What is a Habit REALLY? A Brand New Way of Understanding Habits So You Can Stop Being So Self-Critical
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The word HABIT can easily become white noise because it is used SO often. So we are diving DEEP in today's episode so you can actually grasp what a habit REALLY is!
To live something out, we have to understand it INSIDE and out. So what is a habit really? And how can you stop being so self-critical about struggling with all these healthy habits? Let's go.
So what is a habit?
First — what is it NOT? A habit is NOT just GOOD THINGS like eating healthy, working out consistently, or going to bed at a decent time.
A habit is also not just ANYTHING you do or don't do.
So what in the world is a habit?
A habit is actually something you do WITHOUT THOUGHT — almost ritualistically.
Let’s use some examples to explain this better.
Eating "healthy" involves a LOT — both things you do subconsciously and things you do by CHOICE aka things that take mental effort.
If we’re talking about dinner at our house — things I do by CHOICE are deciding the meal we'll eat and the portion sizes when I’m plating my food — those aren't habits and really never will be.
Things I do subconsciously are things like HOW I cook and the order I do things in.
Another example: working out consistently.
Walking out to our garage every day and starting my workout will always be a choice and will always take mental effort.
But when I lay my clothes out the night before and put them on first thing in the AM — that's habit, it’s a ritual… there is no mental effort required!
That's the difference.
There are things that take mental effort and always will — those technically will never be HABITS. Habits are things that become ritualistic, they take basically no mental effort and require no choice.
Now don't get down on yourself because the mental energy it takes to make the 35,000+ decisions you make a day wanes. One day won’t be as easy as the next!
Understand that HABITS aren't all that you think they are — they're simply things you do without thinking — good or bad. It's great to have HABITS, but our entire journey is not entirely habits. A big piece of it is also discipline and self control.
That's why accountability and CLEAR direction is huge — going it alone and from just your perspective is hard.
So find your Starting Point — an action that over time will become habit… something you don't even have to think twice about because it's just part of who you are and what you do day to day!
Remember, to make something HABIT it has to be second nature, so if you're still putting mental effort into something and it doesn't FEEL super easy yet, you're on the way to it being a habit! Stay the course. Stay consistent. Get after it!
Are you ready to go from overwhelmed and stuck to disciplined and consistent in your journey?
Book your Starting Point Session and let's get you on track to your healthiest life!
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] The word habit can easily become white noise because it is. So often, so we are diving deep today, so you can actually grasp what a habit really is because to live something out, we have to understand it inside and out. So it's time for you to live out your healthy habits inside and out mama. Okay, let's go.
Hey, mama. Welcome to the tough love mom podcast. I know you're here because you're ready to get consistent and finally lose that weight. And you're not afraid of a little tough love, you know, what to do to lose weight. But following through on those things feels impossible. You wish you could just feel like you're strong, confident self again, and want to be a good example for your little ones, but you get thrown off by mom guilt and the unpredictability of motherhood.
Frustrating taking on your journey. Postpartum is hard, but it's not impossible. Hey, I'm Liz and I've been where you are. I gained a lot of [00:01:00] weight in my pregnancies, 90 pounds, and then 60 pounds. I needed to lose that weight to take control of my health. And honestly just wanted to feel like myself again with a sustainable approach to weight loss.
Simple consistency in working on my mindset. I lost it all in just over a year, both times. And I'm here to help you do the same. I believe that we have an ingrained ability to figure out what we need to do, make it happen and do it in a way that AWS the world, if you're ready to stop falling off the wagon, create solid routine and healthy habit.
And finally feel your best inside and out all enjoying D nuggets on your salad. You are in the right place. We're about to transform your journey. My friend get pumped up. It is tough. Love time
before we get into the thick of the true meaning of a habit. I know you already know they're important. They're the building box, the foundation of a healthy lifestyle without habits in place that are productive for your overall. All you're doing is [00:02:00] slapping. Band-aids on gaping wounds. And I know you're not here for that.
You're here for simplicity. You're here for sustainability. You're here for consistency and discipline, and that's what you can create after you identify your starting point. And over time, your stepping stones, a starting point is simply one small habit. You make part of who you are by focusing on just that one thing.
Same with the stepping stone. It's just what comes after your starting point. You're getting the small snowball rolling down the. and getting bigger and bigger over time. Right? Once you get it rolling, you can move on to new stepping stones as you progress along your journey, and you can focus on other areas as you go.
So a stepping stone might be in nutrition. It might be in fitness. It might be with your routine day to day, whatever it is, we will find it in your. Starting point session. We'll figure out why you're stuck. We'll identify your specific starting point and you'll get accountability as you make that starting point a habit.
