Daily Mini Habits (mandatory): Choose 1-4 mini habits you’ll do every day, and select an implementation plan that suits your personality and lifestyle (as covered in the “Mini Habit Plans” section). These daily mini habits are the most important component for change, because they’re your “base” of consistent progress. They’re easy to do, even on a bad day, which is why remarkable consistency is not just possible but highly probable. Daily mini habits are the only mandatory aspect of the entire mini habits strategy. You must do these every day if you want to succeed. Since these are a “must-do” requirement, it’s helpful to remind yourself just how easy these behaviors are, or else you might feel controlled and rebel. If you feel resistance to your mini habits, consider these tips:
Imagine how easy it would be to actually perform your small goal. Visualize it.
Don't compare your goal to other tasks.
Be eager for any amount of forward motion.
Set the precedent of ignoring your circumstances. Progress is rarely convenient.
Never underestimate what a small good decision can do for your life in the short term and long term.
If you can internalize that mindset, you will thrive. Beyond mini habits, the rest of the strategy is about shifting your mindset and making use of the following optional strategies to help you.
Temptation Strategy (optional): Within the “Situational Strategies” chapter is a broad temptation strategy that umbrellas over all situations. The temptation strategy is designed to reduce shame, decrease the severity of your cravings, and empower you to make better decisions now and later. These three things are accomplished through a simple “mini obstacle course.” This strategy is smart because it strengthens you even when you “lose” and indulge in a craving. You’re not going to resist processed food perfectly for the rest of your life, so any strategy that counts on your doing that (read: every other weight loss book you’ve ever read) is a poor one.
The temptation strategy is optional, meaning you do not have to try to implement it every time you’re tempted. Your goal is to make healthier choices, and this is a tool to help you accomplish that. If I suggested that you make it mandatory, it would interfere with the broader mini habits strategy. If you required yourself to use this strategy every time you’re tempted but you didn’t always do it, then you might think you’re failing or that the mini habits strategy isn’t working as a whole and stop doing your daily mini habits. This is obviously something to avoid, since the daily mini habits are most important, and this is more of a bonus if you can do it.
That said, this is a very powerful strategy that I recommend you do as often as possible. But don’t ever feel like you’ve failed or that you’ve “messed up” if you are tempted by food and just eat it without trying this. This is optional, but I would prioritize it over the other optional strategies, since cravings and temptation play such a large role in eating.
Situational Strategies (optional): Life presents you with plenty of challenges if you want to lose weight. You’ll find yourself in situations in which it’s difficult to make healthy decisions. Most people try to use willpower to mitigate all of these situations, and it works well… until it fails. Since willpower does fail us sometimes, it’s better to use strategies that are effective in any willpower or motivational state.
In the “Situational Strategies” chapter, we covered general temptation, six other common situations, and the ideal strategy for each one. You can use them as a reference. For example, when you’re about to attend a party, you can review the “Parties and Holidays” strategy guide. Having different strategies for different situations is more customized than dieting, which ignores the reality of life and gives you a confining “no matter what” ultimatum.
Mini Challenges (optional): You can choose to do these fun and easy challenges on a case-by-case basis. These are like the situational strategies, but they involve movement instead of eating.
If you want, you can try making one of these into a standard mini habit if it’s attached to something you do every day. For example, if you watch TV every day, then you can implement the “TV Challenge” or the “TV Commercial Challenge” as a daily requirement. This is more difficult than a typical mini habit, because it can be triggered several times per day. If you watch three hours of TV, that might be 24 commercial breaks, which would mean you’re getting up and moving 24 times per day. That’s quite a lot to do on every day. It’s doable and easy in each individual case, but to have to do it that many times can be intimidating. That’s why I recommend these as optional in most cases.
If you have a stairs vs. elevator choice every day, maybe at your workplace, then you could make that into a mini habit by choosing one specific cue. Maybe you will decide to use the stairs as you go into and/or leave work, but use the elevator at lunch. Likewise, maybe you’ll choose to do a mini exercise routine before watching TV, but not during commercials. Whether or not you make these mandatory depends on how frequently you run into this situation, and your overall “mini habits load.” It’s not a good thing to have too many mini habits.
Be sure to manage your daily requirements and optional activities into something that’s comfortable. Your plan can challenge you slightly, but daily success matters more than “challenging yourself,” because it forms habits, and habits allow you to challenge yourself more often and in greater intensity without risk of total failure.
