Rolling Benefits
The randomness of the dice rolls is fun and varies your activities, both of which can keep your experience fresh and enjoyable. While your daily behaviors will be more varied with this method (which seems like a hindrance for habit formation), you’ll still form the habit of making progress in fitness and eating every day. Your primary goal is to change your relationship with the concepts of being active and eating healthy food, and this can accomplish that.
By rolling the dice to determine your next move, you actually decrease resistance to action even more. Rolling the dice is a contract in which you agree to do what it says. This is a diluted version of making a bet with a friend: “If they lose, I’ll go in the dunk tank, but if they win, you have to buy me dinner.” Someone might not volunteer for the dunk tank (where someone throws a ball at a target and you fall in the water if they hit it), but if it’s a part of a friendly bet, they’ll do it. The dice roll is a fun bet you make with yourself. Whatever it rolls, you do.
Lastly, the dice roll makes it easier to make a decision. Instead of deciding to do something you might find slightly uncomfortable (a fitness mini habit), you only have to decide to roll the dice, which starts the process of your mini habit.
Incorporating dice into your mini habits plan adds one more step, which is typically a bad thing, but the benefits and fun it provides are well worth it. For those who’ve seen weight loss as a lot of work and misery, this sort of “gamification” might be just what they need to succeed.
Mini Habits Troubleshooting
If you have problems making mini habits work for you, look no further.
I’m feeling resistance.
Resistance is a sign that your subconscious is uncomfortable with what you want to do. Run through this checklist to make sure your perspective is correct.
Am I aiming for a mini habit, or am I pretending to aim for a mini habit while secretly aiming for more? You cannot fool your subconscious mind, so don’t try. Your intention needs to be small. Remember, it’s one step at a time. This is not to say that you won’t ever do more; it’s to say that you’ll get there most often by thinking in small, incremental steps, not by saying “I’ll take this small step” and secretly requiring more of yourself.
Is my mini habit actually mini-sized? One of the biggest issues I’ve seen with mini habit implementation is that people don’t minify the action enough. For example, someone will tell me they’re struggling to read 10 pages in a book per day. Well, my mini habit is to read two pages per day, which is five times less! Ten pages might not sound like much, but on a bad, unmotivated day, it can be too much. Make your mini habits small, and you won’t resist them. Consistency is much more important than quantity, which is why we make these mini-sized in the first place.
Do I still feel resistance? It’s okay to feel some resistance, because you have willpower at your disposal. These mini behaviors are so small that there should never be a time that you don’t have enough willpower to force action. That’s how this strategy is designed for success. Willpower is reliable, as long as you have enough of it for the action you want to take. Relying on how you feel is not a winning strategy. The most successful people in any field did not get there by only taking action when they felt like it. They show up every day, regardless of how hard life is. With a typical goal, this falls into the “easier said than done” category. With mini habits, this is easily said AND done. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through—you can drink a glass of water, eat an apple, or do a push-up!
Whenever you feel resistance toward a mini habit, be sure to challenge yourself on it. Don’t accept that you don’t feel like dancing for a minute. Think about how easy it would be and how you’d feel good about accomplishing it. Challenge yourself to get up and try it. The more you practice overcoming that initial resistance into an easy mini habit, the more you’ll trust the process, and the better your results will be.
I’ve been skipping my mini habits.
Ask yourself these questions.
Am I taking this seriously? Look, I know that “chew your food 30 times” sounds goofy when you want to lose 100 pounds. But there’s some irony here. The crash diets and boot camps seem like a serious effort to change your life, but they’re actually aiming much lower than we are. They’re a joke compared to the permanent life change possible with mini habits. A crash diet or boot camp aims for a short-term and superficial change in body composition. We’re aiming deeper. We’re aiming to change your brain and the way you relate to and think about food and exercise. People temporarily adhere to these insane, torturous programs because they are desperate for the promised results. If you can understand how much greater the result of lasting habitual change will be, you won’t have any problem taking your daily mini habits seriously. This doesn’t mean you won’t laugh at “having to walk to the end of my driveway;” it only means that you’ll be sure to do it, regardless of how silly it seems on the surface.
Do I have the right cues? If you’re not getting it done for any reason, take a hard look at the cues you’ve chosen. If you chose a time- or activity-based cue, then maybe you need more flexibility and should try a flexible daily cue. If you have a flexible daily cue and keep putting it off or forgetting, then maybe you need a more structured cue (time or activity).
Do I have too many mini habits? Regardless of what I say, I know some people will immediately begin 10 mini habits after reading this book (I recommend four maximum). One guy told me he had some trouble completing his 20+ mini habits every day.