So go book@asapatthetofmom.com [00:03:00] slash coaching. I only open up a couple spots a month because my time is precious and I know yours is too. So let's get this journey feeling simple and doable. That's what a starting point will do for you and actually getting you results over time. And true change. Okay. So the tough love mom.com/coaching.
I'll see you there. Now. Let's talk about habits. Are you sick of hearing that word yet? like, I feel like people in the health and fitness industry talk about it a lot. But it's like this aloof idea that we don't totally grasp, but we have, we think we have an idea of it, but we don't fully understand it.
It just gets thrown around. And if, if you're sick of hearing it, it's totally okay. Like I said, some people throw the word around kind of aimlessly or too lightly. Like a habit is a big weighty thing that really makes up who we are. So we can't just use that word lightly. And in all honesty habits are the groundwork that make our life habits are who we are.
So. It's, it's not something to be taken lightly and just to be thrown around aimlessly without [00:04:00] purpose. So what is a habit first? We're gonna talk about what a habit is. Not a habit is not just good things like eating healthy, working out consistently going to bed at a decent time. That's not all a habit is habits can also be unproductive for our health, like picking up your phone.
First thing in the morning and scrolling social media. It can be watching too many extra episodes on TV and not going to bed at a decent time because you're trying to, those are all habits too, reaching for something unhealthy in the pantry versus taking a second to breathe and think about . What is actually gonna feel my body right now?
What is my body telling me? I need. Habits are not just good things. They can also be unproductive, any unproductive things. And a habit is also not just anything you do or don't do. Okay. So it's not just every, like every single thing that you do or don't do isn't necessarily a habit. so what in the world is a habit.
You're like, Liz, I'm gonna live confused. you're saying it's not everything that we do and don't do, [00:05:00] but it's also not good and bad things. So what even is it a habit is actually like the definition of a habit in general, when we're just talking about the word and. Who we are as humans, a habit is actually something that you do without thought a habit is something you do almost ritualistically like, you don't have to put mental effort towards doing that thing towards taking that action, making that well, I'm not gonna say making that choice, but it's something that you don't even think about doing.
You just do it. Does that make sense? That's what a habit. A habit is something that you don't even have to think twice about. You just it's like your automatic response to a trigger or a circumstance or an environment. That's your habit. It's easier explained with an example. So I'm gonna give you two examples real quick.
Let's use eating healthy as our first example. So eating healthy is not a habit. Okay. Scrub that from your mind, eating healthy. Is not a habit because it involves a lot like eating healthy, involves breakfast, [00:06:00] lunch, dinner, snacks, uh, you know what you drink throughout the day, the choices you make, how you're cooking, what you buy at the store, eating healthy involves a lot of things, both things that you do subconsciously like the kids are finally down for a nap.
You get to decompress for the first time today you're stressed. You're not thinking you just go to the pantry and eat whatever's there straight out the. That's a habit. That's something you do subconsciously. And it also involves eating healthy. Also involves things that you do by choice or things that take mental effort, that second half things that are done by choice, or that take mental effort.
Those are not habits. , those are things that you are making choices. So dinner for us, this is what I'm going to give an example of things that I do by choice. When it comes to dinner is deciding on the meal that we'll eat. So what food is going to be served. And then once the food is cooked and everything deciding how much I'm gonna put on my plate, those are decisions that I make a mental effort.
I'm thinking about it. I'm making a choice. They're [00:07:00] not habits. And they really never will be. For me. Those are things that. I just think about, I put some mental effort into they're not habits, but those are big pieces of eating healthy, what I'm serving for dinner and how much, how big my portion sizes are.
Those are very important to eating healthy, but they're not habits things I do. Subconsciously things that are habits are things like how I cook the order that I do things in when I'm cooking or when I'm putting stuff on the table for our family. Those are habits because they happen automatically. I'm not thinking about it.
I'm just doing it. Does that start to make sense? if you're not with me, I've got other examples. So let's talk about working out consistently. Also not a habit, like I'm not gonna, and I know sometimes again, this is me being human to you right now. I know there's times when I probably have called these things habits and.
I'm speaking in like generic terms and sitting here today, I'm probably gonna trip up and do that again. But what we're really diving into is what a habit actually is. So you can understand it today. So in the future [00:08:00] and in the past and past episodes, if I've talked about these things as habits, I mean, yeah.
I'm contradicting myself in a sense right now. And. I'm human. So we all do that. So let this stand as a point of correction of myself, in how I speak about those things. And I'll be more conscious of it in the future, but things like working out consistently. That's another big, there's lots of pieces involved, lots of moving parts that in itself is not a habit.
Working out consistently is a very broad thing that happens, but it's not a habit in itself. So things that are choice in that, working out consistently for me personally, walking out to our garage every day and starting my workout will always be a choice. Those are things that will never be habit. They always take some mental effort.
