Index:

1) Intro

2) Find Your Purpose

3) Paperclip strategy

4) Delayed gratification and dopamine detox

5) Regular movement

6) Healthy eating

7) Focus on identity.

How to make a healthy lifestyle and healthy habits easy, enjoyable and attractive.

• Find your purpose.

• Paperclip strategy for successful studying, eating and active exercise. One big workout can equal 5 paperclips. You can use a different object. This makes it obvious that you’re making small wins.

• Use delayed gratification all of the time, like waiting to have a coffee, to make breakfast (perfect for me, because I intermittent fast), take a shit, brush your teeth, etc.

• Start doing dopamine detoxes to start adding frequent abstinence from non-beneficial habits normal for you, and therefore easier over time.

• Consider regular movement, rather than just huge single workouts. You can use this with the paperclip strategy, and see those small wins stack up.

• Make healthy eating easy by removing all shit from your house, potentially with the exception of one thing per week.

• Focus on identity and how you feel, not on numbers, goals, measurements or even necessarily how you look.

Your Peaky Purpose

Find your purpose understand that everything is helping get you closer to fulfilling certain things.

Every good food that you eat.

Every time that you refuse alcohol.

Every time that you close the laptop and don’t watch pornography or some adult content.

You’re moving closer to fulfilling purpose…

Paperclip strategy.

Like moving paperclips from one jar to another, after you successfully complete a task, as James Clear in Atomic Habits speaks about.

Each paperclip is evidence that you’re making small wins.

Make healthy eating easier by using this Associative Habit:

Associate seeing the time hit a particular time of day, like 11am, with preparing/eating a healthy meal , with pulling out a little notebook (can take it to work or school), associated with squatting down and putting notebook on your thigh, associated with writing one tick under that day’s date, which you’ll write down.

Make regular movement throughout the day easier by using this Associative Habit:

Associate hearing your pomodoro timer go off after a study session, with clapping twice and closing your laptop, with turning around your chair and dropping down to your knees, associated with completing pushups until failure, associated with walking to a specific room in the house and doing squats until failure or until you can’t be fucked. Then, write a little tick in your notebook under today’s date.

You can do something similar to this one if you’re at work on a break.

Strengthen your mind and avoid temptation.

Use delayed gratification for everything, like waiting to have a coffee, to make breakfast (perfect for me, because I intermittent fast), take a shit, brush your teeth, etc.

But remember, that if you’re waiting to indulge in something, in most cases you’ll experience more pleasure anticipating it than actually getting it.

Dopamine detox once or twice per week. I do it twice (well, everyday right now). These help you appreciate higher-dopamine releasing activities and substances more, but they don’t make you wanna have them any more often.

Regular movement

Add regular movement in your most common activities.

Regular movement might actually be just as effective as doing one, long workout on a given day.

Like instead of 1 hour per day, you can just do 6 sets of 10 minute workouts

You can use this with the paperclip strategy, and see those small wins stack up.

Like parking far away from the shops, and making multiple bag trips from car to inside home.

Like doing pushups after every study session, then move the paperclip.

If you do wanna delay gratification by using a reward of a tv show, movie or YouTube or something, walk around while you watch it.

Healthy Eating

Make healthy eating practically easy.

Everything else that we talked about in regards to purpose and delayed gratification and dopamine detox is more about certain practices, and psychological lifestyle-shifts.

Remove non-beneficial snacks from the house, but select one thing per week that you allow little bits of as delayed gratification.

I’ve just moved out and can now fully control what’s in my place, although I still just simply refrained before.

Things that I’ve decided that I’m going to allow include dark chocolate and non-alcoholic beverages.

But remember from my “Dopamine Hacking” video (PUT CARD HERE), the thought of the goodies will actually be more pleasurable than when you actually get it.

So for me, I keep pushing it and pushing it as far as I deem appropriate.

Another thing is hanging out with people who eat healthy, rather than those who love takeaway.

Make identity the focus

Make identity the focus, not the reps and sets or even calories burnt necessarily, because that doesn’t mean that you’re eating healthy.

Focus mainly on how you feel, because if you don’t have a great idea of what your body’s like, then you may be getting healthier, but still look quite similar.

That’s it!

Join the Peaky Pines Email Community. Make healthy living easier with like-minded people. If you’d like to, I can also become your personal accountability partner and provide extra advice, that’ll be the third link in description (Number priority contact)

References:

1) Mini-workout.