Habits: Good and Bad

There are good habits and bad habits. I know for myself, I had many bad habits that significantly, negatively impacted my weight over the years. Honestly, I didn’t have many good habits in place that might help me maintain a healthful weight in the long term and that made me nervous because once you get the weight off, statistics indicate that it is generally behavior that makes or breaks your long-term success.  Like you, I want this to be successful in the long term. We have all had too many weight loss boomerangs and I don’t want that to happen to me anymore than you want it to happen to you. I decided that since habits, good and bad are the foundation for so many behavioral changes that I needed to address them head on. It has helped me a great deal to identify both bad habits that need to be eradicated and good habits that need to be cultivated. Bad habits are part of the reason that we ended up needing to explore the possibility and finally decide to have WLS. Taking a look at these behaviors and trying to conquer them is something that I’m working on to try to ‘stack the deck’ in my favor so that I’ll be able to maintain the significant losses and gains that I’ve enjoyed as a benefit of my weight loss surgery journey.  Good habits are probably as important to long-term success as eradicating bad habits. It isn’t always easy to know what good habits should be, so I look at how others before have succeeded and try to leverage the habits that they have incorporated into their lives.  I have two lists that I use; The Bad Habit List and the Good Habit List. The Bad Habit list allows me to look at the Bad Habits I have, try to assess how ‘dangerous’ they are, why I do them, why I’d be better off if I didn’t and actively think about what to do the make a change. The Good Habit List allows me to take time to think about what I’d like to do for myself, why it’s good for me and how I can make it regular part of my healthier life. I hope that you find these helpful as you look at your own habits and the changes you may want to make to give yourself the best chance at long-term success. 

Barb

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Bad Habit List 

1. Make a list of Bad Habits that you think might negatively impact your ability to reach and/or maintain your weight loss goals.
2. Use scale of 1 to 10 to rate how seriously is this bad habit likely to threaten your weight loss or maintenance goals?
3. Identify the reward you get when you exercise each of the bad habits you have identified.
4. Identify the reward for breaking each of the bad habits you have identified.
5. Create a plan of action to change the bad habit.
6. Select 1 or 2 of your Bad Habits from the list to try to change. Conquer those and move on to the next on the list.

Bad Habit	Rate the threat this Bad Habit might have on  your Success	Reward for indulging Bad Habit	Reward for Breaking Bad Habit	Action Plan to Change Bad Habit

Good Habit List 

1. Make a list of Good Habits that you think might positively impact your ability to reach and/or maintain your weight loss goals.
2. Use scale of 1 to 10 to rate how effectively this good habit likely to support your weight loss or maintenance goals?
3. Identify the reward you get when you exercise each of the good habits you have identified.
4. Create a plan of action to establish the good habit.
5. Select 1 or 2 of your Good Habits from the list to try to establish. Conquer those and move on to the next on the list.

Good Habit	Rate the effect this Good Habit might have on  your Success	Reward for establishing Good Habit	Action Plan to Change Bad Habit

      

Barb,

I love this! My husband and I just had a very long discussion about this very thing- This is a great way to organize your thoughts, and see something tangible.

I'm so glad that you've found this helpful.

Barb