Yes, it’s true; I’ve spent a month of Intermittent Fasting – more precisely it was a month of One Meal A Day. I dropped about 2kg over the first few days, but that was just water loss. It was nothing substantial. This is not what you’d generally expect to hear about Intermittent Fasting, so what happened? What went wrong?
Building My Habit
Actually, nothing went wrong. The first stage of my Intermittent Fasting was to make my OMAD a habit, and this I have achieved. I didn’t want to stress over weight loss at this stage; I just wanted to get the OMAD Habit. I’ve tried chasing multiple goals at the same time, and one-at-a-time works for me!
My readings across the internet indicate that it can take anywhere from 21 days to a month to develop a simple habit. The more complex the habit, the more time needed for it to ‘take’. But I believe the reality is more nuanced, as forming my new habit depends on various factors, including its complexity and my own personality.
Why Does The Time Scale Vary so Much?
Let’s look at what influences habit forming:
- Complexity of the habit: Simple behaviors like drinking water after breakfast, or weighing yourself every morning, will logically take less time to ‘take’ than more complex habits like daily exercise routine in a gym.
- Piggy-backing on pre-existing habits: This is a biggie for me; it was described in detail in James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’ and is one that resonates so well with me.
- Consistency: Doing the new behavior consistently in the same context speeds up habit formation.
- Motivation and environment: A supportive environment and a high level of intrinsic motivation can shorten the time it takes to form a habit. This for me is my work environment; it enforces the same routine every day, so that I can more easily tag my new habit onto this routine.
- Personality: People who are naturally self-disciplined may form habits faster than those who struggle with routine or consistency. This is a difficult one for me. Ever since I found that I could go ‘off-piste’ and the world didn’t end, or I didn’t get into too much trouble with my parents, I’ve had difficulty with self-discipline.
The Importance of Patience
The path to forming a habit isn’t linear. I find that during the week it’s easy, because I have a daily routine set by my job. But during the weekend, where my time is (mostly) my own, maintaining the embryonic habit becomes more of a challenge.
Even if I miss a day here or there, I accept it, simply set it aside, and then get back on my original path. It’s not just persistence, but persistence over time that matters. Habits form through repetition and reinforcement, not perfection. It’s essential to keep going, even when the process feels slow or challenging.
My Practical Tips for Forming Habits
- Start small: Break down your goal into manageable steps. For example, my goal is to eat One Meal A Day. Normally you would expect each daily meal would be a moderate size and packed with nutrition, but no. I kept those aspects out of the mix – these are different habits. Keeping It Simple, Stupid (K.I.S.S.), I set my focus only on maintaining the eating schedule.
- Be consistent: Doing your new habit at the same time and place helps cue your brain to perform the behavior. This one was easy for me – I had set my one meal at dinner time. I had no breakfast or lunch before or during my work day – my working routine made this easy. My new habit tended to stutter a little during the weekends, but I felt this was acceptable.
- Track your progress: I use a simple habit tracker to visually see my progress. Habit trackers are a powerful motivator, but I kept mine simple – just like my habit.
- Reward yourself: You should celebrate small wins to reinforce your progress. My celebration was to eat more than I normally would, and to include cookies etc. in this. Yes, it goes against the Intermittent Fasting system, but as I said before, my focus was on building the OMAD habit.
- Ignore Your Goal: This one is counter-intuitive, but I’ve found it works for me. Normally you’d state that you will build a habit of One Meal A Day because it’s your road to weight loss. This means you’ll be constantly looking at the weight loss and your determination will be decided by your bathroom scales. Instead I would encourage you to take the view that the goal is a good one, and then ignore it as much as you can. Your complete focus then will be on the task at hand – your eating/fasting time windows.
Conclusion
So, how long does it take to form a habit? I did mine in 30 days. I felt I could have moved on before the 30 days were up, but I kept to this timetable.
What do I have to show for this 30 days? Nothing. My yard-stick is my weight, and it has remained mostly stable throughout the 30 days. I just have to remind myself that this part was never about the weight – even though I checked it every day (another habit – this one sneaked up on me without even knowing it).
A new habit is a delicate thing. It simply means that you have a tendency towards the habit, but you can still easily be swayed by other temptations. You need less conscious effort in maintaining it, but you can destroy it easily by simply lapsing back into your old ways. In fact I have done this in the past (hence why I’m restarting the weight loss journey), which just makes me more determined to avoid that trap this time.
It’s time now to move on to the next aspect of Intermittent Fasting which, for me, is the quantities I’m eating. Of course while I’m chasing this aspect I will continue to pay attention to my new OMAD habit.