I’m always a little sad to see the shorter days and darker mornings arrive as summer begins to fade. But this August, I’m also pretty excited because I can report that I actually did what I said I was going to do.
If you remember, at the beginning of the summer I wrote about using the seasonal shift of summer as an opportunity to change our routines and establish new habits. I decided to put my own coaching advice to the test. My goal? Add consistent weightlifting to my exercise routine.
And I did it.
For those who know me, this is no small accomplishment. I am a cardio junkie. Give me a run, a walk, a hike, a cycling or spin class—movement wins over standing around lifting weights almost every day of the week. But I also know how important maintaining and building muscle becomes as we age. So, this summer I decided it was time to get more serious about strength training.
The interesting part is not simply that I started lifting weights. It is how I made it happen. I used what I teach my coaching clients all the time: the ABC’s of creating habits.
A: Make It Automatic
For something to truly become a habit, eventually we have to take some of the conscious decision-making out of it.
That sounds counterintuitive. Don’t healthy habits require conscious thought?
Certainly, they do in the beginning. Change starts with intention. Health Coaching is fundamentally about helping those we coach understand where they are in the change process continuum, and then assisting them to move the needle in the different, unique direction they determine while simultaneously aiding in the assessment of how to make that change sustainable.
But do we really want to wake up every morning for the rest of our lives and debate whether we are going to exercise, take our supplements, stretch, meditate, practice our breathing exercises, or drink our water?
Probably not.
At some point the behavior needs to become more automatic.
Charles Duhigg explains this beautifully in The Power of Habit, describing a habit as a behavior that begins as a choice and eventually becomes a nearly unconscious pattern. He describes what he calls the habit loop: cue, routine, reward.
The cue tells the brain, “Here we go.”
The routine is the behavior itself.
And the reward tells the brain, “That worked. Remember this.”
This was important when I added weightlifting to my mornings. I did not want to wake up every day and ask myself, Do I feel like lifting weights today?
Because I already knew the answer. Probably not. Instead, I wanted strength training to begin moving into the same category as the exercise I already do naturally. Get up. Have coffee. Exercise. Less debating. More doing.
B: Build It Onto Something You Already Do
This brings us to one of the most powerful principles in behavior change: new habits need an anchor.
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, popularized this concept as habit stacking: instead of creating a new behavior in the middle of nowhere, attach it to something already happening.
BJ Fogg, PhD, a Stanford behavior scientist and author of Tiny Habits, teaches a similar principle. New behaviors become much easier when they are connected to an existing routine that is already firmly established.
Think about how simple this can be:
After I pour my morning coffee, I take my supplements.
After I brush my teeth, I take three slow breaths.
After I put on my sneakers, I walk for five minutes.
The existing behavior becomes the trigger for the new one.
I used exactly the same strategy with weightlifting. Morning exercise was already deeply anchored into my life. I did not need to create an entirely new exercise time at 3:00 in the afternoon or convince myself to drive back to the gym at 6:00 at night. I knew that would dramatically increase the odds that lifting would disappear from my routine. Instead, I attached strength training to something I already did consistently: morning exercise.
- Coffee. Exercise. And now, on designated days, weights.
I wasn’t trying to construct an entirely new life. I was building onto one that already existed. That distinction matters.
C: Create the Right Context
The final piece may be one of the most underestimated parts of creating habits.
Context is king.
Wendy Wood, PhD, author of Good Habits, Bad Habits, has spent decades studying the science of habitual behavior. Her research describes habits as a learning mechanism in which repeated behaviors become associated with the environments and circumstances surrounding them.
In fact, her research suggests that approximately 43% of our everyday behaviors are performed repeatedly in the same context, often while we are thinking about something completely different.That is fascinating because it means successful behavior change cannot simply be about willpower.
Your environment matters. Want to run in the morning? Put your sneakers, socks, shorts, and running gear where you can see them. Having to dig through a closet looking for a clean pair of socks at 6:00 a.m. is not exactly setting yourself up for success. Want to take your supplements? Put them somewhere connected to an existing routine instead of hiding them in the back of a cabinet. Want to drink more water? Make the water visible and accessible.
We can spend enormous amounts of energy trying to strengthen our willpower when sometimes the better solution is simply to decrease the friction.I knew this mattered with my weight training too.
First, it needed to be something I could do at home or in a gym I already loved. I travel enough that I could not build a routine dependent upon one particular location or one complicated setup. Second, I needed a format I actually enjoyed.
So, I chose an app-driven strength program that gives me a real person leading and demonstrating the workout digitally. I can follow the entire routine, record what I have done, track my progress, and watch myself improve. For me, that combination worked. And finally, the program needed to feel achievable. I did not start by deciding I was suddenly going to become a bodybuilder and lift weights six days a week.It needed to be small enough to execute, structured enough to follow, and progressive enough to build upon itself.
That is where so many habit attempts fall apart. We start too big.We decide that tomorrow we will completely change our diet, exercise every day, meditate for 30 minutes, drink 100 ounces of water, get eight hours of sleep, and never eat sugar again.By Thursday, we’re exhausted. Behavior change usually works better when we make the first step small enough to succeed—and then let success build upon success.
Mission Accomplished—But More Importantly, Habit Established
As August winds down, I’m happy to say that weightlifting has become part of my exercise platform. And yes, I have more muscle to show for it. But what interests me even more is that the behavior itself has become easier. There is less negotiation. Less friction. Less wondering whether I am going to do it.
I attached weightlifting to a routine I already loved. I created an environment that made the behavior easy to execute. I chose a method I enjoyed. I tracked my progress. And I started with something achievable enough that I could build upon it. That is habit formation in real life. Automatic. Built onto something you already do. Supported by the right Context.
The ABC’s. So as summer winds down, think about one behavior you have been wanting to change. Not five. One.
What are you already doing every day that could become its anchor? How could you change your environment to make the new behavior easier? And what would the smallest achievable version of that behavior look like? Because the goal is not to spend the rest of your life forcing yourself to make the healthy choice. The goal is to practice the healthy choice often enough—and intelligently enough—that eventually it simply becomes what you do.
