For this blog we hear from Vicky Newbold, who is a registered nutritionist and holds a master’s degree from the University of Westminster in Sport and Exercise Nutrition. You can read more about Vicky on her website by clicking here.
Key Question: What steps should I take to create new healthy habits?
Whether you are trying to increase your physical activity or create new healthy eating habits, (e.g. drinking more water or eating your 5-a-day), it can be difficult to stick with initial, good intentions. What sounds like a great idea on Monday, can fall by the wayside come Friday…
Previous blog posts have highlighted the importance of being physically active and eating well for your health. Although many people know this, successfully starting new habits can be difficult. So what steps can you put in place to help you achieve those goals?
Behavioural change scientists looks to understand why we do the things we do and I am going to focus on nutrition today. There are many personal, social, economic, and environmental factors that influence our choices of food. These include pleasure and enjoyment of the food, religion and culture, ethics, traditions, the influence of our friends and family, our knowledge and education, our attitudes and beliefs and the availability or cost of food. There are many psychological theories on behaviour change which say that our attitude, beliefs, knowledge, ability and self-confidence can influence our food choices. These theories each have their own relevant behaviour change techniques (you may have heard of the self-determination theory for example). I am going to talk about the COM-B behaviour system, which looks to combine different theories and techniques into one framework (it is more of an end point for interventions, rather than an underlying theory).
The model proposes that Behaviour is influenced by three factors; Capability, Opportunity and Motivation. Capability can be psychological, for example your knowledge or understanding or physical, for example your skills or ability to do something). Opportunity also includes social, for example people that influence you and physical factors, for example your context and environment. Finally, motivation can be automatic (your emotions and perceptions of rewards) or reflective (beliefs about your capability and yours goals). Does that all sound a bit complicated? Well let’s break it down with an example. Say for instance you were trying to achieve the goal of eating five fruit and vegetables a day:
Capability: this would include improving your knowledge on what fruit and vegetables are available, why they are beneficial, where to buy them and how to cook them. You may need to practice skills needed to peel, chop and prepare fruit and vegetables in different meals.
Opportunity: this involves putting yourself in an environment that makes it easier for you to eat healthy foods; e.g. encouraging your friends and family to eat fruit and vegetables so that this becomes normal in your environment. This might also involve treating yourself to new utensils and cooking equipment and setting aside time to prepare healthy meals.
Motivation: this involves thinking about your reasons for behaving a certain way, for example understanding the benefits of creating healthy habits. Goal setting is also very important in this regard and you can click here, to learn all about that.
The building and maintaining of new habits requires an understanding of these components so that you can identify gaps. Specific changes could then address that problem.
For example, you might have a good motivation and knowledge (capability), but lack the time (opportunity) to prepare fruit and vegetables. In this scenario, solutions could be to try and restructure your daily routine, research options for readily prepared fruit and vegetables or develop your social support, for example to see if family members can be recruited to help. Research into which behaviour change interventions are most effective is ongoing and there are different theories and techniques. Common characteristics of these theories is that behaviour change requires (1) intrinsic motivation, which is acting for enjoyment of the activity or acting to reach personally valued targets, (2) an environment where your behaviour change can happen, and (3) giving yourself the tools to make the change more likely.
Take-home message: behaviour change is not always easy. The COM-B framework could help you identify the steps needed to make a new and healthy habit. Please do get in contact with Vicky if you would like to learn more about this!