How to master healthy eating habits with James Clear

25:46The brain is wired to notice and remember rewards that are in your environment. And so you're going to remember anything that feels good or that benefits you. And that includes not only food, but also many other experiences in life. And so, of course, if you're eating Big Macs or whatever, and that elicits a favorable emotion or positive response, you're going to remember that for next time. And eventually, the more that you repeat that behavior, and the more that you receive that reward, the tighter the loop becomes and the more ingrained the habit becomes. So one of the interesting things I think often about these foods is you eat far too much and afterwards you don't feel very good even when you start, right, James?

26:25So there is something interesting about one's brain you'd think would have recognized this wasn't a great pattern. But rather than further more and more down the loop of how miserable and difficult this is, actually James, I would love you to dig us out of the hole that Federica's talking, which is surrounded by all this brilliantly designed food by these food architects that is like genius for like triggering our desires. Maybe our microbiome is now putting us in the wrong direction. You have literally written the book on how to change one's habits. Could you tell us about how to think about making changes that then might support new resolutions?

27:03Sure. So there's a lot more science behind this for just for the sake of this conversation. I'll say if you're interested in the science, atomic habits covers that in much greater detail. So feel free to check it out there. But what I'm going to do is cut to the chase in a practical sense. And in a practical sense, if we're trying to figure out what can I actually do about this, there are roughly four big categories of things that you can focus on. And I refer to them as the four laws of behavior change. So if you want to build a good habit, there are four things you can do. The first thing is you want to make it obvious.

27:37So you want the cues of your good habits to be obvious, available, visible, easy to see. Easier it is to get your attention, the more likely you are to act on it. The second law is to make it attractive. The more attractive or appealing a habit is, the more motivating or enticing it is, the more likely you are to feel compelled to do it. The third law is to make it easy. The easier, more convenient, frictionless, simple a habit is, the more likely it is to be performed. And then the fourth and final law is to make it satisfying. The more satisfying or enjoyable a habit is, just like we were talking about a minute ago, whatever you feel like is rewarding or pleasurable, the more likely you are to repeat in the future.

28:15So make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying. Now, there are many ways to do each of those things. And Atomic Habits covers that in greater detail. We'll talk about some examples here in a minute. There are many ways to do those different things. But if you're sitting there and you're listening to this and you're thinking, you know, I have this habit, I just keep like, I want to get started, but I keep procrastinating on it. Or maybe you're like, you know, I have this behavior, I do it every now and then, but I wish I did it more consistently. You can just go through those four laws and ask yourself, how can I make the behavior more obvious?

28:49How can I make it more attractive? How can I make it easier? How can I make it more satisfying? And the answers to those questions will reveal different steps that you can take to increase the odds that the behavior is going to occur. You don't always need all four, but the more of them that you have working for you, the better positioned you are to follow through on a good habit. Now, we can use that framework to talk about building better eating habits. And that can be helpful because good habits can sort of like a plant crowding out another one, a good habit can kind of crowd out some of your bad habits.

29:21It creates less space for those to kind of exist and be repeated. So that's a really effective place to start. Of course, many people are also interested in how do I break a bad habit? And so to break a bad habit, you just invert those four. So rather than making it obvious, make it invisible. Unsubscribe from emails. Don't keep junk food in the house. If you're trying to follow a new diet, don't follow a bunch of food bloggers on Instagram. You know, like reduce exposure to the queue. Rather than making it attractive, make it unattractive. Rather than making it easy, make it difficult. So increase friction, add steps between you and the behavior.

29:54And then rather than making it satisfying, make it unsatisfying. Layer on some kind of cost or consequence to the action. So to build a good habit, make it obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying. To break a bad habit, make it invisible, unattractive, difficult, unsatisfying. And again, there are many ways to do each of those things, but that's like the big picture framework to keep in mind. Thank you, James. I would love to dig into each of those in turn, just to make sure that I and the listeners understand it a bit more. So could we maybe start with the first one? You said make it obvious. So imagine someone's listening here and saying like, I want to go and make these changes to what I'm using.

