Making Good Habits for Life

Making Good Habits for Life

Key Points

Successful long term weight toss can only happen if you make changes that are sustainable.

A diet and activity journal can help you identify areas where you are on track to achieving a healthier weight, and areas where there is room for improvement.

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got" - Mark Twain

Topics

1. Making effective lifestyle changes

2. Keeping a diet and activity journal

3. Your diet and activity journal

Introduction

Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is a life long journey, not a one off event.

The Healthy Weight For Life™ program is all about helping you establish and maintain a range of new, healthy eating, drinking and activity habits that can become a normal part of your everyday life. This module outlines how to make lifestyle changes that last.

1. Making effective lifestyle changes

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Successful, long term weight loss can only happen if you make changes that are sustainable. Here are some tips to help you make effective lifestyle changes:

Adopt the attitude that you are creating new, beneficial and nourishing habits, rather than focusing on breaking old, 'bad' habits. Eventually your newly created, healthy habits will take the place of some of your not-so-helpful ones.

Make adequate preparation by identifying which healthy habits you would like to adopt. Do your research, work out what will fit in with your lifestyle, capabilities and preferences. Only you can decide which habits you are willing and able to change.

Make your new habit a priority. It is easy to make excuses as to why now may not be the ideal time to create change. Work out what you can do today and start making those changes! No matter how small the first step is, it will get you one step closer to your goal.

Focus on adopting one new habit at a time. Each small habit combines to create your lifestyle, so making changes to one habit at a time will eventually achieve great results.

Use the SMART (specific, measureable, achievable, realistic and time-framed) goal setting strategy, as outlined in week 2 of the Healthy Weight For Life™ program. Remember to divide long term goals into more manageable, simple, short term goals. Reaching the short term goals and celebrating small successes along the way can motivate you to achieve your long term goal.

When creating a new habit, if you have a lapse or revert back to old habits, re-commit to the new habit again. Work out why you may have slipped up and how you can avoid another lapse. It is perfectly normal to have set backs, but it is what we do about setbacks that will determine whether we succeed or fail.

Studies show that if we want to develop a relatively simple habit like eating a piece of fruit for morning tea each day or taking a 15 minute walk, it could take us as long as two months of daily repetitions before the behaviour becomes a habit - so hang in there!

2. Keeping a diet and activity journal

Keeping a diet and activity journal can help you achieve your weight loss goals and create new, healthy habits for life. By keeping a journal, you will become more aware of your habits and highlight areas where you can improve.

The Healthy Weight for Life™ program assists you to make changes - the journal can support these guided changes, in addition to being a fantastic resource once you have completed the Healthy Weight For Life™ program.

A journal will help you make more conscious choices about what you eat, drink and what activity you incorporate into your day. By writing everything down, it means that you will consider things more closely.

This can be a great motivator. You won't need to keep a journal all of the time, however it is particularly helpful when creating new habits for a healthy lifestyle; during times where your weight loss and fitness may have plateaued; or when your motivation needs a boost.

Ideally you should review your journal with your supporting healthcare professional. They will be able to help you identify some unhealthy habits that you may like to modify. The Healthy Weight For Life™ Support Team can also help you identify areas that could benefit from change.

Diet journals

Diet journals help you become aware of your current eating and drinking behaviours, and ways you can change them to reach your weight loss goals.

Diet journals help you record:

the time you ate or drank

what you ate or drank (and how it was prepared)

what quantities you ate or drank

where you ate or drank.

Other useful information to make a note of is:

who you were with

your thoughts or emotions at the time

what your level of hunger was before eating.

Some of the areas that may be highlighted via your diet journal are:

Where and when do you do most of your eating?

What are some of your non-hunger triggers for eating?

What kind of food contributes most to your total energy intake?

What are some healthy foods that you could introduce?

In order to keep an accurate diet journal, you can follow these simple steps:

Record what you eat or drink as soon as possible after consuming your meal or snack. Carry the journal with you to make this easier as it is difficult to recall everything at the end of the day.

Record your eating and drinking in as much detail as possible, including portion sizes and the quantity of each ingredient in the meal, for example remember to include the amount of oil that was used to cook or any condiments that may have been added.

Use measuring devices whenever possible to record the amount of each ingredient accurately.

Keep your records honest.

Activity journals

An activity journal will help you reflect on your current physical activity levels, and plan ways to increase your activity.

You can keep an activity journal to record:

the time you exercised

the type and intensity of the activity, (eg: brisk walking for 30 minutes)

how long you were active for, and if relevant, the distance covered.

Other useful information to make a note of is:

who you were with

your thoughts or emotions before exercising

your thoughts or emotions after exercising.

Some of the points that may be highlighted via your activity journal are:

what is your current activity level?

what activity has worked in the past?

how can your activity level be increased?

what do you see as your limitations to increasing your activity levels? How can these limitations be overcome?

In order to keep an accurate activity journal, you can follow these simple steps:

Record what activity you were engaged in as soon as possible after finishing it.

Get into the habit of exercising at the same time for each day of the week, for example you could attend the ballroom dancing class every Wednesday night and the Tai Chi class every Saturday morning.

Keep your records honest.

Remember, those who are self-monitoring are more likely to lose weight and keep it off.

What suggestions can you make for the person filling in the sample diet and activity journal? What to continue? (eg: chicken sandwich on wholegrain bread with lettuce is great - try to add more salad and minimize mayonnaise)

What could change? (eg: try to spend more time on physical activity. Go for a walk during your lunch break and take time to enjoy your lunch away from your desk)

3. Diet and activity journal

The diet and activity journal is available under your Resources tab online and in the Tracking Tools section of your HWFL Week by Week Guide book.