Breaking habits or breaking habitual behaviours? Old habits as a neglected factor in weight loss maintenance

Gardner, Benjamin; Richards, Rebecca; Lally, Phillippa; Rebar, Amanda L.; Thwaite, Tanya L.; Beeken, Rebecca J

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2021.105183

Cited by 38 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 89 publications

(111 reference statements)

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“…eating fruit at 2 pm). Inhibition and discontinuation block enactment of habit impulses but do not directly address the associations that generate such impulses; they target habitual behaviour, not habit (Gardner et al, 2021).…”

Section: Understanding How Habit Disruption Relates To Behaviour Cessationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some have hypothesised that continued non-performance of a habitual behaviour in associated settings will lead to habit degradation (Tobias, 2009). Others propose that associations will persist despite disruption of habitual behaviour (Gardner et al, 2021). This has important implications for behaviour change because, in theory, persistent habits retain the potential to be reactivated when an actor returns to a triggering context following non-exposure, or loses the self-regulatory capacity to continue to inhibit unwanted impulses (e.g.…”

Section: Understanding How Habit Disruption Relates To Behaviour Cessationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developing habit-based health behaviour change interventions: twenty-one questions to guide future research

Gardner

Arden

Brown

et al. 2021

Psychology & Health

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Objective: Habitual behaviours are triggered automatically, with little conscious forethought. Theory suggests that making healthy behaviours habitual, and breaking the habits that underpin many ingrained unhealthy behaviours, promotes long-term behaviour change. This has prompted interest in incorporating habit formation and disruption strategies into behaviour change interventions. Yet, notable research gaps limit understanding of how to harness habit to change real-world behaviours. Methods: Discussions among health psychology researchers and practitioners, at the 2019 European Health Psychology Society 'Synergy Expert Meeting' , generated pertinent questions to guide further research into habit and health behaviour.

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Section: Understanding How Habit Disruption Relates To Behaviour Cessationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Understanding How Habit Disruption Relates To Behaviour Cessationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing habit-based health behaviour change interventions: twenty-one questions to guide future research

Gardner

Arden

Brown

et al. 2021

Psychology & Health

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Specifically, an understanding for whom, under what conditions, is the maintenance process most likely to occur is likely essential information for physical activity practitioners. Relatedly, it seems entirely likely that non-physical activity habits (Gardner et al, 2021 ), priorities (Conner et al, 2016 ), and goals (Rhodes et al, 2016 ) as well as the social and physical environments that foster them could differentiate the facilitating conditions for those who are able to develop physical activity maintenance compared to those who have more difficulty. Use of the operating conditions framework (Rothman and Sheeran, 2020 ) is recommended as a tool to consider these contextual moderators that are likely critical in forming the maintenance process.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical Activity Maintenance: A Critical Narrative Review and Directions for Future Research

Rhodes

Sui

2021

Front. Psychol.

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A clear rationale can be made for promoting long-term regular physical activity (PA), yet despite some attempts to operationalize “maintenance,” no robust definition has been agreed upon, beyond arbitrary time frames of regular PA. This has likely impaired the advancement of theory and practice. The purpose of this critical narrative review was to first overview the conception of maintenance and co-requisite theoretical constructs in theories used in PA research. Our subsequent aims were to engage in a critical analysis of this literature to propose a working definition of PA maintenance followed by recommendations for future research. Relevant behavioral theories were parsed for references to maintenance or maintenance-specific constructs and constructs most likely associated with maintenance were overviewed from a recent systematic review. Based on this information, we suggest PA maintenance be operationalized as a process marked by a shift in the mechanisms of action determining behavioral performance, that engender greater perceived behavioral enactment efficiency. We suggest that maintenance should not be considered an absolute state of behavioral performance (e.g., a stage), as some constructs that were critical to behavioral performance during initiation will still be critical during PA continuation. Based on this definition, we propose a method of falsifiability hypothesis testing of theoretical constructs that may determine the maintenance process. Finally, the review concludes with suggestions for future research using this operationalization of maintenance including measure development, tests of latency to reach the peak maintenance process, validating constructs critical to determining maintenance, exploration of the contextual and individual moderators of maintenance formation, and the development of an omnibus dynamic model of initiation, continuation, and maintenance in PA behavior change.

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“…Encouraging parents to use more effective FPP may require minimizing the habit of using ineffective FPP and helping parents develop the habit of using more effective FPP. Various procedures have been proposed to minimize less healthful habits [48] and encourage more healthful habits [49].…”

Section: Habitual Food Parenting Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precision Food Parenting: A Proposed Conceptual Model and Research Agenda

et al. 2021

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Precision medicine, nutrition and behavioral interventions are attempting to move beyond the specification of therapies applied to groups, since some people benefit, some do not and some are harmed by the same therapy. Instead, precision therapies are attempting to employ diverse sets of data to individualize or tailor interventions to optimize the benefits for the receiving individuals. The benefits to be achieved are mostly in the distant future, but the research needs to start now. While precision pediatric nutrition will combine diverse demographic, behavioral and biological variables to specify the optimal foods a child should eat to optimize health, precision food parenting will combine diverse parent and child psychosocial and related variables to identify the optimal parenting practices to help a specific child accept and consume the precision nutrition specified foods. This paper presents a conceptual overview and hypothetical model of factors we believe are needed to operationalize precision food parenting and a proposed research agenda to better understand the many specified relationships, how they change over the age of the child, and how to operationalize them to encourage food parenting practices most likely to be effective at promoting healthy child food choices.

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Breaking habits or breaking habitual behaviours? Old habits as a neglected factor in weight loss maintenance

Cited by 38 publications

References 89 publications

Developing habit-based health behaviour change interventions: twenty-one questions to guide future research

Developing habit-based health behaviour change interventions: twenty-one questions to guide future research

Physical Activity Maintenance: A Critical Narrative Review and Directions for Future Research

Precision Food Parenting: A Proposed Conceptual Model and Research Agenda

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