How do our habits affect our weight?
A lot of our behaviour is guided by habits we form – more, in fact, than we often realise. So for example, we may be aware that we habitually drink a coffee at a certain time each day, but we are perhaps less aware that it is also a habit that we choose a certain place to buy lunch, or to fill up with petrol.
What is a habit?
A habit is a particular behaviour which has a tendency to be present repeatedly, with some consistency and at intervals in a person’s daily, weekly or monthly life. Commonly acknowledged habits include things like smoking and snacking.
We have a robust system for ensuring that habitual behaviours happen. It is robust because it is the same one which makes sure we do other important things like eat and sleep etc.
How does it work?
Essentially, it evaluates reward. When you execute a particular action, your dopamine system will respond and identify that action. Once a relationship between dopamine release and a behaviour has been established, this system will ensure that the behaviour will present with some regularity. For example, say you have a can of coke in the afternoon at work one day. Your reward system will tell you this unexpected stimulus is a pleasurable one, and an increase in dopamine transmission will be the result. A repeat of this behaviour the following day results in the formation of a similar association. A few weeks later, after repeated instances of this, having watched a documentary on the horrors of a certain fizzy drink, you decide not to have one. As your reward system has come to anticipate that reward at that time of day, you find it a real struggle to resist drinking your afternoon coke, which is weird because just a few weeks previously 3.00 would have rolled around without you thinking twice about drinking a can of coke.
If you think about it, this makes quite a lot of sense. As an organism, we are designed to be efficient with the resources we have available. We are constantly bombarded with stimuli – auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory – and there is no possible way we could attend to all of it, process it, and respond appropriately. What you would ideally want is a system which manages most of our behaviour with minimal executive input and with optimum speed, i.e. a set of habits. You would, however, also want the ability to make real-time decisions and to evaluate situations where you are presented with unexpected or novel variables. So, to illustrate with an example, imagine you are driving to work. You don’t need to attend to the shapes of the leaves on the trees, or the hair colour of other drivers because they aren’t relevant to the task in hand, so chances are you will get to work without being aware of these things. You have also been driving long enough that you automatically depress the clutch when the rev counter reaches a certain point and again, you probably barely notice that you have changed gear. When you reach a t-junction, however, there comes a shift in the job you have to do. There is no way you could rely on the same system as you do for changing gear etc. because this situation is constantly changing. Therefore, you recruit your executive control and carry out some real-time decision making. “Is there a car? No. Ok, I’ll pull out”.
Habits are complicated
A habit doesn’t necessarily mean just one single behaviour – it can apply to a spectrum or a network of the same.
The term “habit” doesn’t just mean a behaviour which lasts a few moments
It is important to recognise when thinking about your own habits is that they don’t necessarily confine themselves to a brief time-frame. What I mean by that, is that often we see habits as our tendencies to do immediate things like bite our nails or make our bed in the morning. Less obvious are the more complex relationships between our behaviours over time and how our habits play a role. These often span longer periods of time, like days, weeks, or even months.
How are habits relevant to weight loss?
Einstein pointed out that it is ridiculous to do the same thing over and again and yet to expect different results. Your habit system, by definition, wants to do the same thing over and again. It wants to keep things consistent, recurring and regular. The weight you are currently at is being maintained by your habit system.
If you have tried before to lose weight and been unsuccessful, you have probably been battling an established pattern of behaviour (habits) like eating certain things for breakfast, eating when you come in from a night out, snacking in the afternoon or drinking four nights a week.
Can we change our habits?
Yes. But you need to understand how your reward system works. And you must change your habits if you want to be successful at losing weight. Trying to lose weight without is essentially like trying to go deep sea diving with a snorkel. You’ll make it into the water, and you’ll get your head under, and you may even get a few metres down, but you’ll end up repeatedly bobbing towards the surface and you’ll never get to where you want.
Lauren Hull
