How to Create Long-Lasting Healthy Behaviours

How to Create Long-Lasting Healthy Behaviours

At the start of a new year, many people feel motivated to set lifestyle goals such as losing weight, exercising more, or eating healthier. While motivation is a great first step, it’s often not enough on its own. To avoid giving up after a few weeks, it’s essential to understand how healthy behaviours are formed—and how to make them last.

Start by Integrating Healthy Habits Into Your Routine
Once you’ve identified the healthy habits you want to develop, the next step is to fit them into your daily routine.
A routine can be defined as a repeated behaviour that requires little conscious thought and only a small time commitment. When a new behaviour becomes part of your routine—and is easy to do—it is far more likely to stick long term.
For example, rather than aiming to “eat healthier” in general, try a specific and simple habit such as eating a piece of fruit after lunch or drinking a glass of water after breakfast.

Integrate your habits into your routine

How Long Does It Take to Form a Healthy Habit?
Research from a UK study found that it takes an average of 66 days to form a new habit. However, this varies depending on the type of behaviour:

• Simple habits, such as eating fruit or drinking water, are formed more quickly
  
• Physical activity habits, like doing sit-ups or going for a daily walk, can take around 1.5 times longer

Overall, habit formation ranged from 18 days to 254 days—meaning it can take anywhere from less than a month to over eight months to fully establish a new behaviour.

Be Patient and Kind With Yourself
Because behaviour change takes time, patience is key. You do not need to perform your new habit perfectly every single day.
Importantly, the same study found that missing a day did not negatively affect long-term habit formation. Going on holiday, having a busy day, or stepping out of your routine does not mean you’ve failed.
What matters most is your ability to re-establish your routine afterwards.

Be patient and kind to yourself

Reduce Decisions to Support Healthier Choices
Another crucial factor in building long-lasting healthy behaviours is reducing the number of decisions you need to make each day.
When faced with choices, we naturally tend to select the option that is:

• Easiest
• Fastest
• Most enjoyable

By planning ahead, you make healthy choices the default. Helpful strategies include:

• Preparing meals or meal components in advance
• Checking the menu before going to a restaurant
• Packing lunch instead of buying it
• Scheduling workouts or exercise sessions with a friend

These strategies remove decision-making from the moment and make healthy behaviours easier to maintain.

Reduce decisions to support healthier choices

Avoid Doing Too Much, Too Fast
Research consistently shows that trying to change too much at once rarely leads to lasting success. Instead, focus on one or two small changes at a time.
Allow these habits to become established—ideally over more than a month—before adding new ones. Sustainable health is built gradually, not overnight.

Avoid doing too much too fast

Final Thoughts: Build Habits That Fit Your Life
To create long-lasting healthy behaviours:

• Choose simple, realistic habits
• Focus on one or two changes at a time
• Make the habit easy and accessible
• Be patient and consistent, not perfect

For example:

• Want to eat more fruit? Keep it washed and visible on the kitchen counter
• Want to drink more water? Carry a water bottle with you
• Want to eat healthier overall? Plan your meals in advance

Small, consistent actions—repeated over time—are what truly lead to lasting health.

Here is a template to help you to track your habits. You can get it for free by clicking here FREE Resources.

Build habits that fit into your life

Reference
The Importance of Creating Habits and Routine, Katherine R. Arlinghaus, MS, RD, and Craig A. Johnston, PhD. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. March April 2009.