our minds and sometimes consumes us. Instead of changing your thinking, change your environment. The best way to break an unwanted habit is to change the context so that you’re not in a situation that activates thoughts of the response that you’ve given in the past. Here are three steps to form a new habit, according to science: - Ease up. If something’s too difficult, you simply won’t do it. Make the choice to do better as easy as possible. Fill your pantry with healthy snacks (and get rid of the junk). Turn off social media notifications. Sign up for a gym near your office. - Make it enjoyable. You’re not going to repeat a behavior you don’t enjoy, and you’re not going to form a new habit for something you hate. Find a way to make a new habit fun. And on the other side of the coin, if you’re trying to break a habit, find a way to make it less enjoyable. - Repeat on a regular basis. On average, it takes about 66 days to make a simple health change. The more complex the behavior, the longer it might take. Generally, two months is a good ballpark estimate for the average person to form or break a habit. If you miss a day, don’t worry about it; just get back on track. Habit memory takes a long time to form, yet a single skip doesn’t wipe away what’s been built up.  BONUS - Stop Your Body from Shriveling... The last time you gazed at your naked body in the mirror, did you wonder... “What happened to all those once-proud muscles I used to have?” If you’re over 50, the answer is... Your body is shrinking and shriveling away. It started around your 30th birthday. Your body began losing muscle and bone – even if you exercise. The loss is gradual at first (so you may not notice). But the older you get, the faster those muscles go. By the time you turn 75... You will have lost half the muscles and strength you had at 20. And the more muscle you lose, the faster your remaining muscles will vanish. Which makes you even weaker and more shriveled. (And at a faster rate.) Your bones don’t fare much better. As you age, they lose density and become so fragile they can crack of break from a handshake or a hug. What’s causing all this withering and wasting away? Your muscles and bones aren’t receiving [some key nutrients]( they need in order to keep growing. So, they steal them from your remaining muscles and bones. This is what accelerates their deterioration. But now there’s an easy way to halt this shriveling and degeneration. It’s an amazing new pill that actually preserves your muscles and bones – without any special exercise required. In fact, it even works if you’re bedridden! ([Click here to see the proof.]( If you’re over 50, you really need to know about this new “muscle-and-bone preserving pill.” These amazing results have been proven at the world’s leading hospitals and research centers. [Click here to discover]( how one daily serving can stop your muscles and bones from wasting... So you can stay in charge of your daily life – instead of depending on your loved ones (or total strangers) to take care of you in your senior years. Kindest regards, Change That Up.     Change That Up was founded to help replace old habits with positive, healthy habits. It is our core belief that you have the power to #changethatup when we’re stuck in rut. You can do this by using our powerful daily insights delivered to your inbox. We all grew up on the typical standard American diet. We followed the patterns and behaviors that we learned from everyone around us. When we all first started growing up and becoming adults, we started living a work life behind the desk. We got busy with life. We almost all fell out of any good habits that we had while growing up (this almost always happened unless you grew up in a home that taught good nutrition and healthy habits). As any adult in their 40s and 50s can relate, you feel a great amount of joy when you see your healthy habits create a life of freedom and happiness.  Through all the years of frustration, we eventually figured out that developing healthy habits requires surrounding yourself with positive influences that embody how you want to live. Here at Change That Up (with some help from our favorite health experts and practitioners along the way) we’ve developed a trusted newsletter that has helped thousands of men and women become better at living healthy, one positive change at a time. We give extra time and attention to break down big ideas into simplified, bite-sized insights for daily improvement.  With our daily email newsletter, you will become a much more confident, knowledgeable and healthy version of yourself. Our newsletter is packed with valuable insights and quality product recommendations for you. 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