Change ONE Thing – Keystone Habits that TRANSFORM Your Diet
Video | Keystone Habit Definition | Avoid Added Sugar | Daily Salad | Plan for Tomorrow
There are certain habits that, when adopted, create a chain reaction of positive changes. When you are working to improve your diet, these keystone habits give you a big advantage because you only need to focus on a single new behavior to reap a wide range of benefits.
In this blog post, you’ll learn three Keystone Habits that will transform your diet. Choose one, focus on it, and experience the ripple effect it has on your health and weight.
Keystone Habits for Your Diet – At-A-Glance
- Keystone Habits are defined as relatively small changes that, when followed, trigger a domino effect of positive changes throughout your life.
- Keystone Habit #1: Avoid Added Sugar. If a packaged food or drink has sugar listed as one of the top three ingredients, don’t eat it.
- Keystone Habit #2: Eat A Daily Meal-Sized Salad. Salad is the perfect vehicle for protein and healthy fats, two very hunger-satisfying ingredients.
- Keystone Habit #3: Plan for Tomorrow. Take five minutes at the end of the day to think about your eating plan for tomorrow.
Change ONE Thing – Keystone Habits that TRANSFORM Your Diet [Video]
In this video, you’ll learn…
- What Keystone Habits are.
- How Keystone Habits make dieting simple and effective.
- Three Keystone Habits to implement and instructions on how to do so.
Keystone Habits
Charles Duhigg coined the term keystone habit in his book, The Power of Habit, where he referred to them as relatively small changes that, when followed, trigger a domino effect of positive changes throughout your life.
Here are three keystone habits that can transform your diet.
Keystone Habit #1: Avoid Added Sugar
The first keystone habit that you can adopt is avoiding added sugar. This is one of the most powerful keystone habits because it creates noticeable changes in many areas of your life, from physical to emotional well-being.
In my book, Zero Sugar / One Month, I refer to sugar as the great deceiver.
It gives you a quick energy burst and takes the edge off of everyday stressors. But you can’t outrun the consequences of a high-sugar diet. Its addictive draw and inflammatory impact will lead to weight gain and contribute to heart disease, memory decline, bowel disorders, and other chronic conditions. Consuming it also puts your brain chemistry and blood sugar on a roller coaster ride that makes you obsessed with eating more sugar.
How to Do It:
To avoid sugar, you want to read labels. If a packaged food or drink has sugar listed as one of the top three ingredients, don’t eat it.
And remember that sugar goes by different names. So don’t just look for sugar; also look for alternate names like corn syrup, dextrose, maltodextrin, fruit juice concentrate, and sucrose.
When it comes to foods with natural sugar, like fruit and noncaloric sweeteners, I recommend initially allowing them in your diet to make the transition to a sugar-free diet easier, but then lessening your dependence on them as you progress.
That transition period is a real thing. When you cut sugary foods and drinks out of your diet, there is a withdrawal period. And just like withdrawing from any addictive substance, you can feel worse before you feel better. However, stick with it, and the magic will happen.
The Ripple Effect to Expect:
Once you’ve gotten sugar out of your diet, it will lead to a cascade of benefits that raise your baseline of health without force or the need for willpower. For instance, you can expect fewer cravings, more energy, stable moods, weight loss, less stomach discomfort, more joint flexibility, clearer skin, and more enjoyment from whole foods now that the intense sweetness of processed snacks is no longer high jacking your taste buds.
Of the three keystone habits I present in this post, avoiding added sugar yields the most rewards but is the most intimidating because of its addictive nature.
Having something that disrupts your desire to eat sugar that you can grab very quickly is a big advantage as you move away from sugar. If you follow my channel, you know that I refer to these items as Stoppers.
There are many options. Here’s a list of Stoppers:
- Sugar-free gum
- Flavored toothpick
- Hot or cold tea
- Electrolyte drink
- Bubbly water (seltzer)
- Walk your dog
- Floss your teeth
- Brush your teeth
- Paint your fingernails
- Play an instrument
Stoppers work because they either change the taste in your mouth or take time to consume or perform, allowing you to separate from eating before it turns into a dessert or a snack.
Keystone Habit #2: Eat A Daily Meal-Sized Salad
If you feel you’re at a point where avoiding sugar feels too daunting, you’ll find this next keystone habit doable. Keystone habit #2 is to eat a meal-sized salad each day.
How to Do It:
You can choose the meal: lunch, dinner, or breakfast if that works for you, or you eat a delayed breakfast as part of your intermittent fasting routine.
Salad is the perfect vehicle for protein and healthy fats, two very hunger-satisfying ingredients. On top of that, greens and non-starchy vegetables fill your stomach with a lot of slow-digesting volume.
In other words, learn to build a great-tasting salad, and you have a secret weapon for stabilizing your blood sugar and staving off hunger. There are many great add-ons to choose from. I will point you to my blog post, 10 Best Low-Carb, High-Fat Salad Toppers.
The Ripple Effect to Expect:
Many benefits get triggered by this simple daily habit that I personally experience as a result of practicing this keystone habit.
The most obvious is the many hours of hunger satisfaction it gives me. There is no better way to transform your diet than to keep hunger away. I like to eat my salad at lunch. Partly for the low-hunger effect throughout the afternoon but also because it acts as a transition for me.
My mornings include working out and working on my computer. At lunch, I take an enjoyable break from the physical and mental activity to make and eat my salad. Also, having one of my daily meals be a standard meal makes grocery shopping much easier because I know what I need for the week.
In fact, anytime you can streamline planning, you give yourself a huge advantage. That brings us to our next keystone habit: plan for tomorrow.
Keystone Habit #3: Plan for Tomorrow
If you know what to do to eat healthy but find that life gets in the way, then adopt keystone habit #3: plan for tomorrow.
All that is required for this keystone habit is to ask yourself a few questions at night. Your answers will act as a guide for your eating tomorrow. This works because it creates a sense of living with purpose instead of waking up with a “let’s see how today goes” flip of the coin.
I use this plan for tomorrow exercise in my Freedom 40-Day Diet Reset Program to help members feel confident as they move through each 40-day diet cycle.
I will share the nightly planning questions used in my program. You can modify them to best fit your daily diet goals.
How to Do It:
After dinner, you want to think about the next day and ask yourself questions, such as:
- Is there any event tomorrow where sugar will be served? If yes, how will I handle it?
- When will I eat a meal-sized salad?
- What will I have for my non-salad meal?
- Which cooked vegetables will I choose?
- Do I have the recipe ingredients available?
It works best if you write down your answers so that your mind stays focused on your diet and doesn’t wander off, thinking about other aspects of tomorrow.
The Ripple Effect to Expect:
This is a discipline, but it only takes five minutes. Those five minutes of effort produce a calming effect and give you a feeling of confidence as you move through your day. That feeling comes from knowing what is in store and having a plan for how to deal with obstacles.
Takeaway
In this blog post, we discussed three keystone habits that you can adopt: avoid added sugar, eat a daily meal-sized salad, and plan for tomorrow. Which one is right for you? The answer is whichever one you can commit to.
When adopted and followed, each one will create the positive ripple effect you want. And these are just three examples. There are also keystone habits that you can build around exercise, intermittent fasting, sleep, and a host of healthy living practices.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful week!
About the Author
Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook and Zero Sugar / One Month. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.