Habits set the floor for your worst days. For example, my worst writing day technically has a floor of 50 words. That’s just on paper as my mini habit. Since I’ve had this mini habit for more than two years and my writing habit is strong, my worst days are more like 1,000 words written. Others—including me before mini habits—start out aiming for something challenging like 1,000 words per day, and often fail to hit that mark or quit from burnout. Because I aimed for consistency and built the writing habit, writing 1,000 words a day is now an average or below-average day for me, when it used to be “an extraordinary accomplishment.” This is the power of habit, and don’t forget it.
The fun thing about these mini challenges (and also your daily mini habits) is that, whenever you take a small positive action, you’ll feel good about yourself. I can’t overstate how crucial this is to your success. When I take the stairs instead of the elevator in my apartment, I feel disproportionately good about myself. Someone should slap me and say, “Dude, you just went up some stairs. Calm down.” It sounds silly, but you’ll see what I mean. It’s addictive and rewarding to accumulate these small wins, which is what this whole strategy is based on doing.
Final Words
You are now armed with strategies that can take you the distance. You will be able to apply these strategies seven years from now as well as today, because they are designed for lifelong use and success. If you’ve tried the frantic, motivation-driven push to lose weight quickly, you know how that ends. If you’ve tried to change your diet overnight, you know how that ends. Try this way, and you’ll see a different, happier ending.
To make real, lasting progress, you need to make changes you can sustain. And these changes are not going to become more difficult over time, but easier to do as your brain familiarizes with them. When they finally become habitual, they will be your new preferences, and then you won’t have to operate under any plan. You’ll just be living your new lifestyle.
Lasting weight loss is possible, not through dieting, but through small and consistent changes that mesh with the way your body and brain prefer to change. If a behavior is “too small to fail” and so easy that you can do it on your worst day, what can stop you from doing it? Nothing, and that means that nothing will stop you from changing your behavior and getting healthier.
Mini Habits for Weight Loss is success- and practice-driven. Too many people set goals they can’t reach. That isn’t fruitful. We get better by practicing hitting targets, not by failing to hit targets out of our reach. Imagine succeeding every day, not just when you’re motivated. Imagine growing in confi
dence every day. Imagine losing weight over the next year without having fear of regaining it because of how you’ve changed from the inside out, rather than from forced, conscious-only, willpower-draining, outside-in dieting programs.
This is your chance to try a weight loss strategy that can actually work long-term. I hope you take advantage of the opportunity before you. As the saying goes, once you go mini, you don’t go back. I wish you the best for your journey in weight loss and in life.
Cheers,
Stephen Guise
For additional tools, resources, and community, visit minihabits.com.
Thank You
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Mini Habits
If you haven’t yet, I strongly recommend you read my first book, Mini Habits. Although you don’t need to read Mini Habits to benefit from Mini Habits for Weight Loss, it will give you more of the nuts and bolts of the original mini habits strategy.
Based on the science, Mini Habits is arguably the most effective habit formation strategy in the world. And, based on reviews, it’s arguably the most loved and the most successful! Many lives have been transformed as a result of adopting the mini habits strategy. It can change your life too!
Mini Habits Book: http://amazon.com/dp/B00HGKNBDK
Mini Habit Mastery
If you prefer video and want to learn the mini habits concept, you can take the Mini Habit Mastery Video Course. Use coupon code “MHWL55” for an exclusive Mini Habits for Weight Loss discount. Mini Habit Mastery is among the world’s most popular habit courses, with over 9,000 students.
Mini Habit Mastery HD Video Course: https://www.udemy.com/mini-habit-mastery/?couponCode=MHWL55
How to Be an Imperfectionist
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Notes
1. Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved 26 August 2016, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diet
2. “The cycled animals required more than twice the time (21 vs. 46 days) to lose the same amount of weight during the second restriction compared to the first (food efficiency was increased 142%). One-third the time (10 vs. 29 days) was required to regain weight in the second refeeding. Food intake increased 25% and efficiency 52% in the second refeeding. The difference did not appear to be due to age, as efficiency decreased slightly over time in the age-matched Obese Controls while it increased significantly in the cycled animals.”
