Habit before the habit

Habit before the habit is a behavioural change methodology that encourages people to ‘run the experiment’ until healthy habits replace the old ones. We talk about it across all of our Beezee programmes.
How does it work exactly? Well, first let’s start by explaining the three universal truths.

We aren’t as rational as we think
Have you ever wondered how adverts get us to buy stuff we don’t need? How many times have you left the supermarket with a couple of ‘extras’ that weren’t on the list (usually cakes or sweets)? We are all in the same boat, we are all slightly irrational – and that’s OK!
We all have a ‘planning self’
Our ‘planning self’ is the sensible one. They make lots of plans about being on time, eating healthily and doing lots of exercise. Our ‘doing self’ finds ourselves running late, feeling hungry in the supermarket and too tired to get up with the alarm to go running.


‘What the hell’ effect
You set a goal. Life happens. The ‘doing self’ is busy ruining the plans made by the ‘planning self’. Once you mess up a goal a little bit, it can be easy to say ‘what the hell’ and go the whole hog.
Ever said ‘I’ll start again tomorrow’? Then you know what we are talking about.
Unfortunately, in many cases, tomorrow never comes!
Running the experiment
To combat these three universal truths, we use Hh by ‘running the experiment’. This is simple but not easy. However, when people stick with it, this can be the difference between making lasting change and giving up.
How do we help people make changes?



Plan
You plan for parts of the experiment that might not work. This means thinking through potential failure points and putting a plan B in place.
Understand
When you’re running an experiment, you know there will be things that don’t work. Knowing this takes the pressure off. It isn’t all or nothing!
Experiment
You try to learn what works for you. The goal is to make changes that last- not forcing ourselves to change until we run out of willpower.
You can sign up for one of our free Beezee programmes and learn more about Habit before the Habit today.
Beezee Families – healthy lifestyle support for children and their families.
Beezee Adults – weight loss support for people aged 18 and over.
Gutless – weight loss support made specially for men.
Beezee Youth – health and wellbeing programme for teenagers.