30:28What does make it obvious mean? So it's mostly about how you structure your environment. And I think a simple question to hold in the back of your mind, just like think about one habit that you're trying to build. Maybe it's a certain type of food you're hoping to eat more of or something you're hoping to do. Maybe you just want to cook more meals or something like that. And then walk into the rooms where you spend most of your time each day at your kitchen, your living room, your bedroom. Look around those rooms and just ask yourself, what is this space designed to encourage? What behaviors are obvious here?

31:00What behaviors are easy here? And, you know, if you walk into one person's house and the chips and the cookies and snacks are on the counter and visible and easy to get to, and you walk into another person's house and those things are either tucked away, maybe some of them already have been in the house or they're, you know, on the highest shelf in the back of the pantry and they're harder to get to, and they've got, you know, a piece of fruit out on the counter. Individually, these are small choices and no single one of them is going to radically transform your behavior. You're not just going to be able to put an apple on the counter and magically become a healthy person.

31:31But collectively, you can make a dozen or two dozen or 50 little adjustments like that. And the more that the good habit is the path of least resistance, and the more that the bad habit is distanced from you and has many steps or is higher friction, the more likely you are to fall through on the thing that you want to do. And I think this is just true about many habits in general, which is people often say something's important to them, but then you look around the spaces where they live and work each day and the room is not optimized for that thing. And so the more that you can prime your environment to make the next action easy, whether that's cooking the next meal instead of purchasing it, or whether that's eating something healthy rather than eating something unhealthy and so on, the more likely you are to be able to fall through on those things.

32:17and when you have energy and time and extra capacity, maybe you make whatever choice you want. But when you're pressed for time or you're stressed or you're exhausted, you're tired, what are you gonna choose? You're gonna choose the path of least resistance. And so redesigning your environment is a really effective way to promote some of those healthy behaviors. And one of the reasons why I love starting with environment design is because it's something that's very controllable, it's very tangible, and often you can do it once and it'll continue to serve you again and again. So it's sort of resetting your defaults, if you like, as a result of this, because your environment has changed, just your sort of easy path of behavior has adjusted as a result of this.

33:01I think that's a good way to describe it. There's a chapter in Atomic Habits that's called The Secret to Self-Control. And one of the surprising things about a lot of the research around self-control and willpower is that when you look at someone and you're like, oh, I just wish I had the discipline they had, or I wish I had as much willpower as they have. What a lot of the studies have found is that these people are not necessarily like superhuman. Certainly, there may be some variances in willpower between people. But to a large degree, the people who exhibit the greatest willpower are the ones who are tempted the least.

33:32And so it's actually designing an environment that tempts you less, that positions you to make good choices by making those obvious and easy, that is the best way to increase your willpower. And that, I always think, is something that's very in your control. It's funny. I'm listening to this and thinking I've got this massive tin of nuts here, which is one of the things that at Zoe, we're very, very pro because the science behind nuts for the vast majority of people is incredibly good. And so I'm a big snacker. It's really effortless because it's just sitting there. And as you quite rightly said, it's a lot less effort.

34:08I'm sitting on my coals and the rest of it to do that than to go and try and eat something that is in fact less healthy. So that would be an example. It is like, it's obvious it's right there. I see it in front of me. To give an example that pretty much everyone can resonate with, think about your smartphone. So when I, I'm like everybody else, when my phone is next to me, I will check it every three minutes just because it's there. But I have a little rule for myself and I can't do it all the time, but I probably do it about 70 % of the time, which is I leave my phone in another room until lunch.

34:38And I have a home office. And so it's only like 30 seconds away. I just got to walk down the stairs and go get it. But I never go get it. And I always think that's interesting. I'm like, did I want it or not? You know, in the one sense, I wanted it bad enough that I would check it every three minutes when it was next to me. But in another sense, I never wanted it so bad that I would work 30 seconds for it. And you'd be surprised how many habits are kind of like that. They will curtail themselves to the desired degree if you just introduce a little bit of friction. I've noticed that I'm that way about beer as well.

35:09If I buy a six pack of beer and I put it in the front of the fridge and it's just like in the door, I can see it as soon as I open it. I'll grab one and have it with dinner just because it's there. But if I put it like down at the back of the fridge, like on the lowest shelf and I kind of bent, I need to bend all the way down to see it. Sometimes I'll forget that it's there. It'll be there for two weeks or three weeks. I won't even remember that we have it. And so again, just optimizing your environment to make the good actions obvious and the undesirable actions less obvious or less easy to do.

