Sustainable Weight Loss: Changing Habits, Not Diets
1. Introduction to Sustainable Weight Loss
Sustainable weight loss has garnered significant
public interest, reflecting our expanding waistline. Unfortunately, many
individuals remain unsuccessful in their struggle with weight, despite
scientific developments regarding our bodies and effective therapies. The word
"diet" has ranked in the top 10 most Googled terms for trending
health queries. This suggests that fad diets have swept across the United
States. In our opinion, much more attention should be paid to habit formation.
Most individuals continue to adhere to a restrictive eating pattern, eschewing
certain food habits and other habits considered damaging to weight management.
Eventually, however, this focus should shift away from losing weight and
instead toward long-term success. Instead of just changing someone's path to
losing weight, habits could be modified in such a way that the environment or
personal behavior would lend itself to weight control.
While we often talk about the food elements of weight
loss, someone's habits are very intrinsic to how they consume food. Habits are
the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people when it comes to dealing
with customers; that's why we're discussing them here. Habit development is
tightly interwoven with behavior in general; when they refer to meals, habits
are closely linked to our emotional and mental condition. When habits change,
they should include more than just the effort to lose weight. Habits have the
ability to fully change one's environment, physical health, and mental and
emotional condition. A restrictive diet or exercise routine might serve as a
brief solution. To lose and manage weight within a wellness plan requires a
supportive setting in which the majority of individuals live. Our thoughts here
can help create an environment in which healthy ways of living are
straightforward. These are only ideas for the person who sincerely wishes to
make a long-term commitment.
2. The Role of Habits in Weight Management
Habits are central to the maintenance of body weight
and shape, with the majority of eating behavior and physical activity practice
resulting from ingrained habits. There is increasing evidence to suggest that
it is habit strength that is the key to successful weight management, rather
than compliance with a particular diet or exercise prescription. Habits have
been defined as a process whereby contextual cues become paired with mental
associations or a repertoire of automatic behaviors that can be enacted with
minimal cognitive effort. The more often these contextual cues are encountered,
the stronger habits become. In practice, this means that in order to form a
habit of exercising, the act of going to the gym should be performed regularly
in the presence of a specific cue, such as finishing work for the day. By doing
so, strong associations will form between the act of finishing work, the gym as
a logical next step, and the process of donning gym gear, washing up, and then
actually descending to the gym. The better formed this sequence, the less
effort is required to actually get to the gym, perform the tasks of exercise,
and head back out again to return home.
Changing habits is more time-intensive than forming
new ones over time and needs both motivation and reinforcement of new desirable
actions. In eating behavior, habits can also be triggered by emotional states
or other stimuli associated with actual food consumption. There is evidence to
suggest that food cues in the environment can increase the frequency of intake
of the associated food, and this is of particular relevance to the formation
and maintenance of eating habits. Enhancing awareness of one's personally
harmful habits and their situational triggers is the first step in habit
change. Then, the most desirable alternative healthy behavior needs to be
decided upon, practiced, and eventually become automatic. The behavior should
therefore be something that can be consistently practiced in a particular
context and should also be simple and practical to adopt. The goal in habit
change is therefore differentiation—practicing the desirable behavior in
context, and when environmental or emotional cues are encountered, but not
practicing the old poor behavior so that its strength becomes weakened over
time. Full habit strength can take months or years for formation and
modification, particularly in complex behaviors. Thus, patience is a virtue for
one engaging in habit-based weight loss. Most likely, one can begin to reduce
one's food intake for weight loss purposes while practicing more exercise and
non-sedentary behaviors without these later acts interfering with other healthy
habits. Over time, the new desirable behaviors will become relatively automatic
as well for most. The habit theory of body weight change is particularly useful
in adapting to the fact that most individuals eventually regain lost weight and
that sluggishness in metabolism restores previous weight/fat mass over time. It
therefore provides a sound scientific basis for modifying one's current habits
for life.
3. Practical Strategies for Building Healthy Habits
Incorporating healthy habits into your life and
sticking with them can be quite the intimidating pursuit. The following
strategies are techniques that have been proven to work for establishing and
maintaining positive changes. Accomplishing daily and weekly goals will guide
you to your individualized success.
