Food Bowl Copycats (Habit Stacking)

Remember habit stacking?

Most of our routines originate from one trigger habit. Over time, new behaviors have been added to the original habit, and routines have been created. This has happened through something called habit stacking.

When behaviors are placed directly after an existing habit, they’ll begin to merge together. The reward from the original habit will act as a trigger for the second behavior, and so on. Depending on the original habit, your personality, and circumstances, these routines can have a positive, neutral, or negative impact on your life.

Why does habit stacking make forming new habits easy?

Every habit goes through something called the habit loop. The habit loop consists of three primary stages. Cue, routine, and reward. All stages have to be present before a habit can form. Let’s have a look at what this means before we move on.

Cue: This is the trigger. It starts the loop and prompts you to make a certain action.

Routine: This is the behavior itself

Reward: This is what you anticipate at the cue, and what keeps the habit loop alive.

When forming habits, finding an efficient cue is usually the most difficult. This is where habit stacking can help you.

When you place the new behavior after an existing habit, the reward from the first will, over time, act as a cue for the second. As the cue is present, you’ll begin to crave the second behavior. As you do this enough, the second behavior will become automatic. A new habit is formed.

To sum it up, habit stacking is effective for forming new habits because it removes the need for an external cue to new behaviors. It’s an easy solution to one of the hardest parts of building new habits.

What's Next?

For this challenge, you are being asked to come up with 2 new nutritional habits for August. Now these habits must be small ACTIONS that you can do that will take you a step closer to a goal you would like to reach with your eating habits. Over time, adding small actions toward a goal will eventually meet and surpass your intended goals. For example, if your goal is to eat less, then one small action you can do until it is a habit is to drink a serving of water before you eat your first bite. By stacking your new water habit with taking your first bite, the act of sitting down to eat will be your CUE to drink a serving of water until it becomes ROUTINE. Your REWARD is getting filled up with some water that also hydrates you but now you want to eat less. That was your goal. Over time you can build on your routines.

August Challenge:

Determine what two small habits you would like to add to your current eating habits. Follow the instructions to prepare and then to start habit stacking. Your two habits can be anything as long as your reward is something that improves your healthy eating habits. Meal planning, eat more veggies, have a colorful plate, portion distortion, etc. are the large rewards. Your habits are the small things you can do to ensure that your goal is met. Measuring your food before you plate it can help with portion distortion. Picking what veggie you are eating tonight before you start fixing other dinner items.

Daily Tracking:

Today is:

Habit #1:

Habit #2:

You can use these phrases to let us know how you did each day.

Nailed it!

Did it but didn't stack it as planned.

Not quite but made an effort

Decided not to do it.

Completely forgot about it.

---