35:39It sounds simple, but if you can do that in a dozen or two dozen or 50 different ways, you often find that it's much easier to stick to the behaviors that you want to stick to. James, can I ask you something a little controversial on this? One of my other guests said that in fact, therefore, the biggest thing that you could do to really change your long-term lifestyle and health was to change your friends because they are the biggest driver, in fact, of your environment and what you do. And therefore, if your friends don't do any exercise, eat really badly, all of these sorts of things, that's what you do with them.

36:11Whereas if your friends like to go for walks or whatever, then in fact, you're going to do this different. Does that count within your change your environment, make it obvious? Or is that a bit too radical for you? Yeah. So certainly, I don't know about saying it's the biggest thing. I don't even know that it's possible to measure that or that you could even say that, you know, I don't think he had a clinical study to prove it, to be fair. Sure. And the and the biggest, you know, the biggest is going to change based on the situation and the habit and all kinds of other things. But setting that aside, I think we can say certainly it is a major element or a large factor in driving your habits.

36:49And it's not just your friends, though. It's also just if we more broadly think about so we've been talking about the physical environment, if we just more broadly think about the social environment that you are in, that is an enormous driver of your habits and behavior. We are all part of multiple groups. Some of those groups are large, like what it means to be British or what it means to be American or something like that. Some of those groups are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of your little friend group or a member of the local CrossFit gym, whatever it is.

37:19Those groups that we all belong to, large and small, have a set of shared expectations, a set of social norms for what you do when you're in that group. And when habits go with the grain of the expectations of the group, they're pretty attractive. And this actually leads us to the second law that I mentioned, make it attractive. So habits are really attractive when they help you fit in with the friends and the family and the relationships that you have around you. When they go against the grain of the expectations of the group, they're kind of unattractive. And so this comes back to one of the deepest human needs that we all have, which is this desire to bond and connect.

37:57You know, humans are very social creatures. And even if it's just like your little family unit, we all want to be a part of something. And so if people have to choose between, you know, I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in. I belong. I'm part of something. Or I have the habits that I want to have, but I'm cast out. I'm ostracized. I'm criticized. You might be able to do that for a day or a week or I don't know, a month or two, but at some point it does not feel good to run against the grain of all the relationships in your life. And so the desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve.

38:34And I think that is one really good reason to try as best as you can to get your social environment aligned with the habits that you want to build. And I think the punchline is actually pretty simple. The punchline is you want to join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. That's right. I think of drinking, for example, as you describe this seems like a classic example. Lots of people will be listening to this saying like, one of the things I want to do in January is probably drink less than I have been doing because if your friends are the sort of people who go drinking, then there starts to be a lot of social pressure, right?

39:08And a sense of not participating. Is that an example of what you're talking about, James? Sure. I mean, there are examples like that, which are kind of like your classic kind of habits example, but it influences your behavior in ways that you don't even realize. We're talking right now, I could be wearing a bathing suit for this conversation, but that would be weird. It would violate every expectation we have. Just so you know, for anyone listening on the podcast and not on YouTube, James is not in fact wearing a bathing suit or if he is, he's got clothes on top. So just to set your... There's some slightly anxious listeners at this point, James.

39:45So in a sense, I chose what I wore today, but only sort of. The menu of options was already pretty restricted based on the social norms of what we were going to do and the group that we're involved in. Or like, you know, if I walk outside my house in the summer and I see my neighbor mowing their lawn, I might think, oh, I need to cut the grass too. And you might do that for five or 10 or 30 years, like however long you live in the house. We wish we had that level of consistency with a lot of our other habits. And why do you do it? Partially because it feels good to have a clean lawn, but mostly it feels good to have clean lawn because they're going to be judged by the other people in the neighborhood for being the sloppy one.

40:23And so it's the social norm that drives a lot of these actions. And certainly, that is true with what you eat and what you drink. I think that's really interesting. As you were saying that, I was thinking about my own experience, changing my diet through Zoe over the last seven years. And as some listeners have heard, one of the things that made that most easy was the point when my wife ended up doing the tests and then starting the membership and following the program and changing her diet. Because suddenly, instead of being something that was a sort of source of conflict over dinner every night about maybe what I want to eat, why do you want to eat all of those plants and things like this?

