Faced with this overwhelming dilemma, most people do exactly the same thing: Nothing. Some get stalled by the false belief that you can go from a frozen-dinner-eating couch potato to a farmers’-market-shopping yogi overnight. If they could just muster up a massive force of willpower and change everything at once, all their problems would instantly go away. MORE: Meet The Writer Who Tried 14 Insane Celebrity Diets Of course, this sounds ridiculous, but the beliefs of those paralyzed by the fear of making big changes aren’t far from this ideal. They downplay small tasks like eating breakfast, taking the stairs, or learning to cook a new vegetable, while outwardly wishing they could make better food choices, run 4 days per week, and cook like a celebrity chef. Outside of the couch-potato-to-yogi fantasy, the secret to making positive changes is realizing that small actions aren’t actually small. Doing something is infinitely better than doing nothing, because it means you have started to build a habit. MORE: This Is Why Your Attempts to Eat Healthy Are Backfiring In fact, the smaller and easier the action you choose to start with, the better. Since forming a habit should be your goal, the action you choose should be so easy, you have no excuse not to do it. For example, you can decide to build on one healthy habit you already do. For example, if you bring a brown-bag lunch to work 1 day a week, try stepping it up to 2 days, then 3 days, and so on, until you have a whole week of homemade lunches—inevitably healthier than takeout or vending machine meals. But it’s nearly impossible to transition from eating fast food for lunch every day to lunching only on homemade kale salads 5 days a week. Think about this: If you have a goal you’ve been dreaming about but never acted on it, what is one small habit you can start to put yourself on the right track? Do that. Darya Rose, Ph.D. is the author of SummerTomato.com.
