How to Change Behavior, Maintain Weight Loss and Break Bad Habits

Apr 7, 2010
Jerry Lopper

Change Behavior and Maintain Weight Loss - Julia Freeman-Woolpert

Maintain a lifestyle that breaks bad habits and self-defeating behaviors such as smoking, over-eating, or heavy credit card debt with an effective plan.

Stopping smoking is easy, witness the number of people who have stopped over and over again. Becoming a long term non-smoker though is a different story. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, smokers who quit are at greater risk of relapsing in the first three months of becoming smoke-free. Why? Probably because they have not put in place an effective maintenance plan for their new, non-smoking lifestyle, according to James Proachaska, Ph.D. author of Changing for Good (Quill Publications, 2002).

It's not just smokers who have trouble making a lasting change to non-smoker; losing weight and keeping it off is also difficult. Prochaska indicates "many dieters lose weight quickly, but six months after beginning a diet, many people weigh more than they did when they started!"

Many people attempt major lifestyle changes to break bad, self-defeating habits such as overspending and accumulating heavy credit card debt by jumping into action without adequate planning and preparation, and without giving advance thought to the challenges of sustaining new behaviors. Prochaska's research shows that effective lifestyle behavior change involves moving through distinct cycles of change and using appropriate change processes. For information on Prochaska's cycles of change, see How to Break Bad Habits and Change Behavior.

Reinforcing the need for an effective maintenance plan, Prochaska notes the typical New Year's resolution process where people feel compelled to start a new year with healthier eating habits, reduced spending, increased exercise, or reduced alcohol consumption, is an example of ineffective change due to lack of maintenance planning. His research finds that forty-five percent of New Year's resolutions fail after one month, sixty-percent after six months, and eighty-percent after two years.

To effectively break bad habits Prochaska advises that people "must replace problem behaviors with a new, healthier lifestyle." For a person to remain smoke-free, free of credit card debt, or trim and healthy at a new weight, she should be aware of the common threats to sustained lifestyle change and have plans in place to counter them.

Threats to Effective Behavior Change

Social pressures can come from friends, family, and co-workers who engage in the problem behavior. They may continue to influence and subtly, inadvertently sabotage new, healthy eating, non-drinking, or responsible spending behaviors. Social pressures of being rejected, left-out, and out-of-step with others can be a very powerful influence. Avoiding the environments typically triggering the problem behavior can be effective, especially early in the action stage, but environmental control is very difficult to sustain long term.

Internal challenges include over-confidence, lack of confidence, and self-blame, which can each work against sustained behavior change. Being over-confident with new behaviors, some people intentionally tempt themselves to prove their resolve. This is exemplified by the non-drinker who keeps a bottle in his desk drawer to prove his willpower. Prochaska points out that continuous exposure to temptation is a recipe for failure, "We have yet to meet a self-changer who played the daily temptation game early in maintenance and won."

Intense unexpected situations can also threaten behavior change. No one can completely control life situations. Arrival of an intense, unexpected situation which causes extreme stress can tempt the non-smoker to light-up just one time to help relieve anxiety. Most bad habits are originally adopted to deal with a physical or emotional need. When that need emerges in response to an intense experience, it can be very tempting to return to the problem behavior.

How to Maintain Lifestyle Changes

Effectively sustaining significant lifestyle change involves utilizing the following processes to reinforce newly acquired behaviors in an ongoing maintenance plan:

Maintain a list of the harmful effects of the old behavior which are now being avoided.
Keep a reminder list of the positive aspects of the new lifestyle.
Take credit for the difficulties and obstacles overcome in abandoning the old bad habit.
Enlist friends and family to continue supporting and reinforcing the new behaviors.
Maintain positive, affirming thinking relative to the new healthier lifestyle.
Recommit to the new lifestyle, recognizing the need for an ongoing, sustained effort required to habituate new behaviors.
Be prepared for a relapse of two, which is typical of even successful lifestyle change.

Maintain Behavior Changes

Making a significant lifestyle change of reduced weight, healthier eating, non-smoking, or responsible spending is difficult, but possible when one recognizes the need for a maintenance plan that sustains new behaviors. The processes indicated in this article are found to help sustain lifestyle behavior changes.