How to Change Your Mindset Towards a Healthy Life

Almost everyone in my circle has experienced the conventional diet vicious cycle, which works like this:

It’s the start of the year. You feel motivated, and life looks promising. You start to cut highly processed food and carbohydrates, eating lots of salads, tuna, and grilled chicken. You’re not satisfied with your diet. Everyone around you seems to be enjoying life except for you. You let go for a day or two. You become inconsistent, your weight plateaus, or you break the diet habit chain and revert to old dietary habits. You feel anxious and start to binge eat, and you gain weight. This cycle repeats 2 to 4 times a year. The reason why you keep repeating this loop is that you don’t know better…

The first step to breaking this vicious cycle is self-awareness. You must understand how your brain works against you in this matter.

In this article, I will explain how the book “Atomic Habits” changed my mindset and how I applied its concepts along the way.

The Habit Loop: 4 Steps

Anytime you do a repeated behavior, the 4 steps of the habit loop will repeat.

For example, you wake up and instinctively go to the toilet and brush your teeth. In this example:

1. You wake up (cue).

2. You feel the need to brush your teeth (craving).

3. You brush your teeth (response).

4. Your mouth feels refreshed (reward).

In this example, good habits work for you. Your brain creates these habit loops as a power conservation mechanism. It identifies patterns and automates them to consume less power, preserving most of the power for survival.

When it comes to bad habits, your brain does not make a difference. If it senses a repeated behavior, it will automate it before you even know it. For example, binge eating: you’re stressed all day, night comes, you want to watch your favorite show, and you feel that you deserve a treat. You crave your favorite crackers and show, prepare the crackers and drink (response), get a dopamine hit from the highly processed carbohydrates, and enjoy your series (reward).

Now that you are aware of the habit loop’s 4 stages, let’s discuss the necessary changes to build better habits and break bad habit cycles.

The 4 Laws to Create Lasting Habits

1. Make it obvious

2. Make it attractive

3. Make it easy

4. Make it satisfying

The inverse of these rules applies to any habit you want to change. I’ll explain how you can apply these rules to:

1. Environmental change

2. Behavioral change

   
   

Environmental Change (External Triggers)

Make it obvious: Arrange healthy food around you. Remove processed sugar bars and replace them with a fruit basket. Replace the candy jar with a transparent nuts jar. Make the things you want very obvious and the things you don’t want invisible. Remove canned sugar drinks from the front fridge shelf and put them in the cupboard where they are not cold enough to drink.

Make it attractive: Design your meals in advance. Collect them on Instagram or YouTube recipes. Add touches to make them look gorgeous. Get tools that can make special cuts for potatoes or zucchinis. Satisfy your eyes before your taste buds.

Make it easy: Since I started to have a steady diet, I loved having a vegetable omelet for breakfast. I love colors in it: mushrooms, chilies, olives, tomatoes, and bell peppers. This used to take most of my time, so I often settled for a plain omelet. Now, I bought a box with 6 sections and a seal lock, allowing me to prepare my weekly vegetable omelet in advance, saving 70% of the time. By doing this, I never feel lazy to make my favorite omelet again.

Applying the idea of making it easy, simplify any meal you want to make it easy to prepare in 10–15 minutes. Prep ingredients in advance to reduce meal prep time.

Make it satisfying: When I found out that almost any recipe can be replicated to be healthier, it blew my mind. For me, sauces are the secret to any satisfying meal. It’s not the deep-fried French fries, but the sauce that satisfies my cravings along with the baked potato. I deliberately make my food look great and taste greater. Satisfy both your eyes and taste buds.

Quick tip: You can now ask Chat GPT to convert any recipe you like into a healthier version using the ingredients you have. Simplify the prep time and grocery list. You have no excuse not to satisfy your cravings.

Redesign your environment to work for your favor

Behavioral Change (Internal Triggers)

Behaviors will be highly affected by environmental design; they are more interconnected than you might think.

You basically need to guard yourself against yourself. As the 18th-century poet Samuel Johnson says: “My life is one long escape from myself.”

Create boundaries and more steps towards the behaviors you want to stop and facilitate the road towards the behaviors you want to encourage.

If you keep binge eating and watching TV for hours at night, create boundaries: unplug the TV cable, remove the remote control to another room. If you want to go a step further, put the TV in its own box. By doing this, you are applying the inverse of the 4 laws: make it unobvious, unsatisfying, invisible, and less satisfying.

Avoid buying things you cannot control. If you cannot control binge eating a certain type of crackers, don’t buy them. Replace them with a salad that looks good with a light thousand island sauce to make it satisfying. Find alternatives for the things you like that bring you closer to your goal rather than away from it.

When do you know that what you are doing is working? Ask yourself if you can do this behavior for the rest of your life. If you cannot, then you need to make it easier, more obvious, more attractive, or more satisfying, or all of the above.

Applying the 4 Laws to Behavioral Change

1. Make it obvious: Set clear cues for the new behaviors you want to adopt. For instance, place workout clothes next to your bed to remind you to exercise first thing in the morning.

2. Make it attractive: Link the new behavior with something you enjoy. If you like listening to podcasts, make it a rule to only listen to your favorite podcast while exercising. This makes the new habit more appealing.

3. Make it easy: Simplify the process of adopting new behaviors. Break down tasks into smaller, manageable steps. If you want to start reading more, begin with just 5 minutes a day.

4. Make it satisfying: Reward yourself for sticking to new habits. Celebrate small wins to keep yourself motivated. For example, after completing a week of consistent exercise, treat yourself to a relaxing activity you enjoy.

   
   

Once you understand yourself, your new habits will slowly become part of your new identity, the number of times and repetitions will determine how you can master those habits, That’s how you change your mindset. It takes time and effort; there are no shortcuts.

To wrap this up, you are in control of yourself. However, your brain will go with the easiest, least resistance possible. So, pave the way for yourself to let it go in the easy way you want.