40:58Suddenly, Justine was all in. And actually, she's got really into it now. She's cooking lots of these dinners, and I'm delighted in eating this. And so, it suddenly switched, in the way it said, from it feels really attractive. We're very compatible in this. And before, we were quite incompatible. and actually there are quite a lot of members who've talked to me and and federica i imagine you've heard a lot of these stories people it's like well i managed to get my my husband or my wife to do this as well or we did it together and it's sort of been this journey of change versus people who's saying like you know what this is really hard i'm trying to do this on my own but like my husband my children like don't want to change any of this and that makes it very difficult yeah we know through so much public health research that community is crucial so actually finding a community of like-minded individuals that have similar goals massively increases the likelihood of success you know to some extent I think what James is saying being aware of the influence of our social setting and the people we spend time with can also sometimes help us to maybe reduce the time we're spending with some of our friends who maybe are no longer on the same trajectory and I think we have to be a little bit less scared of that because for example you know friends who I was friends with in my twenties who have a very different lifestyle to me.

42:10I think it's a lot of listeners will maybe align with this, but when you have children, you do lose friends, right? Because suddenly you're not going out on a Saturday night until like three in the morning, you have different priorities. And that doesn't mean that you don't love those friends anymore. It just means that they're not aligned with the person that you're becoming anymore. And that's okay. Like things change and you might see each other again later in life, but making sure that you know who you want to be and what is priority to you. Like, what is the big why? What kind of habits do you want to cultivate to get you to that place where you want to be in 10 years time?

42:44Sometimes that's going to have some discord with some people, but finding your new community that has similar goals and similar principles can really help to mitigate any sort of changes in friendships and communities. James, will you tell us about the third one? Make it easy. Sure. So one of the most common challenges with building new habits is that people bite off more than they can chew. You know, they decide to try to do too much. And this is, I have made this mistake more times than I can count. So, you know, it is something that is very natural to do. I think particularly for ambitious people, there's kind of this conversation in their head where they sit down and they start thinking about the changes they're going to make.

43:23and then the assumption in the back of their mind, even if they don't state it explicitly, is, man, you know, like, what could I do if I really got going? Like, what would peak performance look like for me? You know, if I was like really on my game and like living my best days, if I really have my habits dialed in, what could I achieve? And I think when you're in that mindset, which is great, it's great to be hopeful and dream about where you could go. It's also really easy to end up doing too much. Oh, well, I'm going to change five, six, seven habits at the same time. And rather than asking yourself, what could I do on my best day?

43:54I actually think the place to start is by asking, what can I stick to even on the bad days? And that becomes your baseline. That becomes the new habit that you try to get established. And once you establish that, then you can start to feel successful and feel like you're moving forward. You gain some progress and a feeling of momentum. And then great. Now you're showing up each day and there's all kinds of things that you can do from there. And so does that mean your guidance is in general, don't try and make this massive change all at once, but think about this more as a series of smaller habit changes step by step?

44:28And is that in fact what the science shows is more successful? well. So I think there are, let me give you two examples that'll probably help clarify. So the first one, this is just a really simple tactic. I think a very actionable thing that you can use for building better habits. I call it the two minute rule. And it just says, take whatever habit you're trying to build and you scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So read 30 books a year becomes read one page or do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat. Now, sometimes people resist that a little bit because they're like, okay, buddy, you know, I know the real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out.

45:04I know I'm actually trying to do the workout. So this is some kind of trick and I know it's a trick, then why would I fall for it basically? But I have this reader, his name's Mitch. I mentioned him in Atomic Habits. He lost over a hundred pounds. So what is that? 40, 50 kilos. And he kept it off for more than a decade. And he had this strange little rule for himself where he first started going to the gym for the first like six weeks, he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So he would get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home.

