Speaker 1: Oh hello, welcome to healthy Ish and a happy new year.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on the podcast from Body
Speaker 1: and Soul. I am your host, Felicity Halle. Yes, the
Speaker 1: healthy Ish team is ooo out of office. So to
Speaker 1: celebrate the new year, we're dropping our top Healthish episodes
Speaker 1: from last year. Now, this one we did drop a
Speaker 1: long time ago, well, the beginning of last year. And
Speaker 1: here's the scenario. You've got two people, same health goal,
Speaker 1: so why does one hit it and the other doesn't? Well,
Speaker 1: joining me was doctor Amantha Imba to tell us why.
Speaker 1: The organizational psychologist, author and podcaster joined us from Melbourne
Speaker 1: now listening to our sister podcast Extra healthy Ish, where
Speaker 1: she talked about how to make health habits a little
Speaker 1: bit easier, perfect for this time of year. You can
Speaker 1: grab that one where we get your podcasts now the
Speaker 1: perfect book to kickstart and year making habits stick. Before
Speaker 1: we get to that, talk us through how habits work,
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on with us in our brains.
Speaker 2: Well, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 3: I mean, a habit is simply where a behavior becomes automatic.
Speaker 3: But why it becomes automatic is the easiest way to
Speaker 3: think about it is.
Speaker 2: There's some kind of a queue or a trigger in
Speaker 2: your environment.
Speaker 3: Like let's just say you're in the middle of a workday,
Speaker 3: it's got to three o'clock and you're starting to feel
Speaker 3: that three o'clock slump of energy.
Speaker 2: So that might be the trigger out for the habit
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 3: Then there is the behavior, or is some people say,
Speaker 3: there's a craving for the behavior, and then the response
Speaker 3: to the craving, which might be reaching for.
Speaker 2: The chocolate at three o'clock.
Speaker 3: And the reason why that becomes a habit is because
Speaker 3: there's a reward for doing that behavior, and in the
Speaker 3: case of chocolate, the reward is about a twenty minute
Speaker 3: boost of energy, and then of course youre slump again.
Speaker 3: But we don't think about that when we're feeling really
Speaker 3: exhausted in the middle of the afternoon.
Speaker 1: No, So, in terms of New Year health goals, you've
Speaker 1: got two different people. I mean, let's say me and
Speaker 1: you we've got the same health goal. Let's carry on
Speaker 1: with that great example of three pm reaching for the chocolate,
Speaker 1: which happens to be me, although I'm not chocolate and
Speaker 1: I'm more sugar. You know, you kind of get that deep,
Speaker 1: don't you. I want some sugar. We have this health
Speaker 1: goal that we want to achieve. Stop eating so much
Speaker 1: sugar at three pm. You achieve it. I don't what's
Speaker 1: going on here?
Speaker 2: Well, this is the thing because there are a lot
Speaker 2: of books about.
Speaker 3: Habit change and the kind of assume that there's this
Speaker 3: formula to change a habit. But what I discovered when
Speaker 3: I was doing my research for the health habit is
Speaker 3: that there are actually four different barriers that can get
Speaker 3: in the way of when we're trying to change a
Speaker 3: habit or form something new. And one of the things
Speaker 3: that happened to me when I was going through the
Speaker 3: Melbourne lockdown, which were I think. I think we took
Speaker 3: the prize for worst in the world.
Speaker 2: We I think. So I had a.
Speaker 3: Couple of friends and they were both trying to adopt
Speaker 3: a new healthy habit of walking walking for an hour
Speaker 3: a day. And you know that that seemed pretty realistic
Speaker 3: and achievable as a goal given that as Melbourne and
Speaker 3: we were allowed outside for one hour a day. I thinks, right, exactly, yes,
Speaker 3: but within our five k radius, So you know, achievable.
Speaker 3: And you know, both of my friends they started off strong,
Speaker 3: like in that first week they both walked for one
Speaker 3: hour a day, every single day. But then in the
Speaker 3: second week they both began to encounter problems where their
Speaker 3: habit basically got broken. So, for one of my friends,
Speaker 3: what happened is that a major project hit at work
Speaker 3: and she had timed her walk for something that she
Speaker 3: did in the evening at about six or seven o'clock.
Speaker 3: But what was happening in her life is that she
Speaker 3: was she was on Zoom meetings all day and then
Speaker 3: by the time six or seven o'clock was coming around,
Speaker 3: she was still working and trying to feed the family,
Speaker 3: and the walk just went by the wayside. Then I
Speaker 3: had another friend who was also doing this walk, and
Speaker 3: she had decided to do her walk in the morning.
Speaker 3: But what happened with her is that in the second week,
Speaker 3: her partner was getting a bit aggravated at her because
Speaker 3: she would wake up early for her walk, but in
Speaker 3: the process of getting ready for the walk, she would
Speaker 3: also inadvertently wake.
