Why habit stacking can make healthy changes stick

A growing area of behavioural science is offering hope for those of us that struggle to maintain momentum with our diet and fitness goals. Known as habit stacking, it’s a simple, science-backed strategy that promises to sidestep the cycle of forgetting your goals or losing momentum.

Keen to know how to do it? Then look no further…

Getting a bit more scientific, it’s a ‘neuro-hacking’ tool (ie: something that can have a positive impact on the way you think) that suggests we can embrace difficult, new behaviours by attaching them to old, familiar ones.

Illustrating the power of this approach, a study from 2013² examined dental flossing habits. It revealed that people who flossed immediately after brushing – rather than before – tended to develop stronger flossing habits overall. That’s probably because, for many of us, toothbrushing has been part of our night-time routine for as long as we can remember, so we can connect the new follow-up action – flossing – to it with ease. And the habit stuck. At an eight-month follow-up, participants who flossed after brushing consistently flossed more frequently than those who didn't adopt this habit-stacking approach.

For example, when you perform a well-practised behaviour, such as opening the curtains in the morning, specific neural pathways in your brain fire up and become activated.

Like learning a new language or practicing the piano, these neuroplastic connections become strengthened with each single repetition, eventually causing the behaviour to become automatic over time. And if you don’t do it, you really notice the change in your routine.

When you make a concerted effort to habit stack, you're essentially cheating the system – that’s why it gets called a ‘hack’. As Jennifer Mann, co-author of The Secret Language of the Body,³ says: “piggybacking a fresh, hard-to-set habit onto a well-established pathway that’s already second nature.”

On top of that, habit stacking tends to break big goals into smaller, more manageable tasks, making the whole process less intimidating. For instance, rather than committing to an hour of meditation daily, habit stacking suggests starting with simple actions, like doing a quick mindfulness exercise while waiting for the kettle to boil. Over time, we can then incrementally build up these micro-tasks into bigger habits, as our brains adjust to our new routines.