When you have too many mini habits, you overwhelm yourself by the number of things you must do, and the result is the same as for any overwhelming goal (failure). That being said, if you have four mini habits, that might still be too many for you. Personally, I do best with two or three mini habits. When I add in the fourth one, it doesn’t work very well. And I’ll add that I started with just one mini habit (one push-up per day) that completely transformed my life and relationship with exercise. So don’t think that having only one mini habit is useless! If you aren’t completing your mini habits, consider dropping one of them.
What if I complete some mini habits and not others?
Partial completion is failure in mini habits. These behaviors are supposed to be so easy that you can complete them all on the worst day of your life. So if you find yourself completing some, but not others, either drop the others or figure out why they’re posing such a challenge to you. With all of the strategic plans for implementation, you can also try tweaking your mini habit plan to see if that helps. This strategy is meant for 100% daily success, but you might not achieve that immediately, as you figure out the strategy and number of mini habits that work for you. The great upside to having mini habits is the ease of restarting a mini habit program at any time for any reason. If you “fall off the horse,” you can get back on within five minutes! Aim for 100% completion of all of your mini habits. If you’re not hitting that mark, make adjustments until you do.
I never do bonus reps. What am I doing wrong?
Bonus reps are just that—a bonus. If you never go “above and beyond,” there’s no need to panic. Some habits take longer to take root than others. For example, my reading mini habit was fairly slow developing, my push-up mini habit had moderate growth, and my writing mini habit took off like a racehorse. You can expect variance, but otherwise, consider this.
Is your mini habit too small? This is something I didn’t mention in the first Mini Habits book because I wasn’t aware it was possible. One day, I received an email from a reader. She told me that she had written only 30 words in 30 days—one word per day. This gave me an epiphany: A mini habit is too small if the action fails to start the process of your target behavior.
For example, if your goal is to write more, writing just one word does not begin the writing process, because, at the very least, writing requires you to form a thought or phrase that means something. Otherwise, you can write “The” and stop thinking
about it. My writing mini habit is 50 words per day, because that almost always leads to more ideas and writing; it begins the writing process. Since it’s only a paragraph, I’m never intimidated by it. I don’t get writer’s block.
One push-up per day is a good example of a very small mini habit that’s still enough to start the process of exercise. Once you get into push-up position and do one, it’s conducive to doing more. Some people may feel the need to be in workout clothes before they exercise, so they might modify their habit to “change into gym clothes” or “change into gym clothes and do one push-up” or “change and drive to the gym.”
One day, I noticed that every time I set up my doorway pull-up bar, I did pull-ups. From that moment on, I didn’t set the goal to do even one pull-up; my goal was to set up the bar. Then habit took over.
Whatever the mini habit, pay close attention to what starts the process for you. If your mini habit is to eat a baby carrot and you only ever eat one, try making it two baby carrots to see if that gets the carrot party started. The ideal mini habit is always going to be at the level of lowest possible resistance that also begins the process of the target behavior.
Questions and Answers
What if I miss a day?
If you miss a mini habit for whatever reason, it’s not a big deal. At all. A study on habit formation found that one day missed did not affect successful habit formation.163 The only threat of missing a day is that you’ll let it grow to two days (which is a new trend in the wrong direction). If you miss a single day, don’t worry about it, but make it your highest priority to knock out your mini habits (early, if possible) the next day.
One advantage of having mini habits is the ease of “jumping back in” if you experience a setback. Since you can “get back on the wagon” in less than five minutes, you stand to succeed as long as you’re committed to it.
Should I reward myself?
If you’re familiar with the habit formation process (cue, behavior, reward), you might be expecting me to discuss rewards, but rewards are optional for mini habits. There is an intrinsic reward for accomplishing your goals, and that is plenty for a mini habit. Maybe we would need rewards to encourage a more difficult behavior, but a mini habit is easy enough to force yourself to do even without any external reinforcing reward. The intrinsic reward of success is enough for a mini habit. The only point in an external reward is to get your brain to the point that you’re conditioned to do the behavior even without a reward, that is, you don’t need a reward to do the behavior (which is one of the reasons it’s superior!). As Sun Tzu said, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.”
There’s also a good reason not to think about rewards: It adds one more thing to manage. This strategy thrives on simplicity, so I recommend keeping it as simple as possible. That said, you can reward yourself and treat yourself well in general, and draw the connection to your success with mini habits. That’s certainly worthwhile, but you don’t need to make it a hard rule.
How many mini habits?
I recommend a maximum of four mini habits at a time. Aside from those, you’ll have numerous (optional) opportunities to improve your health and weight. Don’t worry about not doing enough! Besides building a foundation for lasting change, which already boosts this strategy above the rest, you’re going to have opportunities to make short-term progress, too.
I remembered to chew each bite 30 times, but it was halfway through my meal. Does it still count?
