Why your Environment is More Influencial than your Willpower

For someone who helps people change their body shape it is not surprising that habits are the area I am most interested in.

Habits literally shape both our bodies and our lives.

When someone states they plan to lose weight, fundamentally they are stating they plan to change their habits.

So understanding habits and where they come from is an absolute essential if you plan to change your body shape.

OUR 'TWO BRAINS'

What separates humans from every other animal on this planet?

Automated Brain

Humans, like animals, have an 'instinctive brain' that work on impulse and instinct. This brain developed is where all your habits, automatic reactions, responses and impulsive actions come from. This is our fast reacting brain - any time you do something without thinking, this is where that action or thought came from.

Rational Brain

However, humans, unlike animals, also have a second 'brain' that allows us to think cognitively - to make plans, to analyse, assess or to consciously change behaviour, tact or strategy in order to get a different outcome. This is our slower, considered brain - any time you have to stop, consider various parts of a problem and then make a decision, this is where that analyses came from.

The Critical Info

The instinctive brain developed millions of years ago before humans had the ability to think consciously. It's prime function was to keep man alive so 'rewards' such as food, water and sex were of critical importance to it.

In regards to food, once food was found, if the food tasted sweet (which usually meant not poisonous) his brain would instinctively register all critical elements of the environment (sights, sounds, smells, dangers) in order to map how to get this food again the next time he became hungry.

Today we probably associate more with our conscious, rational brain than our instinctive brain. We look at ourselves as conscious beings who plan our days, make rational decisions and adapt as needed.

However, two critical pieces of information may make you reconsider:

Your slow rational brain cannot multitask:

If you want to see this in action, try reciting your 17x table in your head whilst drawing the object to the left.

What happened? Did your pen stop to allow you to focus on the math?

Now try again reciting your 2x table.

Could you now do it as your rational brain focused on the drawing and your instinctive brain did the math?

Learning a new skill takes time and mental effort and is done using your rational brain. It is done through trial and error. However, once this skill is refined, your rational brain downloads this skill to your instinctive brain in order to free up cognitive space for more complex issues. This makes perfect sense in a world where we need to multi-task most of the day.

It is estimated that up to 84% of our day is done on auto-pilot

As mentioned above, in today's world we need to multi-task and this isn't something your slow, rational brain can do so most of our day is spent using our Automated brain.

It is also important to realise that

Our automated brain was designed to react to our environment (both physical and social) in order to know which habits to fire and when.

Once we know the anatomy of a habit we can start to understand our behaviour for whilst I said that the thing that separates humans from animals is our ability to think consciously, it is estimated that up to 84% of out daily lives are set on auto-pilot relying on the same instinctive patterns of behaviour as the afore mentioned dog. The only difference is our habits involve more complex and intricate movements (driving a car, playing a sport etc).

THE ANATOMY OF A HABIT

An animal learns a cue (a dog realises it is that time of day when it gets its day walk), the cue triggers a craving, (the dog gets excited for its walk), the craving triggers a response, (the dog starts barking at you to take it out), and the response (hopefully) gets the desired reward, (you pick up the lead and take the dog out).

And this is the basic anatomy of a habit as written by Charles Duhigg and James Clear.

This is the basic anatomy of a habit whether you be an animal or a human. Remember that habits are simply routines that have been downloaded to the automated brain so seldom involve our rational brain.

This means that 84% of our daily lives are simply automated patterns of behaviour that are derived from encountering specific cues/triggers situated within our environment.

KEY TAKE HOME POINTS:

1. We spend most of our days operating via repeated habits that stem from our automated brain.

2. Our automated brain reacts heavily to our environment looking for cues on when to fire each habit.

3. Our environment therefore has a huge impact on our behaviour

The next logical question is what constitutes a cue/trigger?

What Triggers a Habit to Start?

Habits aren't random. You don't suddenly start pouring yourself a glass of wine at breakfast. There has to be a trigger somewhere to tell your brain when to start a given habit be it impulsive eating, brushing your teeth or checking your phone.

All habits need a trigger in order to know when to fire.

There are 5 key triggers which are listed below:

LOCATION

Have you noticed that you tend to get the same cravings in the same places?

Maybe you always fancy a muffin when you stop for coffee or you find yourself grabbing a chocolate bar at the petrol station.

Locations house our triggers so it's not surprising we get a craving in certain locations

TIME

How many of us notice we start getting the nibbles at 11am or a similar time each day.

This isn't by chance. Much like feeding a dog at the same time every day, once a pattern has emerged, your brain will instinctively make you peckish once the clock rolls round to feed time.

EMOTIONAL STATE

Whether you are happy, sad, lonely, fed up or just plane bored, you brain knows that eating something high in sugar and fat will change your emotional state (even if only for a moment) so encourages you to reach for the biscuit barrel/ice cream.

PRESENT COMPANY

Certain friends will encourage certain food habits.

Do you have a set of friends who you always drink with?

Do you have a set of friends you always have a coffee and a muffin with?