Brownell, K., Greenwood, M., Stellar, E., & Shrager, E. (1986). The effects of repeated cycles of weight loss and regain in rats. Physiology & Behavior, 38(4), 459-464. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0031-9384(86)90411-7
3. Bjorntorp, P., & Yang, M. U. (1982). Refeeding after fasting in the rat: Effects on body composition and food efficiency. Am J Clin Nutr 36: 444-449.
Walks, D., Lavau, M, Presta, E., Yang, M. U., & Bjorntorp, P. (1983). Refeeding after fasting in the rat: Effects of dietary-induced obesity on energy balance regulation. Am J Clin N, tr 37: 387-395.
Boyle, P. C., Storlien, L. H., Harper, A. E., & Keesey, R. E. (1981). Oxygen consumption and locomotor activity during restricted feeding and realimentation. Am J Physiol 241: R392-R387.
Boyle, P., Storlien, L., & Keesey, R. (1978). Increased efficiency of food utilization following weight loss. Physiology & Behavior, 21(2), 261-264. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0031-9384(78)90050-1
Levitsky, D., Faust, I., & Glassman, M. (1976). The ingestion of food and the recovery of body weight following fasting in the naive rat. Physiology & Behavior, 17(4), 575-580. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0031-9384(76)90154-2
Robinson, D., Hodgson, D., Bradford, G., Robb, J., & Peterson, D. (1975). Effects of dietary restriction and fasting on the body composition of normal and genetically obese mice. J Animal Science, 40(6), 1058. http://dx.doi.org/10.2527/jas1975.4061058x
Rolls, B., Rowe, E., & Turner, R. (1980). Persistent obesity in rats following a period of consumption of a mixed, high energy diet. J Physiology, 298(1), 415-427. http://dx.doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.1980.sp013091
4. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A., Westling, E., Lew, A., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62(3), 220. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=2007-04834-008#
5. Field, A., Austin, S., Taylor, C., Malspeis, S., Rosner, B., & Rockett, H., et al. (2003). Relation between dieting and weight change among preadolescents and adolescents. Pediatrics, 112(4), 900-906. Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/4/900
6. Pietiläinen K. H. e. (2016). Does dieting make you fat? A twin study. PubMed - NCBI. Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved 26 August 2016, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21829159
7. Tucker, T. (2006). The great starvation experiment: the heroic men who starved so that millions could live. New York: Free Press.
8. Taubes, G. (2016). Diet advice that ignores hunger. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 26 August 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/opinion/diet-advice-that-ignores-hunger.html?_r=0
9. Callahan, M. (2016). The brutal secrets behind “The Biggest Loser”. Nypost.com. Retrieved 26 August 2016, from http://nypost.com/2015/01/18/contestant-reveals-the-brutal-secrets-of-the-biggest-loser/
10. Fothergill, E., Guo, J., Howard, L., Kerns, J., Knuth, N., & Brychta, R., et al. (2016). Persistent metabolic adaptation 6 years after “The Biggest Loser” competition. Obesity, 24(8), 1612-1619. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/oby.21538
11. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A., Westling, E., Lew, A., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62(3), 220. p. 222 Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=2007-04834-008#
12. Howard BV, et al. (2006). Low-fat dietary pattern and weight change over 7 years: The Womenʼs Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 107(4), 949. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/01.aog.0000203661.68762.62
13. Bailor, J. (2013). The calorie myth. Harper Wave.
14. Hu, T., Mills, K., Yao, L., Demanelis, K., Eloustaz, M., & Yancy, W., et al. (2012). Effects of low-carbohydrate diets versus low-fat diets on metabolic risk factors: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled clinical trials. Am J Epidemiology, 176(suppl 7), S44-S54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aje/kws264
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15. Hall, K. (2015). Prescribing low-fat diets: Useless for long-term weight loss? The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 3(12), 920-921. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s2213-8587(15)00413-1
16. Lutes, L., Winett, R., Barger, S., Wojcik, J., Herbert, W., Nickols-Richardson, S., & Anderson, E. (2008). Small changes in nutrition and physical activity promote weight loss and maintenance: 3-month evidence from the ASPIRE Randomized Trial. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 35(3), 351-357. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12160-008-9033-z
17. Gorin, A., Phelan, S., Wing, R., & Hill, J. (2003). Promoting long-term weight control: Does dieting consistency matter? Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0802550
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