Say goodbye to your bad habits

Giving up a bad habit is a bit like waging war against your own brain. Trying (even really, really hard) is just not enough – you need a map of the territory, a slick strategy and the latest neuro-weapons.

By Paige Dorkin

Whatever your fix – be it sugar-laced carbs come 3pm, stress-induced spending sprees or half-hourly Facebook checks at work – you can break your bad habits.

Habitual behaviour has neurological consequences that can make it very, very difficult to break. We know this, of course, from having tried, over and over again…

We’d all like to eat better, exercise more and clear our debt, but wanting – and sometimes even trying really, really hard – simply isn’t enough. We need to understand the real power of our habits and tackle them with more than good old-fashioned discipline. So we asked the experts exactly how it’s done…

1. Get to know your enemy

The first step, says Cape Town psychologist Morgaine Fitzgerald, is to identify your cravings in specific terms. She suggests keeping a journal of your triggers (hint: stress, anger, lack of sleep and boredom are among the biggest), but also of how the substance or experience makes you feel.

“Learn to recognise what the coffee, chocolate, cake or other product is giving you. By this I mean how do you feel before and after your fix. Write it down.”

2. Don’t back down

Once you’ve done a bit of amateur neuroscience, noting down the possible causes of craving and the effects of caving in, it’s tempting to blame temptation itself on the mysterious chemistry of your grey matter. This would be a mistake; the truth, alas, is far less convenient.

After all, argue neuroplasticity researcher Jeffrey Schwartz and psychiatrist Rebecca Gladding in their new book You Are Not Your Brain (Avery), you’re the one who trains your brain in the first place.

By eating that late-afternoon Kit-Kat three, four, five days in a row, you’re teaching your brain this is a significant action – something to take heed of and reproduce. What’s worse, the more chocolate wafer fingers you gobble down, the more frequent and intense your cravings become.

The solution? Gladding and Schwartz agree with Fitzgerald on the first step (identify your enemy). They then go on to suggest four “Rs”: Relabel, Reframe, Refocus and Revalue.

It works a bit like this:

1. You get to 10am and feel the familiar, magnetic pull of dark-roast Arabica beans. Immediately, you “relabel” the craving, replacing “I need coffee” with “Oh, there’s that craving for coffee again”.

2. Next, you reframe the craving, reminding yourself that your brain is generating this desire, but that the bigger-picture is that you don’t want to be reliant on regular doses of caffeine.

3. Then refocus your attention by making a healthier choice – drinking some rooibos with a little honey, for instance. As the temptation persists, continue to revalue it: “This is just the feeling of craving. I don’t have to respond. I can let it exist and get on with my day.”

It sounds simple enough, but getting to “R” number four requires rather a lot of self-awareness, not to mention impulse control. The crucial shift, insists Johannesburg-based life coach Chi-Chi Muzariri, is that we learn to take a step away from our cravings. “We are better able to manage our cravings when we realise that it’s not really the wine or chocolate that we’re after,” she explains. “It’s the results and feelings they produce.”

When we no longer identify so closely with these cravings, or feel so defined by them – that’s when their grip on us begins to loosen and we can retrain the brain in line with our real, rather than chemical or hormonal, priorities.

3. Be prepared

It makes sense, then, that meditation is widely prescribed in the battle against temptation. Learning to observe your thoughts – and even your chemical impulses – rather than merely reacting to them, will surely strengthen your ability to distance yourself from them.

Be that as it may, warns Muzariri, don’t think that you can simply swap your nightly chocolate on the couch with a meditation class. “I believe in replacing the temptation with another activity that you believe will give you as much, if not more, pleasure – but without the habit-forming side-effects,” she says.

Pair a deep bubble bath with a gripping novel or a phone call to your best friend. Make it something with an instant payout; yes, you will feel good after an hour at the gym, but that’s rather too high a mental hurdle to be jumping early on. The aim is to reassure your brain that you’re not bent on becoming entirely Spartan in your battle, that you will still give it kicks – just ones that you consciously choose.