Habit Stacking to Success

It’s a new year – time to reflect on the previous year’s accomplishments and setbacks and plan for 2022.

Are your intentions to put your health first this year? Have you thought about what habits you’d like to incorporate into your daily life?

Through 1201 CrossFit and Nutrition’s Build Better Habits Wellness Series, our coaches will be covering five foundational habits – Hydration, Movement, Sleep, Stress Management, and Healthy Meals. Through habit stacking, a new habit will be added each week for participants to take on and add to the others.

Habit stacking is a great strategy to make small changes that add up to make a HUGE difference in our overall wellness.

You’re probably wondering ‘how can I get the most out of habit stacking’?

Here are some key points to habit stacking:

Accountability

Through our Build Better Habits series, our coaches and participants can hold each other accountable throughout the challenge. The challenge will take place in a secure app where participants can communicate one-on-one with a 1201 Nutrition Coach as well as with all of the other participants. It’ll be a community where like-minded people are on the same journey with the same struggle pushing toward the same goals.

Start out slow

You want to start simple, and then slowly build onto the habit. The key factor is consistency, so you don’t want to feel immediately overwhelmed when you begin a new habit. It just doesn’t work for most people.

Implementing new habits into your life is not a race. By adding one habit per week, you’ll have time to adjust to each new one before piling another one on. This increases your chances of success.

Make a habit stick

To make a new habit stick, you must determine the best time, place and way to implement the habit. Consider scheduling a time, identifying a trigger, etc. to begin.

If you want to read after you stretch in the morning, stretching would be your trigger for reading. Or, setting an alarm could be a trigger to start your new routine/habit. Having a trigger can be a reminder to take action.

Find times convenient in your day to stack your habits, like in the morning, on your lunch break, before bed, etc. Determine when you have the most energy for these habits.

Create a checklist

Checklists are an easy way for you to feel accomplished by striking off each item on the list. Instead of thinking of each habit as a separate activity, create one checklist/routine in which you complete each habit one after another until the entire checklist/routine is done.

Repetition is key

Consistency is crucial when forming a new habit. Even if everyday isn’t as good as the one before, it’s important to just keep going. Repetition builds muscle memory and will eventually help you ingrain the new habit as part of your day/lifestyle.

Click here for more information on habit stacking or the Build Better Habits Challenge.