HEALTH & SAFETY FEATURE- How to be lazy and improve your health

Kaitlyn Bruschi explores what habits are and how we can use them to our advantage for better health.

Our brain is in overdrive, making thousands of decisions each day – everything from what clothes we should wear, to the food we should eat, to what exercise we should do (if any). We make over 200 decisions each day around food alone.

Thankfully, many of these decisions are occurring at the subconscious level without our awareness. It is our habits that make this process seamless. However, we need to ensure we are making the right decisions. Namely, establish positive habits to maintain our physical, emotional and social wellbeing.

Habits are good

Behaviour change is a difficult process, with traditional methods of intervention often providing only short-term success. A growing literature investigates the benefits of habit formation for longer-term maintenance of positive actions. Habits can be good for our health, for example using seatbelts, washing hands, or always carrying a water bottle. However, our habits can also increase our trend towards unhealthy behaviours.

In the mining industry, with fly-in fly-out shift work and a male-dominated workforce, triggers for unhealthy behaviours are widespread, leading to formation of undesirable habits. Industry figures from 2016 suggest that the trend towards poor food choices, physical inactivity, risky alcohol intake, and tobacco use are prevalent throughout the workforce, leading to high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high waist circumference.

Reports suggest rates of overweight and obesity to be as high as 80 per cent within the mining industry. Ultimately, this is putting individuals at greater risk for a range of chronic health conditions, as well as musculoskeletal injuries, fatigue-related incidents and reduced productivity. Addressing the habits underlying these risk factors is an essential step to initiating successful change.

What is a habit?

The brain’s function is to coordinate all activities in the body. This takes a lot of effort, utilising at least 20% of the body’s energy expenditure. However, the brain is essentially a lazy organ looking to economise where possible and save on this massive energy output. It does this by establishing neural shortcuts in the brain that reduce the need for conscious effort, i.e. our habits.

Habits are our actions and thoughts that occur automatically in response to contextual cues associated with their performance. They are established through associative learning; the process of repeating simple tasks in a consistent environment until it can be performed with minimal conscious effort.

Gardner, Lally, & Wardle (2012) describes a three stage progression through habit formation (see image). The behaviour change process begins with the initiation phase, where the individual identifies an action they are seeking to create and a corresponding environmental cue.

A familiar example to this would be brushing your teeth (action) before going to bed (contextual cue). Automaticity is then developed gradually throughout the learning phase. Several studies have investigated the time taken for the learning phase to progress. These studies suggest a range from 18 to 254 days (average 66 days), depending on a variety of factors, such as the type of change, importance of change, context chosen, etc.

Encouragingly, the research showed that the trend towards automaticity followed an asymptotic curve, meaning the change got progressively easier over time. This culminates with the stability phase, where minimal effort is required for the action to occur in response to a contextual stimulus.

Several models also incorporate a forth step, where rewards (either intrinsic or external) play an important part in reinforcing and building habit strength. Rewards stimulate the release of endorphins, hormones that create a sense of happiness, thereby fortifying new neural pathways in the brain. Taking a habit formation approach is a powerful tool for successful, long-term behaviour change.

The power of our habits

Many studies have investigated the application of habit-based behaviour change to health interventions. In one such study, participants were encouraged to establish habits through associative learning with ten simple diet and exercise behaviours.

Their weight change was compared with a control population provided no intervention. After eight weeks, the participants had lost an average of 2kg compared with 0.4kg in the control. After 32 weeks, weight loss had climbed to 3.8kg. Habit change can be a powerful tool for creating positive health outcomes.

Five steps to successful habit formation

Habits originate from various influences in our lives, including our family, friends, society and our culture. Existing habits were created by repeating an activity over and over again until it became second nature. This creates strong neural networks that reduce our need to exert conscious effort into the action. We start developing these almost as soon as we are born, and as a result, they are difficult to change. However, there are several strategies that can increase the likelihood of successful habit formation.

1. Context is key. Choose a context or cue that is relevant and timely, i.e. a situation you will come across regularly in your daily routine. Ensure this remains consistent across the habit formation process.
2. Focus on the right change. Research has shown that the strength of the habit formation grows at a faster rate for smaller actions compared with more complex tasks. This increases the likelihood for success, enhancing self-efficacy, while also reducing the likelihood of any discouraging failures. Choose smaller, more manageable actions and break down larger goals into distinct steps. Despite health messages often being ‘loss-framed’, for example ‘stop eating saturated fats to reduce chronic disease risk’, by focusing on adopting a positive new healthful behaviour rather than attempting to give up an existing one, we are more likely to succeed. This echoes the mantra, ‘you do not stop habits, you replace them’.
3. Does it matter? Motivation is an integral component of successful habit formation. Evidence suggests that success follows choosing actions that carry greater personal value, rather than focusing on those that may have been provided by a health professional or consultant.
4. Keep it simple. Although variety is often cited as the spice of life, it can often mean the death of successful habit formation. Consistency is the key, especially during the learning phase.
5. Track adherance. A daily record of habit adherence is a useful tool to track success until the behaviour becomes automatic. This can also help identify how much motivation the action requires, which can help assess where you are at in the habit formation process. However, it is important to recognise that missing the occasional opportunity to perform the desired action will not result in failure of habit formation, rather is just a minor setback that can be overcome. Perseverance is the key.

Call to action

Understanding habits is an important component of developing successful behaviour change interventions. Behaviour change is a process that takes time, and habit formation is no exception to this. Old habits, through strong neural circuits, remain dormant while not in use. In time, these can be repurposed elsewhere.

However, during periods of stress these habits can resurface. Think of the reformed smoker, who returns to smoking after years of abstinence during a time of stress. By creating a culture of health within the workplace, complimented by targeted interventions utilising a habit-based behaviour change approach, it is possible to start addressing the health risks within the mining population. Establishing healthy habits takes much of the effort out of the decision making process, allowing us to improve our health without even thinking about it.

KAITLYN BRUSCHI
CORPORATE BODIES INTERNATIONAL, ACCREDITED PRACTICING DIETITIAN

Kaitlyn Bruschi is an accredited practicing dietitian from Corporate Bodies International (CBI) with a passion for empowering and supporting individuals to improve their health and wellbeing. Through her work at CBI, she delivers innovative and interactive outcome-based workplace health programs that engage individuals in the process of behavioural change.