Geschatte leestijd: 5 minutenHow do you turn the intention to lose weight into habits? What prevents you from implementing habit change?
“Weight loss starter pack”
As a passionate nutritionist, you receive dozens of nutrition consultations per week, and many of them involve people who think that weight loss is the next starter pack:
- You want to lose kilos
- You follow a meal plan (to cry!)
- The expectation is 100% results, even if you secretly eat more in the evenings than you write down
- Calories aren’t just calories
- Trying to think about it as little as possible
Newsflash: it’s not going to work
You want to change deep-seated habits, but you don’t want to make an effort for it. Let’s be honest: “Do you always do that when you want to change something in your life?” Do you always go back to your own safe haven where you know and can do everything? Or do you also venture into the dark unknown to find new paths to your own happiness?
If you think that losing weight plays a small role in your happiness, then make an effort for it, darn it! A small group of people get everything handed to them, but most people have to work hard for it. So do you! Don’t you want to see yourself happy? What exactly is holding you back from changing? Is it the difficulty of diets? Is it annoying to think about it, or do you find it obsessive? If you want to respond to this blog, I’m very curious about your obstacles!
Habits
Habits don’t just happen overnight because they need a longer period to become part of your structure. A habit arises from an intention (tendency to). If you repeat an intention often enough, a habit forms. Developing certain habits can be called healthy or unhealthy in the health industry. It’s more interesting to look at deep-seated habits when it comes to gaining body weight (think about driving a car; do you think about that?).
An unhealthy habit can be successfully addressed through an intention-implementation [1]. This is systematically deploying an idea to change people’s intentions. In this particular experiment, they created a noticeable recycling spot to get employees to recycle more. It worked for the 109 employees.
Does providing information work for habit change?
Unfortunately, providing information does not work to change habits. A descriptive article that describes this strongly [2]:
“Information campaigns that successfully convey information do not necessarily change consumers’ behaviors.”
The Dutch Nutrition Centre states that the Dutch should consume 200 grams of vegetables and fruit, but only 1 in 10 people eat their vegetables and fruit per day [3]! Everyone knows that vegetables and fruit are necessary, but no one does it. What is the solution to ensure that people get their portion of vegetables and fruit? Is it the mountains of useless information on the internet?
Another quote from the research [2]:
“Informational campaigns and self-help programs offer a kind of ‘downstream,’ individual-level intervention designed to change the behavior of people who already suffer from a given risk factor (e.g., sedentary lifestyle, unhealthful diet)”
Providing information does help when someone already suffers from something. Another strong point, and this can be supported with an example. Suppose you suffer from constipation (difficulty passing stools due to hard stools) and you know you eat little vegetables and fruit. A counselor then indicates that you need to work on your intake of vegetables and fruit and provides practical tips to make it easier. The intention to add vegetables and fruit is stronger because you suffer from constipation. If you don’t suffer from it, many people think: “oh well, it won’t happen to me – I’ll live to be 100 years old!”
Health is not a tangible object, so it all seems far away.
Suffer and yet do nothing?
Frankly, people are masochists (they thrive on pain). We suffer from a health problem and then tackle the symptoms when they get too bad. Then the health problems come back later, isn’t that wonderful? That’s why you do it, because of the wonderful painful stimuli that arise? Why else would you continue to suffer with symptoms for so long and not address the cause (except for extreme cases)?
The downside is that people only intervene when they start to suffer. Think of people who are overweight and start to have knee problems due to wear and tear. The doctor’s reaction is that the excess weight might have been a bit too much for the knees in the long run. What do you see then? A lot of regret from people that it has come to this. Regret because you have become less mobile and have to sit on a bench every 500 meters.
The example of overweight is problematic because there are not always symptoms (except for the weight itself). However, there are clear signs that indicate you are overweight. Being overweight doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have knee problems, as you might do a lot of strength training and have developed strong legs. So it varies per situation!
Losing weight and health?
The problem in the industry is that we don’t separate weight loss and health from each other. Also, in the health sector, we often see that health problems are automatically linked to overweight. Of course, they both influence each other, but an approach doesn’t have to address both points. An example:
You are Piet, you weigh 120 kilograms, and you suffer from constipation. Piet wants to lose weight to 90 kilograms and wants to feel confident.
The “weight loss” is purely about eating fewer kilocalories than you need. That’s rule number one of thermodynamics. Piet can lose body weight, but this doesn’t mean he loses his constipation.
Then we come to “health,” and you realize that Piet is missing fiber in his diet. You don’t advise him to increase his fiber intake because it will help him lose weight. No, you advise it because otherwise, he has so much stomach pain due to constipation. His chance of abdominal cramps, colorectal cancer is reduced.
Habits, weight loss, and effort
If you have deep-seated unhealthy habits, then you need to seriously get to work. Another example from everyday life:
If you always eat a cookie with your coffee, then a cup of coffee will make you feel like you’re missing something, and that’s true: a cookie! Then you ask yourself whether you should take that cookie or not. So the inner struggle to unlearn an unhealthy habit begins.
Practical tips
- Standard craving for something tasty two hours after dinner? Go for a 15-20 minute walk instead of eating/drinking
- Don’t know if you often look in the snack cupboard? Stick a colored note on the cupboard and note how often you look.
- Do you always have treats in the cupboard (supposedly for visitors or family)? Leave those outside… the treats, that is?
- A partner who keeps indulging while you want to work on your figure? Ask your partner for understanding and support, talk to each other!!
Final remarks
Losing weight, no one is going to do it for you! You can only arrange your own environment (healthier) so that you are tempted as little as possible. If you don’t do that, you have a greater chance of gaining weight.
From a personal point of view, it’s not willpower that makes you successful, but the strategic approach you implement in your own life.
Really the last remark: if you still say now that a calorie isn’t a calorie, then I recommend reading the section “losing weight and health” again. As often nicely expressed by other colleagues: you don’t talk about energetic (kilocalories) properties of food, while weight loss focuses on that. In other words; If you want to lose weight, first look at the total amount of energy you consume and only then at the source of calories.
Health often focuses on non-energetic properties of food (fiber, vitamins/minerals, etc.).
References
- Holland, R.W., Aarts, H. & Langendam, D. (2006) Breaking and creating habits on the working floor: A field-experiment on the power of implementation intentions. Elsevier uitgeverij
- Verplanken, B. & Wood, W. (2006) Interventions to Break and Create Consumer Habits. American Marketing Association
- RIVM (2016) What’s on our plate? Article consulted on January 24, 2018, and found at:
