An earlier series of blog posts looked at the 4 Horsemen of the Foodocolypse. The posts covered the 4 major things to avoid in order to live a long, healthy, exciting life.
But it’s not easy to remove something out of a daily routine. According to research in The Power of Habit, Removing a habit from your life can create a habit vacuum. Let’s look at this.
We all have habits, and every habit has four parts:
- The Cue: the trigger that causes us to do something. For example, stress.
- The Routine: the action we perform. For example, overeating.
- The Reward: why we do it. For example, to calm down.
- The Craving: once we start into a habit, it becomes a craving that keeps us in the loop.
In this loop, the routine is the one thing that can be changed. But removing the routine can cause a habit vacuum. Even trying to remove something like overeating can cause a problem. The cue will still exist; you will still get stressed. The craving will still exist. And you will still remember the reward if you give in. Something will come in to take the place of the routine.
So instead of removing the routine, we need to replace the routine. We need to find something that will address the issue and do that thing instead. That will generate a reward which will begin a craving in us to continue.
So, for each of the 4 horsemen we uncovered, we have a Joy of Healthy Living to put in it’s place. These 4 Joys will not only help you enjoy life, but it will help you fill the gap left from any bad habits from the 4 horsemen. Upcoming blog posts over the next two weeks will cover these one at a time.
The 4 Joys of Healthy Living Are:
- Instead of drinking your calories, drink pure, clean, water
- Instead of eating processed foods, eat real, delicious food
- Instead of consuming lots of bad carbs with sugar, enjoy a balanced mix of nutrients
- Instead of ingesting fried foods, savor some garden-fresh edibles