45:33And it sounds ridiculous. You know, it sounds silly. It's obviously it's not going to get the guy the results that he wants. But what you realize is that he was mastering the art of showing up. You know, he was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week, even if it was only for five minutes. And this is a pretty deep truth about habits, which is that a habit must be established before it can be improved. You know, it has to become the standard in your life before you can scale it up and turn something more you need to standardize before you optimize. And so the two minute rule kind of helps push back against that perfectionist tendency that we have sometimes or against that tendency to try to do too much and encourages you to master the art of showing up.

46:12I'm reminded of that quote from Ed Lattimore, where he says the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. There are a lot of things in life that are like that, you know, The hardest step is the first one. And the two-minute rule kind of helps you open the front door. It helps you get started. I love that. James, can I just ask about the 28 days? Because you laughed at that at the beginning. But I was still thinking, oh, so you need to do that for 28 days. Or is that maybe six weeks? Because you just talked about six weeks. I think everyone was like, well, okay, but come on. How many times do I have to do this for it to somehow start to become a habit?

46:44Sure. So this is a very common question. How many days does it take to become a habit? and so on, you'll hear 21 days, 28 days, 30 days, 90 days. I don't know. There's all kinds of stuff that people say. The answer is it depends. There was a study that shows that on average, it takes about 66 days to build a habit. So that's a common number you'll see floating around now. People with science says it takes 66 days. But if you actually read the study, the range is quite wide. So something pretty easy, like drinking a glass of water might only take a couple of weeks. Something more difficult, like going for a run after work every day might take seven or eight or nine months.

47:18And even that I don't think tells the story very cleanly because you can imagine one person who wants to build the habit of going for a run after work, who lives with people who nobody is working out and nobody's interested in that. And it kind of goes against the friction of that group. And then another person who lives with all athletes that are excited about working out and they just need to join their friends to do it. Obviously, these are two different circumstances. And so it's going to depend. But I think the real answer, the honest answer to how long does it take to build a habit is forever, because if you stop doing it, it's no longer a habit.

47:52And what I'm trying to get people to realize with that answer is that we often think about our habits as this finish line to be crossed, but they're not a finish line to be crossed. It's a lifestyle to be lived. So it's not like do this for 30 days and then you'll be healthy and you won't have to worry about it anymore. It's much more along the lines of what is the kind of lifestyle? What is the type of identity that you're hoping to build? And how can this become your new normal? And I think when you start to shift your perspective in that way, you can see the importance of choosing a small change, a non-threatening change, something that feels sustainable and is going to last for the long term.

48:29I think alongside that, though, we have to be kind to ourselves and that if you forget to do the thing once, it doesn't mean you've broken that habit. So I really resonated with what you said earlier, James, where people come to resolutions in a year and they take on a huge challenge or like six different things. So like, I'm going to start running. I'm going to go vegan. I'm going to write a letter every day. And, you know, they take really lots of changes all at once. And I think when we scale it back and make it realistic and make sure it resonates with who we want to be, we also have to be mindful that if you just don't make it to the gym one of the days you're planning to go, or if you are trying to reduce how much alcohol you drink, for example, and you end up having an extra glass at a party, it doesn't mean you've broken that habit formation.

49:16you know 80 20 rule where 80 of the time you're able to achieve the things that you set out to do and then you leave 20 of the time for life to happen essentially and unplanned things and as long as you're on track 80 of the time we you know the long-term benefits of what you're doing will show themselves would you say that with habit formation it's a bit stricter or do you think that it's again about the overall pattern as opposed to daily daily precision it's a fantastic point that you make and a crucial thing to remember that, you know, missing once does not ruin you. And I feel like it's almost even there's an extra layer that gets thrown on top of all this, which is people fall off track, they do something for, you know, 12 days.

49:57And then on the 13th day, they miss or they do something for a month really consistently. And then in the second month, they just start to fall off course. And it's even worse than just missing. They a lot of the time they start assigning, there's like self worth to it. Oh, I knew I was going to fail at that. Oh, oh, this always happens to me. I try to start something and then I fall off track. And my response to it is like, we don't need to turn it into that. It doesn't need to be this assignment of your self-worth. It can just be that one day was different than what you had planned, and now we can show up again the next day and try to get back on course.