Build a Realistic and Supportive Routine Set small,
achievable goals that fit your lifestyle and can become part of your daily
routine. Incorporating healthy habits into the routine you currently have is
much easier than making a major transformation. Observing and overcoming
obstacles is the best way to make lifelong changes and will result in a much
lower stress level. When you make a habit a part of your routine, rely on a
specific time of day to consistently complete your task. An established time to
eat, exercise, or walk your dog will keep you on task and reinforce your new
habit.
Tracking Your Progress Record and journal your daily
progress focusing on the healthy habits you are working to establish, as well
as any challenges that you encountered along the way. Journaling can occur on
your smartphone, calendar, or planner. On a particularly difficult day, write
down at least one positive occurrence that helped you to stay on track. This
can be as monumental as passing up a favorite food and choosing a healthier
option or as minor as taking a couple of minutes to really breathe. When
working to establish a new habit, celebrate your achievements along the way to
build confidence. Stack a new habit on top of an established habit that has a
similar purpose. For example, drink a glass of water at the time you normally
drink your midday coffee.
4. Mindful Eating and its Impact on Weight Loss
Mindful eating is paying attention to our eating
experience in the present moment without judgment. This means being aware of
taste, texture, and the feeling of fullness that we get when we eat, and
acknowledging whether our bodies need more food or if it would be better to
stop eating. Making a conscious choice about portion size and food quality
could lead to improved health and reduce rates of overweight and obesity.
There are many ways to practice mindful eating, such
as slowing down to fully savor each bite of food and recognizing this
experience. Eating when just hungry and stopping when full is a mindful
practice as well. Consuming meals while multitasking or working distracted is
linked to obesity and overeating. Multitaskers often consume meals more quickly
than they would if they were focused on the taste, texture, and visual aspects
of their meal. Eating so quickly prevents our brain from registering fullness,
which leads to overeating and hunger for more calories long after the meal has
been digested. Mindful eating has been shown to improve our health. Overweight
individuals often eat in response to sadness, anger, and frustration.
Individuals practicing mindfulness eat less junk food while in a sad mood.
Mindful eating may encourage individuals to focus on the positive, non-food
aspects of the holiday. Focusing on activities they enjoy can help individuals
savor experiences that motivate them to continue a healthy lifestyle. Stress
has been linked to emotional eating. Engaging in relaxation techniques such as
deep breathing, aromatherapy, and acupressure for stress relief often can help
alleviate emotional eating. As with stress management, awareness remains pivotal.
When mindful eating, moments of relaxation are appreciated and used in order to
reduce eating as coping. Practice mindfulness at each meal. Turn the focus away
from portion size, fat grams, and calorie count and more toward regaining
awareness of your physical hunger and fullness cues. This benefits body weight
and health.
5. Exercise and Physical Activity in Sustainable Weight Management
Following the previous section of this chapter, this
part discusses the importance of exercise and physical activity for achieving
sustainable weight loss. However, this is by no means the only benefit of
regular exercise. There is strong scientific evidence to show that physical
activity is healthy and confers many healthful outcomes. This includes lowering
the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes,
osteoporosis, and depression. It can also be seen that regular physical activity
improves mood and psychological well-being. This section begins by discussing
the role of exercise in weight management and then considers the beneficial
effects of regular physical activity on the body. It describes the different
types of exercise that an individual might engage in and how they might
maintain their levels of physical activity over the long term to prevent weight
regain. Finally, the importance of combining exercise with diet therapy is
discussed to achieve the best results.
There are two components to energy expenditure. The
first is the baseline rate of energy required to support the inner workings of
the body at rest. In other words, even if we were to lie very still in bed all
day, we would require a good deal of energy to keep the heart beating, the
blood circulating, and to support various functions in the brain, liver, and
elsewhere. In previous sections of this chapter, we discussed the energy used
for metabolic function: basal metabolic rate and the thermogenic effects of
food. The major part of the remaining energy that the body uses is from
physical activity. This forms the second component. The following sections
continue this discussion and show how it can contribute to a negative energy
balance to achieve weight reduction.