A: No matter what your goal is—lowering breast cancer risk, shedding weight, or cutting back on alcohol—it’s all about creating sustainable habits. The more you make health-promoting habits automatic, the greater your protection from breast and other cancers and chronic diseases. At first, many of my patients think that habits stifle their spontaneity. Yet once they get started, they’re thrilled to find that creating routines actually sets them free. Science confirms it. Three new studies from the University of Chicago found that exercising good habits, called trait self-control, makes people happier. Why? When you follow solid routines, you don’t have to exert mental energy mustering up the willpower to make wise choices. Your brain is released to seek out new challenges, do creative work, and simply enjoy life more, secure in the knowledge that your health is sorted out. You know the old saw “Make habits as routine as brushing your teeth.” (Cue exasperated sigh: Yes, I know.) But what’s behind that idea? You weren’t born a regular brusher—parental nagging followed by years of relentlessly repeating microsteps led to the habit. Repetition and positive reinforcement created neural grooves so deep that if you forget to brush, you feel like there’s fur growing on your teeth (or maybe that’s just me). Our parents don’t nag us anymore; habit building is your job now. To carve new mental grooves, bring that same automation to all your habits, using these five smart, proven strategies. Your challenge: You forget to schedule doctors’ visits.Adapt & adjust: Preplan your planning. Select the day and time for next year’s visit at this year’s. After your exam, book the date. Or binge-schedule all your annual visits for the same day. (End with a spa pedicure as a reward!) (Prep for your appointments with these health test secrets docs forget to tell you about.) Your challenge: You splurge on high-calorie specialties at restaurants.Adapt & adjust: Link a new habit to an existing one. You probably already offer tastes, so start sharing your meal. Can’t resist dessert? Ask for more forks—take one bite and pass the plate along (no seconds!). Appetizers your weakness? Order two: Start with salad or soup, but don’t order an entree. Instead, make a calorie-bomb appetizer your main course (with a side of extra forks). Your challenge: You drink more than a few cocktails on the weekend.Adapt & adjust: Buy split bottles of wine (one-quarter of an average-size bottle) or “pony bottles” of beer (7 ounces versus 12). Research has found that we habitually finish all the food or drink in a container. You might open the same number of bottles you did before, but thanks to the decreased volume, you’ll automatically drink less. Your challenge: You have trouble sticking to any new diet.Adapt & adjust: Go with what’s tried and true. The most successful reducers don’t follow the latest diet trends—they pick and stick with approaches that are proven to work for them. And people who eat the fewest different kinds of foods (especially high-fat foods) tend to have the greatest success with keeping weight off. Your challenge: You’re an all-or-nothing exerciser—and right now, it’s nothing.Adapt & adjust: Set a timer and gut it out. But that habit needn’t cost you a lot of time: A recent Norwegian study found that just 4 minutes of intense exercise (at 90% of max effort) three times a week lowers blood pressure and reduces blood sugar levels by 5%. Researchers at Stanford University’s Persuasive Tech Lab found that taking small steps is the key to habit creation. Once you’ve wedged in 4 minutes, extend your exercise time by 4-minute chunks until you hit the recommended 75 minutes of intense exercise every week. (Never skip another workout with these simple solutions for any motivation obstacle.) PAM PEEKE, MD, is assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and author of The Hunger Fix: The Three-Stage Detox and Recovery Plan for Overeating and Food Addiction (Rodale, 2012). Dr. Peeke is a Pew Foundation Scholar in Nutrition and Metabolism and is one of the few physicians in America formally trained in nutrition. She was also the first senior research fellow in the original NIH Office of Alternative Medicine, where she helped to lay the foundation for evidenced- based scientific studies in the field of cancer and nutrition. Dr. Peeke is a medical and science commentator for CNN Headline News as well as PBS’s Health Week. She is presently a regular expert on NBC’s Today Show and has appeared in numerous national television specials. Dr. Peeke is the author of the bestsellers, Fight Fat After Forty and The Hunger Fix: The Three-Stage Detox and Recovery Plan for Overeating and Food Addiction, (Rodale 2012).