Speaker 2: Up her partners. Yes, yeah, so he got grumpy and
Speaker 2: the walks stopped. And you know, when you're locked down
Speaker 2: with someone, you kind of want to keep the peace.
Speaker 3: So very like the same habit, but very different reasons
Speaker 3: as to why they stopped. One stopped really because of
Speaker 3: like complete exhaustion, and the other stopped because of the
Speaker 3: social relationships in her environment.
Speaker 1: So what were the how did they then? How would
Speaker 1: they work with that and make it more okay? So
Speaker 1: that is obviously the barrier right to the habit. How
Speaker 1: do we overcome this? How do different barriers? How do
Speaker 1: we identify our barriers and then overcome it?
Speaker 3: So firstly, it's a matter of identifying which of the
Speaker 3: four main barriers or habit hijackers as I refer to them,
Speaker 3: is going on.
Speaker 2: So there are four types.
Speaker 3: One is motivational, where we kind of feel like we
Speaker 3: should do something, but we don't want to do something,
Speaker 3: like we know it's good for us, but we're not
Speaker 3: really feeling that pull.
Speaker 2: The second hijacker is relational.
Speaker 3: How I described in that story, the partner of the
Speaker 3: person that was trying to form this habit, it just
Speaker 3: wasn't working well in the relationships in her life and
Speaker 3: that's why it inevitably stopped. Then there are environmental hijackers,
Speaker 3: where something in our environment is making it really hard
Speaker 3: to change a habit, Like if we're trying to eat
Speaker 3: less chocolate, for example, but our pantry is full of chocolatey.
Speaker 2: Goodness or not goodness. In the case of chocolate, it's
Speaker 2: going to be hard.
Speaker 3: And the fourth hijacker is cognitive hijackers, where we're just
Speaker 3: feeling so tired and exhausted it becomes really hard to
Speaker 3: have any mental reserves to have the energy to create
Speaker 3: a change. So we need to identify that hijacker. And
Speaker 3: then in the book, I talk about different habit heroes
Speaker 3: that you can apply depending on your specific barrier.
Speaker 2: And really what it is is it's like changing a habit.
Speaker 2: It's not a one size fits all thing.
Speaker 3: It's about identifying this is my barrier and so for
Speaker 3: therefore this is how I need to change it. So
Speaker 3: in the case of motivational, we need to make the
Speaker 3: habit desirable something that we want to do. In the
Speaker 3: case of relation or we need to make it social,
Speaker 3: you know, engage to people around us to.
Speaker 1: Help us make that out of the bed and then okay,
Speaker 1: let's go together and walk.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In the case of environmental things, we want toe our
Speaker 3: physical environment so that it's just natural to perform the habit.
Speaker 3: And in the case of cognitive barriers, like my friend
Speaker 3: that was overworked, we just need to make it easy
Speaker 3: to engage in that habit.
Speaker 1: So do you have a habit that you're hoping to
Speaker 1: implement this year and how are you going to stick
Speaker 1: to it?
Speaker 2: I do, I do.
Speaker 3: So something I learned when I was researching the book
Speaker 3: is the importance of probiotics. And when we think of probiotics,
Speaker 3: we think of going to the chemist, and we think
Speaker 3: of that special exclusive fridge that sits behind the desk
Speaker 3: and getting some really expensive tablets that are apparently going
Speaker 3: to transform our gut But when I interviewed professor Tim Specter,
Speaker 3: who's at King's College London, he's amazing, so he's one
Speaker 3: of the world's experts on gut health. And when I
Speaker 3: interviewed him, he said, eat your probiotics.
Speaker 2: I thought, what is it? What does he mean like
Speaker 2: crush up the tablets and.
Speaker 3: He said, no, fermented foods. If you can eat small
Speaker 3: amounts of fermented foods throughout your day, So this might
Speaker 3: be things like yogurt or kefer or fermented vegetables or kimchi,
Speaker 3: that is going to do wonders for your gut health.
Speaker 3: So for me, I don't have many of those things
Speaker 3: in my diet, but one of the things that I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do this year is to regularly have fermented
Speaker 3: foods in my diet. So that is a habit that
Speaker 3: I am trying to change.
Speaker 1: Oh, good luck with that. Well, we'll check in perhaps
Speaker 1: in a couple of months and see how you're going
Speaker 1: me that. Thank you for coming on healthy Ish thgs.
Speaker 1: Amantha's new book is called The Health Habit and it
Speaker 1: is out now, perfect for January reading. If you did
Speaker 1: enjoy this chat, make sure you rate and review it
Speaker 1: or New Year's resolution. You must subscribe to this a
Speaker 1: podcast or share it with a friend. For more info,
Speaker 1: head to body and sooul dot com dot you follow
Speaker 1: us on socials. Grab our print edition, which is out
Speaker 1: in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrowtay healthy Ish