What do you think when you hear the word ‘habit’? A habit is usually either something that’s hard to break or hard to start. How many times have you wanted to start a positive habit? It probably started well but after a while you found it hard to maintain. Perhaps it’s doing something proactive each day towards a new career goal. Perhaps it’s a new exercise regime to lose weight or the ultimate habit for a lot of people – changing our diets.
The problem with establishing and maintaining healthy positive habits is lack of motivation.
One solution we often hear to keep motivation going is to get an accountability buddy. The most common example is with exercise. Having a training buddy can be an important tool to keep ourselves accountable to turning up at the gym or the running track. However, when it comes to diet changes, we don’t always think of getting someone to do this important lifestyle change with us and help us keep on track.
You don’t only need a workout buddy, you need an eating partner too!
We all like to believe we’re strong and determined enough to make a positive change in our diet. Often this works if we’ve had, say, a major health scare but when it’s a decision we’ve made without a fearful condition in place to motivate us, motivation can dwindle pretty quickly.
We are human after all. We like falling back into our comfort zones and old ways of living. We can start to convince ourselves we can always start again next week even if we know next week will never come.
Bringing in another person with the same goals as you will not only give you extra motivation (see how people get more successful with their fitness goal by getting a workout buddy.) and push you harder, but it will also tap into our fear of letting others – and ourselves – down. In other words, if we give up on our new habit, our failures aren’t just known by us but also another person. They are essentially out in the open and we don’t like to be seen by others as unsuccessful.
When it comes to a big diet change, an accountability buddy is the perfect way to keep our new habit going and ultimately improve our life.
Need Accountability? This is The Perfect App For You and Your Healthy Eating Regime
When it comes to our diet, it’s harder to keep track of what you and your new accountability buddy is up to. After all, it’s not as easy as establishing an exercise routine that you show up to together.
This is where Foodstand comes in. Foodstand is a community-lead app that encourages you to keep to your new healthy diet by using food challenges alongside thousands of other people as well as friends and family. Perfect if you’re struggling to find an accountability buddy in the first place!
The main focus of this app is making healthy eating fun instead of hard to maintain. There are several different challenges: eating less sugar, cooking dinner more often, or eating 3 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. You gain points for every challenge you pass taking you up to the next level.
These challenges have been designed alongside several top dietician experts from Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Johns Hopkins Centre for a Liveable Future. The fun and relatable challenges help you progress, keeps you accountable, and helps you along your journey by providing daily motivation, tips, recipes, and explains why each habit is so positive for your lifestyle.
The best part is that you’re ‘competing’ against other people by being able to see your buddy’s progress. It matches people specifically to you who can then become your accountability buddy if you wish. You’re able to see how many days they’ve managed to keep on track and their overall success rate – and they, in turn, can see how you’re progressing. With a supportive and motivational community on hand to share experiences, questions and tips that help you, it’s the ultimate aid to keeping you on track.
So, if you’re like so many who fall off the healthy-eating bandwagon after a week or two, find like-minded people with Foodstand to help keep you accountable and raise your chances of success as well as a happier and healthier you.