50:29And what you realize if you zoom out a little bit is that it is impossible to go through your entire life and to not have days where you miss. And so if you are going to be missing at some point, one of the most important things to have is a plan for getting back on track quickly. If the reclaiming of a habit is fast, the breaking of it doesn't matter that much. And I think we all have felt that at different times in life. You know, it's not really the first mistake that ruins you. It's the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. It's letting slipping up become like a new three-month pattern that's the real problem but if you get back on track the next time then the mistake doesn't actually mean much at all and so one of my favorite mantras for building better habits is never miss twice maybe you've been following a diet for eight days and then the ninth day you binge eat a pizza well you know wish that hadn't happened but never miss twice let me make sure the next meal is a healthy one or in my case Italian, there's nothing wrong with pizza.

51:30In my case, the habit that kind of launched my career was that I wrote a new article every Monday and Thursday. And I did that for the first three years. And if I missed on Monday, well, you know, wish that hadn't happened, but never miss twice. Let's make sure that I get one out on Thursday. And again, if the reclaiming of the habit is fast, the breaking isn't that big of a deal. It's really interesting. It reminds me of something we talk a lot about within Zoe, which is that no food is off limits. So clearly some foods are better for you. Some food is more like a tree. It's not creating lots of healthy things for you, but nothing is off limits.

52:01And I think once, because if you start to think about it like that, then A, it's like, well, this is all a bit miserable, right? One should also be able to enjoy one's life. But also, I think you get to this point where you say, well, I sort of failed, right? So then you berate yourself and you give up and you sort of go into that spiral. Now, I would like to cover the last one before I'm so slow and we run out of time. make it satisfying. What does that mean? So it's mostly about feeling good in some way, you know, pretty much there are all kinds of behaviors in life and some behaviors are positive and make you feel good.

52:33Some behaviors are just kind of neutral and don't really mean a whole lot. And some things have a consequence. You touch a hot stove and you burn your hand once you're like, I want to avoid that for the rest of my life. But if a behavior is not rewarding in some way, if it doesn't have some positive emotion associated with it, it's really hard for it to become a habit because you're asking yourself to repeat something that your brain is like, well, why would I remember this? It didn't really get me very much. And so you need some positive emotional experience with it. You need to feel good about yourself in some way in order to remember it and come back to it in the future.

53:04I think actually there was something that was mentioned earlier, Jonathan, about like a lot of these foods we eat. If you zoom out just a little bit, an hour or a day later, you actually feel terrible after eating them. And I think that's an interesting thing to realize with many habits is that it's often worth it if you want a habit to be satisfying, to find a different way to measure it. You know, a lot of people, when they talk about food, the only thing they talk about is how it tastes. And really what they mean is how it tastes immediately. That's like their only measure for whether something is enjoyable or not.

53:33But if you can find a different way to measure the experience, and I don't even mean measure in like a technical sense, I just mean a quality of it that you like, you know, like you could say, well, I really like eating this food and it's because of how my body feels an hour later, or it's because of how much energy I have in the afternoon or some other means because of how well I sleep at night. And if you can find some other aspect of the experience that feels enjoyable to you, then you can start to draw this connection between the habit that you want to build and what is pleasurable about it.

54:04And that is by changing the way that you measure the experience, you often give yourself a chance to find something enjoyable about the thing that you're trying to build. James, I love that. I want to ask you one last question, shifting topics a bit, but it just came up a lot from all of our listeners. And that was a question about approaches that we could use with our children as we think about healthy food. And I think everyone listening to this knows this is a really hard thing to do. There's no straightforward answer. And it's something that I struggle with a lot, but I also know that the science says that what my children need is quite important.

54:41Is there anything that you can share out of everything you've been studying here that might be relevant as we think about our kids? Sure. So let me give you three quick things. So first thing is model the behavior that you want to see. To ask somebody else to do something and then to not do it yourself, your kids are almost always going to imitate your behavior more than they listen to your words. And so if you want them to act a certain way, then you should try to set the standard as well. People often play to the standard that you set, not the one that you request. And so like, how can you showcase that?

55:14Second thing is, you cannot have a human that is outside of an environment. And so in many cases, your kids and yourself, you share an environment together in your home. And so how can you design that environment to optimize for the things that you want? So we talked about that a lot earlier, but all of those things, the kitchen is not just a space that you walk into, It's also a space that they walk into. And so how can you structure that in a way that promotes and makes the good habits easy and obvious? And then the third and final thing, which is something we haven't talked about yet. And this is not just for your kids, but also for yourself.