They always take choice because I could just stay on the couch all morning till my kids get up or I could go work. Yep. That's what I'm doing that morning. Those will always take mental effort because it's always a choice for me to get up and go do that. But something I do when I work out first thing in the morning is I lay my clothes out the night [00:09:00] before.
Again, that takes some mental effort. Cause I'm choosing what I'm gonna wear. I'm thinking about what workout am I doing? What, what, you know, a leisures, what workout clothes are gonna be best for that type of workout. and things like that when I have that laid out, that's a choice. But in the morning, when I look at that, you could, you could argue that that's a choice, but it's become a habit that when my clothes are laid out, I just put 'em on.
I don't even think about it. It's habit. It's ritual. There's really, for me, no mental effort required for you. There might be because it's not a habit yet, but for me that's become a habit. That's just something that it's there. I. Same thing with, I keep a water bottle next to my bed and when I wake up in the morning, that is the first thing I reach for cuz I am parched.
We live in the desert, so that might be part of it. But that is the first thing I reach for. Literally the first thing I grab in the morning, aside from seeing what time it is on my phone is sipping my water and drinking a lot of water. That is habit. I don't think about it. I just do it. So I hope that kind of makes sense.
That's the difference. There are things that take [00:10:00] mental effort and choice and they always will. and those, technically those things will never be habits because habits are things that become ritualistic. They take basically no mental effort. They require no choice. They just, you just do them without thinking about it.
Okay. It's it's this or that. You just do it or you don't do it because it's just habit. Does that make sense? The rest of it, everything else that doesn't just happen automatically is it, it takes, it's a choice. And it takes mental effort. So you might have things that are habits that are automatic, that you don't think about, like grabbing a candy bar, right after mealtime from the kid stash from leftovers, from Halloween, you know, 10 months ago, something like that.
Those are habits, not the most productive, but they're habits cuz you might do it automatically. And. When there's things, habits that you want to change that are not as productive, it's gonna take a lot more effort over time, especially if you wanna make it something that does become [00:11:00] automatic down the road.
So I'm kind of SQUI braining here. So let's get back to the point. I don't want you to get down on yourself because part of what I brought up in the title of this episode was trying to understand habit. So you're not as self critical. Because you understand it now there's things that you do automatically without thinking hopefully a lot of them are productive, helpful habits.
Some of them might not be though. I mean, I've totally had some that I've had to change too. So I get it. I totally get it. But there is a difference between things that you do automatically without thinking and things that are a choice day in and day out, things that you're changing intentionally or not changing intentionally because it's the easier path.
No judgment. But there are things that, that that's the difference between a habit and things that aren't habit is something that just happens automatically and something that takes choice, mental effort. You're thinking about it and you're choosing what you're gonna do. So don't get down on yourself because , I don't need you to get too [00:12:00] critical.
And this is the second part of this episode where we're not gonna, we're gonna talk about not getting too self critical because the mental energy that it takes. To, to make the on average 35,000 decisions that you make every single day, probably more because we're moms and making plenty decisions for our kids too.
Am I right? that energy? WANs day to day. It's gonna, is it waxing and waning? I don't know. I don't, it's gonna ebb and flow. It's gonna come and go. That energy is not gonna be the same every single day. That mental energy that we have, if we don't sleep as much night before, if our nutrition's been off, if you know, we're changing time zones, cuz we're traveling.
That those things will change the mental energy that we have to make decisions. And we're making up to 35,000 decisions a day. You're probably making more decisions than you have ritualistic habits. That just happen because you they're ingrained in you. Okay. So a lot of these things that you're trying to change or get, get to a different point, so you can live a healthier.[00:13:00]
So many of those things are not habits and that's okay. They're choices that you're trying to make. You're trying to put in this mental effort and this mental energy into a productive choice, and you might fall off of that sometimes because we're making up to 35,000, probably more cuz we're moms decisions a day and that's a lot.
And most of these things that you think are habits or you want to be habits. Are gonna be habits way further down the road than you expect, because it takes a lot of consistency in choice making and discipline with the decisions that you're making. It takes a lot of that for something to become automatic for something like that, to become a habit.
Okay. Drinking water. First thing in the morning, I'm gonna, I've been doing that for like a decade. so obviously it's a habit for me now, but a decade's a long time for that to become an automatic thing that I do without even thinking. So don't get all critical on yourself because one day. Isn't as easy as the next to make [00:14:00] productive, healthy decisions for your life.
Most of the things you're doing that you think are supposed to be habits are actually choices. They're actually decisions that you're making. And that takes mental energy. I don't know if you've heard the concept of that mental energy tank, the decision energy. Going down throughout the day because you wake up with a certain amount and with each decision that you make, that reserve goes down, that's why a lot of people say working out in the morning, sport more beneficial.