Once a pattern has been established it doesn't feel right to not have this food with them.

IMMEDIATE PRECEEDING EVENT

An action or event can trigger another habit.

For example: How many of us get home and after coming through the front door we head straight for the kitchen? The closing the front door triggers the desire to go to the kitchen.

A trigger can be brought to life through any of our senses:

• Sight

  • Seeing a chocolate bar in a shop

• Sound

  • Hearing music or a sound you associate with a chocolate bar because of the chocolate bar’s advertising on TV

• Smell

  • Smelling freshly bakery products when shopping

• Touch

  • Holding a warm cup of coffee in your hand can fire up the desire for an accompanying muffin

• Taste

  • A food that triggers consumption of other food. e.g. Alcohol and a curry/kabab. These are known as 'trigger foods'

The most common sensory trigger is sight. How often have you been feeling fine then suddenly have the urge to buy a chocolate bar whilst queuing to pay for your otherwise healthy shop? Had those bars not been at the checkout, the thought of eating one would never have crossed your mind.

The issue we have is that these triggers are all around us and they encourage us to often act in ways they aren’t in alignment with our health or body shape goals.

The more we can shape our environment, alleviating bad triggers and replacing them with healthy triggers the more we may find our behaviour changing without us forcing through these adaptions using willpower.

PUTTING THIS INTO ACTION

I often tell my clients that 'A goal without a plan is just a wish' so here are some practical tips to help you plan to change your habits:

Start by focusing on the environments you can control:

Avoid Planning Unhealthy Behaviour

When you do your weekly shop, avoid purchasing food you know you should be avoiding, (including alcohol).

If you want this food later in the week, make yourself work for it by having to make a special journey to get it at the moment you want it. Avoid making unwanted behaviour easy.

Cleanse your House and Kitchen

Take unhealthy food out of your home. Clear the biscuit barrel, the fridge or the wine rack as having these triggers within touching distance simply encourages impulsive consumption.

In your fridge, please veg in the middle of the fridge at eye level and place the less healthy food tucked away at the back or bottom.

Avoid Locations that Encourage Impulsive Eating

If you know there are locations that encourage you to consume the wrong food stuffs, try to avoid them.

Change your coffee shop to a walk in the park with a coffee or choose a coffee shop that doesn't sell your favourite muffins.

If this isn't possible, get your friend to purchase the coffees so you don't have to go anywhere near the cakes and sweets at the sales counter.

Take time off from your local pub if you know you consume too much alcohol. If you still have to go there, fill up on water before you enter the pub so you already feel full with liquid.

When shopping, pre-fix which isles you will use. Avoid the confectionary isle and the alcohol isle as these only lead to impulsive purchasing.

Plan for Impulsive Moments

If you know you get stressed and the consume sugar and fat in order to relieve this stress, use YouTube to find a relaxation/breathing video and have this set up with some earphones in order to try meditation to see if that calms you without the need for food.

If you know you have a tendency to snack on healthy food at a set time of day (for example, late evening), pre-cut some peppers and place next to a small put of humous. This way when the craving to consume something comes, you can impulsively great the peppers and eat them SLOWLY to see if that wards off the late night high calorie munchies.

Avoid Trigger Foods

If you know you have a food that triggers an increase desire or consumption for further impulsive eating, try cutting that out of your diet. For example: My trigger food is a Snickers bar. I only have to eat one bar and my desire to consume every chocolate bar under the sun sky rockets. As a result, I consume Snickers as a rare treat but stick to other bars that do not have this affect my my desire.

Change Company

If you know you have friends who encourage you to consume the wrong foods, take a month sabbatical from heading out with them. If you don't want to be so antisocial, try changing some of the other triggers - change the time of day you see them, change the location you see them, or change the length of time you see them for.

If you are in a position you cannot change any of the triggers, change the way you respond to them:

When you want to impulsively consume a foodstuff and you cannot move away from it, try using the 20 Minute Rule. You may still consume the food after the 20 minutes is up but it won't be impulsive, it will at least be considered.

If you are drinking down the pub, leave a 20 minute gap between finishing one drink and ordering the next.

If you are at work and there is birthday cake, wait 20 minutes then eat half your slice, re-set the 20 minutes and only eat the other half after the second countdown is complete.

At Christmas when people leave nibbles out, leave 20 minutes between each handful you consume. Whilst this won't stop you consuming unhealthy food it will hugely reduce the volume of food you eat and also the number of needless calories.

The list is endless and specific to you but the key principle is that you understand when, where and why you act like you do. 

WRAP UP

This isn’t a sexy new diet that you can post on social media, this isn’t going to show amazing results in a week that you can tell your friends about but it is a fundamental of long term shape change.

Most importantly, it allows you to develop future skills that are bespoke to you.

For more information on how to use these techniques to help you, pop me a mail or give me a buzz.  I am always happy to sit down and discuss how I may be able to help you with creating a plan of action that could change your future.

#passion #livinganactivelife