55:48I really think it's worth asking yourself or asking them or thinking about this for them. What would this look like if it was fun? And in a lot of ways, I actually feel like this is maybe one of the biggest hurdles to cross when you're getting ready to start a new habit is to figure out the version of it that works best for you. You know, we started by talking about New Year's resolutions. I think a lot of people are going to the gym in January just because they feel like they should go to the gym or society wants them to go to the gym, not because they actually want to do it. But we could come up with a really long list of, you know, ways to live an active lifestyle, rock climb, kayak, do yoga, go for a run like that.

56:26You should list those out and then pick the one that makes the most sense for you. Another example related to healthy eating and perhaps to kids. Let's say you want to get your kids to eat more greens or eat more salads. I just talked to a woman who she wanted to get in the habit of making a salad for lunch every day. And when she started, at first she had this idea in her mind that it had to be like pure and perfect, that if it wasn't like a perfectly healthy salad, then it wasn't worth it for her to do it. And then she shifted to this idea of like, What would it be like if it was fun? And so she tried to make each salad bowl like a party, and she would put little toppings on it.

57:02And some days she would even crumble up potato chips and put them on or whatever. But it made the habit enjoyable. And then once she got to the point where she was actually having a salad 90 % of the days, there are all kinds of ways to improve that and to optimize it because she's actually showing up and eating it every day. And so I think you can take a similar sort of approach, whether it's with yourself or with your kids and whether it's an eating habit or something else. What would it look like if this was fun? Let's start there, get the habit established, and then we can optimize and improve it from there.

57:32James, I love that so much. I have many more questions, but we're definitely hitting time. I would like to do a quick summary, which is something we always do here. And please, both of you keep me honest if I've got any of it wrong. So we started by just saying, why is changing food so hard? And I think there were two parts of this. One is just like what we're talking about, which is all habits are hard in part because we focus too much on like what the end result is. I want to be healthier. You know, I want to look better on less on the type of person that I want to be as I show up every day.

58:06And James, I think you gave this great example. It's like if I decide I'm the sort of person who doesn't want to miss workouts, then like every day, if I just turn up to the gym, I've already modeled that person. But of course, if I turn up to the gym, I'm going to do some exercise. I'm sort of on the path. And so I guess the same thing is about like, I want to be the sort of person who is eating food that is better for my microbiome. It's going to get me to the point where I'm actually going to be much healthier and all the rest of these things. And then the second thing we talked about is our food environment is really difficult.

58:34So this is not an easy thing. You're surrounded by foods where super smart scientists, food architects have been designing this for decades to make you want to eat more, to design the food so it tastes yummy but doesn't fill you up. And then there's all this new science around ultra-processed food that suggests this is actually changing your microbiome. It may be affecting your brain. So this is like literally trying to fight against some very real things. So you need all the tools you can have. But James, you have this wonderful guide, your four laws. So these are our tools to try and get started on the positive direction.

59:09Your first is make it obvious. And I think the heart, as I understand it, is changing your environment so that somehow you're defaulting into the right direction. And so I think examples you gave was, you know, in your kitchen, you know, you're having your nuts, you're having your fruit and as opposed to maybe, you know, default unhealthy choices. The second thing is make it attractive. And interestingly, you said that your social environment is a very big part of this. So human beings really want to fit into the environment they're with. So if your social environment, your friends, all these sorts of things are actually supporting your habits, that becomes very easy.

59:44If your social environment is really at odds with the change you're trying to make, that's very difficult. The third thing you said is make it easy. And I think you both talked about lots of people trying to do too much. So if you're listening to this in January, you may have created this crazy list of goals, just like somebody might start Zoe and want to just go from a diet that in our wording might score 45 and jump straight to 75. And it's just not realistic. You've got to go step by step. And James, I think you mentioned a two minute roll. So you said, if you could scale that all down to something you can achieve in two minutes, that might be a lot easier.

