Episode 7: Finding the healthy habit that works best for you

With so many fads in fitness and health at the moment it’s hard to separate what’s trendy from what works for you. In this episode the vibrant Dr Amy Bucher, Behaviour Change Design Director at Mad*Pow Boston discusses the importance of experimentation and cultivating kindness to finding the healthy habits that will work best for you.

In this episode we discuss

·       How engineering your environment is vital to your long term habit success

·       The importance of adopting an experimental mindset towards your healthy habits

·       How becoming a coach not a critic can help you overcome healthy habit challenges

·       How to tune into the key things that will help you get started with a physical activity habit

Key questions to ask yourself based on this episode include:

·       How can you shape your environment to support your healthy habits? Is your gym convenient enough? Can you bring your exercise gear into work?

·       Could you start to experiment with various aspects of self-determination theory to support your healthy habits? (keeping in mind the balance of these factors is completely individual i.e. community doesn’t matter to everyone, but feedback can be more important to some)

For example:

·       How can you feel like being active is a free choice for you?

o   Perhaps thinking firstly about; Why it is important to you to engage in activity?

·       How can you feel like you’re making progress or growth? How do you get positive feedback?

o   What type of feedback works best for you? Are you data driven? Or socially driven?

·       How can you foster feeling part of community?

o   What type of encouragement works best for you?

o   How can you build community (if that is what motivates you) into your habits?

·       Can you tune into your own inner coach, what positive things can you say to reinforce your success?

o   (For evidence based ways of how to do this see our Kindness Habit blog)

Amy has a unique and engaging way of translating what the evidence says is most effective into key factors that you can apply to grow your healthy habits today. I hope this conversation sparks some ideas about how you could adopt some of these elements into your own life.

Resources:

You can find out more about Amy and read her fantastic blog at:

http://www.amybucherphd.com/

The game Amy mentioned was Super Better

https://www.superbetter.com/