You can start your day eating really well. But by the end of the day, it's trash it's because our decision energy, we have a, a set amount at the beginning of the day. And as we make decisions throughout the day, it gets lower and lower. So don't get all critical on yourself because you wake up one day and that's just not an easy day with your decision making for your health.
Not everything is a habit that you think is not, everything is habits are things that happen automatically. You don't have to think about that. That's what I want you to understand today is [00:15:00] that habits are not all that you think they are. They're simply things that you do without thinking good or bad.
Okay. So all of that being said, it's great to have habits. I want you to get to the point where this stuff is second nature. You don't think about it. You just do it because it's who you are. But our entire journey. Even for me today is not entirely habits. It's not a majority of it is decisions and that is tied into discipline and self control over time, consistency, discipline, and consistency over time.
And that's hard. That's hard because we're moms and we're making a lot of decisions day to day. It's hard because of the culture that we live in, the environment we live in that caters towards an easier path. And the convenience, but that's why accountability and clear direction is huge in simply making the choice to be disciplined.
Because as you do that day after day after day, it gets a little bit easier. It becomes slightly [00:16:00] more habit than it was before. Okay. But going it alone and from you, just your perspective from just your viewpoint without an outside perspective is really hard. It's gonna take longer than you want it to.
And to be honest, without someone spurring you on, you tend to lose motivation over time. So that's why your starting point session needs to be scheduled like yesterday. Okay. If you're feeling stuck and overwhelmed or frustrated, all of that is unnecessary. Like feeling that way needs to stop. To be honest, it needs to just end because you should not feel that way in your journey.
Yes, it is hard. Yes. It takes discipline and discipline in this day and age is not the easy. but it is, it is the only route to true change. I will stand on that soapbox till the day I die. You want true change in your life. You have to be disciplined for a season of time until it becomes habit until it becomes automatic.
and that feeling of it being automatic, that feeling of it just being second nature, who you are that takes a lot [00:17:00] of time. It takes a lot of consistency, but consistency with the simple things, you can see progress from a place of simplicity in your journey. And it all starts with a starting point, an action that will over time become a habit, something you don't even have to think twice about because it's just part of who you are and what you do day to day.
It's a life. Your choices that you make consistently over time, end up becoming habits, end up becoming this thing that happens automatically. That takes no mental effort, but that takes a lot more time than you probably think it's gonna take. Okay. But when you keep it simple, when you know what your starting point is, and you work on that and you make it closer and closer to a habit, and then you figure out your next stepping stone and you build on that, your foundation's gonna.
unbroken unshakeable. Like you cannot break a foundation. That's built that way. You can't. So book yours book, your starting point session. Okay. And remember to make something a habit, it has to be second [00:18:00] nature. It has to come to you naturally. It has to be something you don't have to put any mental effort into it, cuz you just do it.
It like, there's no other explanation other than you just do it. People ask, how are you so consistent with working out? I just do it. And it's because there's so many little pieces of my day that just make it a habit that I don't have to think about anymore. Laying my clothes out the night before putting 'em on drinking some water, first thing in the morning to just kinda wake my body up.
I set out my like shaker bottle so I can put some pre-workout in it. I put that in the fridge. So it's cold water. And I like, literally, I'm like half awake as I'm putting that in, shaking it up, drinking it down, reading the Bible, reading a book while I'm drinking that I go out and work out. A lot of those things I don't have to think about.
Cause I just have stuff laid out. I have it in place and it just makes it so I don't have to put any mental effort into it to make something habit has to be second nature. Just part of who you are. So if you're putting mental effort into something right now, wanna encourage you. And it doesn't feel easy yet.
[00:19:00] It feels harder some days than others. You're like, when is this ever gonna feel easy? Right? We want things to be easy. That's human nature. Don't feel bad about that. It's human nature to want things to be easy, but it's not gonna feel easy. Second nature, no mental effort required. You don't feel like you're making a choice anymore.
You're just doing it. That's gonna take a long time. But if you're putting the mental effort, some days it's harder. Some days it's easier. I promise that you are on the way to it being a habit. It just is gonna take longer than you think. And I know you don't wanna hear that right now, but I'm gonna start your week off that way because you just need to stay consistent.
I don't care about, well, I do. I do care about you and your circumstances, but in the grand scheme of things, when you can push through when it's hard, that's what makes it easier. Okay. Stay the course. Stay consistent and get after it, make those habits habits. But give it time before you go. Thank you for spending this time with me on the tough [00:20:00] love mom podcast.
If this episode encouraged you in any way, the number one way you can thank me is to leave a review. Letting me know how this show has impacted you. Then send this episode to another mom friend or. Take a screenshot, post it on social media and tag me so I can personally thank you for helping me on this journey to impact thousands of moms.
I'm so grateful to be on this journey with your sister until next time. Get after it.
