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Balancing the Grind with Dr. Gina Cleo, Author of The Habit Revolution

For this conversation, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Gina Cleo, an Adjunct Professor at Bond University and an Accredited Dietitian, as well as one of the world’s leading experts in habits.

Gina opens up about her transition from dietetics to focusing on the transformative power of habits, drawing on her extensive research and personal experiences. She shares the inspiration behind her book, The Habit Revolution, offering readers practical strategies for lasting change. Gina also discusses the common challenges and misconceptions surrounding habit formation and provides valuable tips for those looking to make meaningful lifestyle adjustments. 

Dr. Cleo, your journey from a dietitian to a habit change expert is fascinating. Can you share what sparked your interest in the science of habit change and how it became the focus of your Ph.D. research?

As a dietitian, I had the privilege of helping people achieve their health goals and regain their confidence. I worked across various hospital settings and ran my own private practice. I loved my job, but I started noticing that my patients’ results were only short-lived.

Within just a few weeks or months they would be back in the clinic wanting to work on the goals we’d already worked so hard to achieve. Initially, I thought I must have been a terrible dietitian, that perhaps my love for food got in the way of my objective advice. Did other dietitians have this same issue? What could I be doing wrong?

I was determined to help my patients achieve long-term results, so I started to hunt for evidence-based strategies. I took a deep dive into the medical literature in search of answers and read something that changed the course of my life: in all types of attempts at goal attainment and behaviour change, there was an overwhelming fail rate.

Whether the goal was to lose weight, get fit, drink more water, quit smoking, reduce drinking, get better sleep or spend less time using technology, most of the time, people fell back into their old patterns and old habits and did not successfully achieve their goal.

Everything I read reiterated the fact that we’re very good at setting goals but not so great at maintaining those goals in the long term. I wasn’t a terrible dietitian after all. This yo-yo life of bouncing between moving towards their goals and falling off the wagon wasn’t just happening to my patients, it was happening to most people on this planet. In fact, the majority of people who lose weight end up regaining that weight over the following months or years. In the same way, most New Year’s resolutions are forgotten by February.

Not long after this discovery, I decided to put my private practice clinic on hold and embark on a research journey. I wanted answers, I wanted sustainable solutions and I wanted to be able to help people achieve long-term success. Over the next four years I completed a doctorate in habit change and became a habit researcher.

The Habit Revolution promises to offer practical and evidence-based guidance. Could you give us an example of a simple activity from the book that readers can try to start rewiring their habits today?

Because your habits are automatic, you won’t always be aware of them. To better understand your habits and bring them into your awareness, it’s good to reflect on the things you do automatically and identify when or where you’re doing them. Once you identify your habits and triggers, you can have much more control over your automatic actions.

Use a notebook or journal to respond to these prompts.

Wanted habits

List three habits you currently have that you’re happy with. Then identify the trigger for that habit. 

For example:

Habit: I do 10 minutes of meditation

Trigger: When I get into bed at night

Unwanted habits

List three habits you currently have that you would like to break, and identify their triggers. 

For example:

Habit: I snack when I’m not hungry

Trigger: When I’m feeling bored or lonely

In your book, you discuss why willpower often fails us in habit change. Can you explain this concept and what approach you recommend instead?

Think of willpower as like a muscle. Just as a muscle requires energy in order to apply force, behaviours that demand willpower require energy; in both cases we can’t be too hungry or tired.

In the same way that muscles become fatigued with sustained exertion, which results in a reduction in their ability to exert further force, self-control draws from a limited ‘reservoir’ that depletes with demand, resulting in a reduced capacity for further self-regulation.

Imagine picking up a dumbbell to do bicep curls. After a few curls, your arm is going to get fatigued and you’ll need to put the dumbbell down and rest your arm before doing another set of curls. Self-control works in the same way: the more you use it, the more exhausted it gets. After a long, hard, emotional day, the last thing you’ll want to come home to is a chicken salad. You’ll crave chocolate cake, cheese and that extra glass of wine.