Yes, it does. Chewing half of your meal 30 times per bite is a mini habit (you could even make it your standard mini habit if desired). The spirit of this strategy is that all progress is valuable. It’s obviously better to remember to chew all bites 30 times, but if you’re trying, give yourself the benefit of the doubt. The second most important thing (behind consistency) is to remain positive about your progress.
What is a healthy meal?
Healthy meals have one thing in common—they use real and minimally processed ingredients. They lack preservatives, added colors, added sweeteners, emulsifiers, added flavors, and other chemical additives. Beware of companies using these phrases to get your attention. Just because there are no artificial colors or flavors does not mean there aren’t a lot of other terrible, processed ingredients. Healthy food is rare.
What counts as a serving of fruit?
When it comes to your mini habits, do not count any fruit that comes in a can or in sauce. Fresh or frozen fruit is easy to acquire almost anywhere, and it has plenty of flavor and sweetness on its own (it doesn’t need the sugary syrup they put in fruit cups). If it’s some kind of fruit salad with creamy dressing, whether you count that is up to you. My suggestion is not to cheat yourself either way. Your goal isn’t to “cheat the system” and count a fruit snack pouch as your daily fruit; it’s to eat more fruit! If you eat four blueberries covered in syrup or blueberry jam, that’s not really hitting the mark.
What counts as a serving of vegetables?
The ideal target to hit here is raw vegetables. Second best is boiled, steamed, or baked vegetables. That said, if the only vegetables you’ll eat are sauced beyond recognition or salted, you can start there. It’s better to eat healthy food covered in unhealthy food than to only eat unhealthy food. So, if you only enjoy broccoli if it’s smothered in something unhealthy, well, go for it.
The paltry, low-quality lettuce and tomato you might get on a fast food burger is better than nothing, but not what we’re looking for. I suggest making the rule that vegetables need to “carry the most weight” in the food you’re eating for it to count as a serving. French fries, for example, are potatoes, but that’s dwarfed by the fact they’re deep fried in vegetable oil.
If you want your vegetables to have more flavor, black pepper gives a healthy and delicious kick to basically any savory dish. There are many more spices that can do the same. I use organic all-purpose seasoning for most things. Healthy food is usually delicious as it is, but for some foods and some palates, experimentation might be warranted.
What if I don’t like [insert healthy food here]?
You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it. With the variety of flavors, textures, and preparations of fruits and vegetables, it’s almost impossible to dislike everything. Find the combinations that work for you. I enjoy salads, blueberries, mangoes, strawberries, broccoli, and spinach the most, so I eat them the most. These foods are a small fraction of the number of options. I will occasionally eat cauliflower, but I don’t care for it. I never eat mushrooms. Chicken is healthier than red meat, but I tend to go for beef and broccoli more often because I like how they go together. Remember that everything is on a scale, and that broccoli dipped in soybean oil ranch dressing is still healthier than macaroni and cheese.
What if I can’t stop eating unhealthy food?
The strategy for temptations is in the next chapter. The sneak preview answer is: Don’t try to willpower your way out of a poor diet. The way out of an unhealthy diet is not restriction, it’s abundance! Unhealthy food provides a reward, and you must find an alternate way to get that reward. If you cut out a powerful reward completely, you won’t last long!
You’re going to continue to eat some unhealthy food as you integrate changes, and that’s okay. The short-term perspective says that no amount of junk food is acceptable, and that just makes me want to eat a cheeseburger. Think abundantly, and move toward healthy food rather than away from unhealthy food. Our strategy in the next chapter is more specific and actionable than this advice, but perspective does matter.
What if I’m not in the mood for a carrot?
Just now, I took a break from writing to eat something. I thought about eating a carrot, but I was in the mood for something more substantial (like a meal). My desire for a full meal or heavy snack had discouraged me from eating “just a carrot.” I suspect this feeling is extremely common, since vegetables are not calorie dense. In this case, I would usually skip the carrot and eat what I craved, but this time, I i
magined actually eating the carrot. I thought about the flavor, texture, and satisfying crunch of it, and immediately, it became more appealing to me. But the key thought that sealed the deal was reminding myself that eating a carrot does not mean I can’t eat something else too. I ate the carrot and enjoyed it. Not long after that, I once again desired a meal, but now I had a carrot in my stomach.
If you’re in such a situation, you might think that eating the carrot was a “waste,” since you still feel just about as hungry after eating it. This is NOT true. Vegetables provide powerful health benefits, independent of how well they sate your appetite. In addition, it’s unlikely that your sense of hunger is so sensitive and accurate as to be able to say, “I feel exactly as hungry after eating the carrot as I did before.” Did you measure your hunger before and after? What were the readings?
Mini Habits for Weight Loss: Stop Dieting. Form New Habits. Change Your Lifestyle Without Suffering. Page 21