“The last snowflake causes the avalanche”
I recently listened to a podcast featuring Dan John. If you don’t know who he is then you check him out. His work as a strength and conditioning coach and author is absolutely fantastic. He features on numerous podcasts, has wrote numerous books and has a tonne of free resources at his website:
You can also find lots of free articles at T Nation:
I was listening to him being interviewed on the Adam McCubbin podcast, where they started discussing habits and fat loss.
The title of this blog post was a quote from Dan, where he was discussing ‘tiny habits’.
The message he was conveying was that lots of tiny snowflakes eventually create something big and significant – the avalanche.
This same idea can carryover to you and your fitness / fat loss goals.
An ‘avalanche’ or significant transformation never happens instantly. You won’t wake up one day, decide you want to drop a couple of stone and it happens over night.
A message often forgotten in the world of miracle shakes, 6 week transformation programmes and quick fixes for everything.
This is usually prevalent when people start a weight loss diet or fitness regime. They focus on avalanche before the tiny snowflakes.
I have discussed the idea that habits are more effective than motivation in a previous blog, you can find it here:
https://brianmilliganpt.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/strategy-trumps-motivation/
Developing good habits are essential for long term changes to your health, fitness and waistline. However this isn’t an overnight solution, you won’t just flip a switch and have all these good habits in place.
They say it takes 66 days to master a habit. You will struggle, you will forget or fail numerous times but the key is to stick at it for longer than 4 days.
Focusing on the ‘snowflakes’ or ‘tiny habits’ will make building these habits much more successful than going for the ‘avalanche’ on day 1.
The problem with these tiny habits is that people don’t think they are important enough or effective enough in a world where everyone is going #beastmode on social media.
2 examples of tiny habits Dan suggested on the podcast were:
1. Drink 2 cups of water a day
2. Park as far away from your place of work as realistically possible.
Now, these probably sound way to basic, but I bet you could stick to them? Much more than starting off your ‘diet’ with an advanced intermittent fasting keto vegan eating plan.
Complicated new habits are much harder to stick to, simple new habits are much easier to nail.
These small, simple habits will pave the way for more complicated habits in the future.
Small ‘wins’ will have a positive influence on you for the rest of the day.
If you started the day with 2 cups of water and a longer walk to your place of work, you will have achieved something positive and conducive to your health goals that you have not done previously.
You will be more inclined to spend the rest of the day making better choices, leading to more small wins and a step closer towards your health and fitness goals.
On the flip side, when you try and introduce complicated habits, these tend to be harder to stick to and you end up in a ‘failure’ mindset when you struggle to stick to the habit.
Once you have built the 2 cups of water and longer walk into your morning routine you can look at adding another ‘snowflake’. You probably are getting up slightly earlier to tick these off. You can build on this by getting up 10 minutes earlier and preparing a healthy lunch for you to take to work. Stacking habits on top of existing habits is a great way to make sure you stick to them.
So, you’ve now got up earlier, had your water, prepared your lunch and got some of your daily steps in – this will free up time at your lunch break that you could maybe sneak a workout in or go for a walk now that you don’t need to head out and buy lunch? It may not be feasible but you can see where I am going with it.
All these snowflakes or tiny habits eventually lead to the avalanche or the major break through when it comes to your fat loss goals.
If you have fallen off the wagon with your New Years Resolution already, don’t panic and try and starve yourself or embark on an unrealistic training regime to get back on track.
Assess the situation and see what small changes you can turn into habits and build from there.
“Little and often over the long haul”
Coach Milligan 