In our last blog, we briefly touched on how to habit stack in terms of achieving your new year’s resolution! Today, we are going to dive deeper into habit stacking, which is one of Primal’s favourite core concepts when it comes to nutrition coaching. This is because nutrition coaching is behaviour change…not a meal plan free of or greatly restricting carbs and just plain chicken. To us, that is not proper nutrition coaching, folks…that is an overpriced shopping list which likely took someone a few minutes and little thought to write up.
Why is habit stacking so powerful?
Habit stacking is so powerful because it builds confidence and momentum. You may have found that when things build, and you feel you are on a roll and in a solid rhythm, at that time it allows you to hit big goals and make progress steadily. This is key when gaining momentum.
Momentum as we all know, is very powerful and once it gets going, it snowballs.
A key for anyone, especially beginners is to build this momentum with little wins or pats on the back if you will. These little wins or pats over time will get bigger and bigger and add up to a massive slap on the back one day. Before you know it, without overstressing, you have become a completely different person!
This is the beauty of habit stacking. It is an immensely powerful tool when you utilize it the right way! This habit stacking approach has been huge for all Primal clients to achieve amazing long-term results that they can maintain!
What if I did it before? Why can’t I just go right to macros and chicken and rice?
Well, as we touched on earlier, momentum is huge and even if you had all the best habits before, currently you are probably lacking in a few areas and need some improvement. It can be very overwhelming to try and go back to your super master habit and it may even be very discouraging to. This in turn will make it very hard for you to find some momentum forward to your goals.
There may also be a way that works better for you, but that you know is also unsustainable. What you did before was great at the time, but it was not something you could even keep up with. For example, a bodybuilding show prep or a photoshoot prep or even a powerlifting meet. We see this popularized by fitness influencers and elite athletes of their respective sports on social media, but it is important to remember that these are all events that require extreme focus and peak conditioning. The reality is, this is not something you can reasonably maintain every single day, nor should you expect to.
Is it really that simple?
Yes, it can really be that simple. Picking two habits every few weeks that will improve you and work as a building block for your health and fitness. If you take the time to master that habit before adding more and focus on maintenance of that habit, you will see huge success and progress long term much faster than those on the traditional plans. We have found at Primal the success rate of this, along with client centered coaching to be extremely high. As you can see, your results speak for themselves and when you build people up, they thrive!
Why is no one talking about this? It sounds so awesome!
Well, in part, because they do not know about it either! Many fitness professionals are supernatural with these habits and never had to struggle with this very much. This is why they are drawn to health and fitness, so the concept of having to build up and have confidence in their health and in the gym is very new and pretty much foreign to them.
This is where we have a huge disconnect in the industry. Although coaches can be exceptional at programing, exercise, and the latest diets, they often miss the mark on the soft, more human aspects as it relates to the art of coaching. As much as the science is critical, complete coaching requires the understanding and application of the human element. All that knowledge is great but can be absolutely meaningless if you cannot apply simple behaviour change coaching concepts. Even the best program and plan will ultimately fail you if there is no coaching and it does not meet you where you are currently. This is why at Primal; we have a very refined approach, and you may notice none of our coaching programs are cheap. The big reason is you cannot get high quality coaching or feedback and contact for cheap. Generic templates do not work. Period.
Stay tuned for more new year’s resolution related fitness tips!