You could think of willpower as like a bank account. Each day you start with a certain amount in your account. As you go about your day, life’s demands debit funds from your account. The more you debit, the less funds you have to spend on other things. On a day where you debit a lot of your funds, your account will reach zero earlier than on a day where you haven’t debited a lot of funds. On the days where you still have surplus funds, you have enough willpower

left to splurge on more demanding tasks. But on the days where life has debited much of your willpower funds, you’re less likely to have the capacity to do other challenging things, such as regulating your emotions, sticking to your diet, doing a hard workout, and so on.

We’re living in a time when we seem to be working longer hours and sleeping less than ever before. We consume more news and media, and we’re expected to be available via email at any time of the day. So it’s no wonder we feel exhausted and depleted.

Because our levels of motivation and willpower change from day to day and moment to moment, our goal should be to rely less on our willpower. To do that, we need to lean on our habits, because habits don’t need willpower once they’re formed. Habits operate from our impulsive brain, which uses very little mental energy. That’s why we tend to fall back on our habits when we’re ego depleted or our motivational energy is directed elsewhere.

We need to use willpower when we’re starting to form a new habit, but once that habit becomes automatic, that habitual behaviour will happen even when we’re tired. Relying on our habits rather than on our willpower is how we achieve long-term outcomes and reach our goals.

With your extensive experience, what common misconceptions about habits do you often encounter, and how do you address them in your teachings?

It’s easy to overestimate the importance of big one-off actions and underestimate the value of small frequent actions. There’s a common misconception that big changes require big, grand actions.

We think that to lose weight we need to be on a very restrictive diet, or to get fit we need to exercise vigorously every day, or if we want to save money we must forgo all our surplus luxuries (goodbye going to the movies or enjoying a meal at a restaurant). But the reality is, we can very rarely sustain those big actions.

It’s impossible to stay on a restrictive diet for long periods, and never going out to the movies or to enjoy a meal at a restaurant in the name of saving money is unreasonable. It’s the small, achievable actions done consistently that make big achievements happen. Just as money in a bank account multiplies through compound interest, the benefits of micro habits compound as we repeat them.

If you clean out just one shelf in the cupboard and you repeat that action with a new shelf several times over the course of the next few weeks, you will eventually have a cleaned-out cupboard. But if you wait to feel motivated enough to clean out the entire cupboard at once, it’s likely to stay cluttered. Change the small things and big things happen. 

Your trajectory is also much more important than your speed. Every step you take in the right direction moves you towards your goals, no matter how small that step. It’s much more productive to move slowly in the right direction than fast in the wrong direction. Small progress is still progress, and micro habits are what will help you achieve that.

Another common misconception is that we need to feel motivated in order to take action. ‘I want to start a new hobby but I’m waiting to feel motivated.’ ‘I want to save more money, but I’ll start when I’m motivated to.’ But the reality is, we get motivated as a result of taking action. Yes, that’s right, action comes first and motivation follows.

Action is a prerequisite to motivation, which means that if we want to make changes in our life, we’ll often need to take action without feeling motivated to do so. When I read this in the scientific literature, my mind was blown. I was hoping that motivation would one day be presented in an easy-to-digest pill, so that I could live my best life without having to push myself, but it turns out that motivation is a resource we can tap into anytime. All we need to do is take the first step.

Finally, the biggest misconception about habits is that it takes 21 days to change a habit. Unfortunately, there is no scientific evidence to back that claim. It takes on average 66 days to create a new habit, but for some people it can take 3 weeks and for others, it can take 10 months. There are many variables that impact how long it takes to change a habit. 

Finally, for someone struggling to make or break a habit, what’s the first step you’d recommend on their journey towards meaningful change?

Don’t focus on trying to create a perfect plan before you’ve done the thing that’s fundamental to that plan, which is just showing up. You just need to get into the habit of starting. Become the person who shows up every day. What happens after that is not the focus. Focus on just showing up; just start. 

Changing habits is all about consistency, not intensity, so if you want to create positive habits, you need to start small – micro, in fact – focus on consistency, just show up, pick ourselves up with compassion when we have a setback, and be patient.

About Author

Hey there! I'm Hao, the Editor-in-Chief at Balance the Grind. We’re on a mission to showcase healthy work-life balance through interesting stories from people all over the world, in different careers and lifestyles.