1:00:19And again, you had this beautiful example, take out the yoga mat. And as you said, presumably, once you take the yoga mat out, you probably don't just roll it up and put it away again. But success is just that first step. But the associated part of it is you've just got to keep doing it forever. So you can't just do the two minute rule, do this forever. All of these habits are really about lifetime habits. And then the fourth rule was make it satisfying. So how do you get some reward? Because you were saying our brain is wired to respond to rewards. So if there's nothing positive about these habits, It's very hard to get anything.

1:00:50And so I think you're sort of saying, can you reframe what's going on? So for example, as you're thinking about food, think less, oh, it's so sweet and sugary in the second I've got it. And more like, actually, how do I feel two hours later? Because actually the reality for most of these foods is you feel terrible two hours later. And if you start to think about it in that and you've changed your diet, you might be shocked how within just a few weeks, it's shifting the way that you're feeling. And then I think you said, if I would have paraphrase, give yourself a break. If you break your habit, it's not the end of the world.

1:01:21Don't give up forever. Missing once doesn't ruin you, but try and get back on track. And James, you're quite tough. You're like, never miss twice. So once you fail, get straight back on. But I guess if you have missed twice still, you can still do it the next day, right? So there is always, it's not like it's all over. And then finally, we asked about kids, which I think might be a whole podcast if I can tempt you back because it's such an important topic, which I'd love to do. But I think the three rules you said here is model the behavior you want to see, right? So if your kids don't see you doing it, why will they do it?

1:01:54Secondly, again, think back to the environment. So what's in the kitchen for them? What are they surrounded by? And then thirdly, what would this look like if it was fun? It's a beautiful summary. You guys don't need me. Just run that. We definitely do need you. James, thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. And I would definitely like to tempt you back for the, you know, what do we do with our children? Which I think if there's other listeners like that, this is the thing that makes me consciously, frequently a bit anxious. So I need that. Well, this has been great. Thank you both so much. Appreciate the opportunity to chat and learn from both of you.

1:02:28And it was a lovely conversation. I appreciate it. On today's episode, we've learned four great rules to change our habits to improve the way that we eat. And I hope that armed with this knowledge, you feel that you're in a great place to make positive changes. Now, if you want to take things further and get personal support and advice on how to improve your diet and eat the right foods for your body, then you might want to consider becoming a Zoe member. Zoe can help you to feel better now and live healthier in the years to come. Why not give it a try? Head to zoe.com slash podcast now to learn more and get 10 % off your membership.

1:03:07As always, I'm your host, Jonathan Wolfe. Zoe Science and Nutrition is produced by Yellow Hewins Martin, Richard Willen, and Tilly Fulford. The Zoe Science and Nutrition podcast is not medical advice. It's for general informational purposes only. See you next time. One final thing, listener. If you're enjoying Zoe Science and Nutrition on Google Podcasts, I want to let you know that Google is closing down its podcast app in the next two months in favor of YouTube music. We wanted to share this so you aren't caught out. Zoe Science and Nutrition is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or if you are an Android fan, there are plenty of apps like CastBox, Overcast, Pocket Cast, and lots more.

1:03:48If you follow Google's plan and switch to YouTube Music, you'll find us there already. Search Zoe Science and Nutrition wherever you listen and hit the follow button. I look forward to seeing you there.

1:04:07As you can imagine, hosting this podcast, running Zoe, juggling family life, it all keeps me pretty busy. So I try as best I can to stay energized and show up well in all those parts of my life by fueling my body with the right food, by exercising, and by adding a scoop of Daily 30 to my meals every day. If you haven't heard of Daily 30 yet, it's the gut supplement designed by our gut health scientists here at Zoe. It's made of over 30 high-quality, hand-picked plants, including seaweed, fungi, and different types of fiber. Better yet, it contains ingredients that support gut health, digestion, and energy, which is ideal for packed calendars and busy lives.

1:04:49Simply add one scoop a day to any meal for an extra boost of fiber and plant diversity. And because it tastes delicious on just about anything and adds a satisfying crunch, it quite quickly slots into your life. becoming a daily healthy habit you'll always have time for. By the way, whenever we talk about Daily 30 as a good source of fiber, we're required to say that it contains four grams of total fat per serving. Obviously, that's all amazing healthy fats from plants. So order yours today at zoe.com slash daily 30. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

1:05:31You