My bad habit is eating junk food before sleep. The cue is heading to the kitchen

Question

My bad habit is eating junk food before sleep.

The cue is heading to the kitchen before sleep

The routine is eating junk food

The reward is feeling happy

Create your topic sentence to include the idea that changing a routine requires identifying the craving, changing the routine that satisfies craving, and uses outside resources for support: -----------

Your habit craving -------

Quote from The power of habit book that supporting the idea of craving in habit formation: ------

Explanation of the craving in terms of your habit:------------

Changing the routine but meeting the craving ---------------

Quote from The power of habit book that supporting the idea importance of routine change in habit change: ------

Explanation of routine change in terms of your habit---------

Outside support ---------

Quote from text supporting the idea of using outside support in habit change -------

Explanation of outside support in terms of your habit change ----------

Explanation / Answer

Habits are formed by repeating any particular behaviour over and over again. New habits are indeed hard to from and old habits indeed die hard. A theory suggests that an individual usually take about 3 weeks or 21 days, to form a new habit. But the point is to stick to the same routine for 21 days for the new habit to form.

A habit that I abhor about myself is bingeing on junk just before I am about to sleep. I know I dislike this habit of mine as it makes me add extra pounds. I want to get rid of this habit, but I am unable to.

Habit loop governs any habit. You are in a constant loop which makes you continue with a particular habit without making any changes. It includes, cue, routine and reward.

Cue, triggers a particular habit. When I am about to sleep, I automatically go to the kicthen, go through my junk drawer and just grab anything sweet that's kept. It could be a biscuit, or chocolate, a sweet pretzel, just anything sweet. Just before hitting the sack, is a cue to kick in my habit of junk bingeing.

Routine; when you especially do not like a habit, you know you want to change it, what you first do is, identify a pattern in your behaviour. I head to the kitchen before I hit the bed. I am in a routine of doing so. I need to try different things instead of stepping in to the kitchen and automatically reaching out to something sweet.

Reward; it is the reward that drives our behaviour. The satisfaction that I get after eating a chocolate, makes me want to keep going back to it. However, in this situation, the satiation does not achieve anything positive. Instead I just end up adding extra pounds and in taking empty calories which does not make me feel good about myself the next morning.

New habits are indeed hard to form, but consistency with change in behaviour makes it achievable.

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