The Science of Self-Help

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Day 91, Eating and Burpee Status Update

Day 91 Record Keeping SRHI = 70
Day 59 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 72
Day 5 Burpee SRHI= 42
Day 105 Eating SRHI = 58
Good night sleep, great wakeup.

Eating and Burpee Status

I feel generally back on track with eating. Will monitor carefully, because now I’m in uncharted territory - I’ve done eating habits and diets for 3 months, never for more, so this is really quite exciting. Yesterday I was thinking of habits that would help. I had in mind BJ Fogg’s Tinyhabits. Tinyhabits seem to work by lowering the threshold needed to endure a habit until it reaches full habituation. Hence his “brush one tooth” mentality.

What are some individual habits that make up eating right? I came up with several - making a salad or an omelette every morning. Cutting out anything but water. A shopping habit, since a lot of cheating involves not having material for cooking on hand. A cooking habit. Eating one clean meal a day. 

I’m thinking of these because, if my theory is correct, I’ll be sorely tested in these next three months. My theory that the universe conspires to throw a wrench in habits seems to be true for this one as I will be traveling for three weeks and will have to have a “travel protocol.” Again, the point isn’t perfection - the point is just surviving this period.

Also, I can’t help thinking about an ideal - if I were to do it again or teach someone else how to eat right, I’d definitely start with smaller steps - eating right is just way too complicated and is made up of many small habits. Doing it all it once seems highly untenable. But I’ve gotten this far, might as well charge on ahead.

I initially thought that I’d have to only do one habit at a time. And I still think this is generally a good idea. But with Tinyhabits, I have a sense that it’s not necessary. Which is why I’m continuing my burpee habit.

Lally’s graph extension indicated 250 days for a basic exercise habit. But employing implementation intention combined with the lightened Endurance load, I really feel it’s going to take a lot less time to achieve automaticity.  Which brings up another issue…

If these techniques change the full lifecycle of a habit, then it’s just one more variable that’s on a sliding scale. We’ll see, but it might be just that much more difficult to come up with a concise equation.