How to get your midlife mojo back

I n late December last year, Public Health England published a survey that makes for alarming reading. It found that 80 per cent of people aged 40 to 60 in England are overweight, take too little exercise, and/ or drink too much.

Each of these lifestyle habits affects our health adversely, increasing the risk of acquiring Type 2 diabetes, dementia, and other serious diseases. Changing behaviour and attitudes, says Professor Sir Muir Gray, clinical adviser at PHE, could significantly benefit our general health and wellbeing, now and in later life.

That sounds straightforward enough. But breaking bad habits is a formidable challenge – and maintaining change is even more daunting. Still, with our future wellbeing at stake, it’s worthwhile making the effort.

How, then, do you go about breaking comfortable, well-established but unhealthy habits?

Start by being really honest with yourself. What areas in your life most need attention?

If you don’t know already, a good way to find out is to access the PHE website or app, where you’ll find a quiz that gives you an overall health score and pinpoints the changes you need to make.

Next, choose one habit on which to focus. It’s tempting to try to change everything at once, to get the unpleasant business out of the way as fast as possible. However, this clean-sweep approach demands so much effort and causes so much stress that most people give up within a fortnight.

A better way is to start small, by choosing the habit you think will be easiest to change first. Then, with success under your belt, tackle the most challenging habit second. You can now deal with the rest in any order you like.

Focusing on your chosen habit, begin by writing down in specific terms how you’ll benefit when you’re behaving more adaptively. Say you choose sugary snacks at certain times, and as a result you gain weight and feel out of control. If you made healthier choices, you’d lose weight and feel more confident about your appearance. You’d also have more energy and you’d think more clearly.

Next, see if you can identify what triggers this habit. You may notice that you make poor choices when you have particular foods in the house, and when you eat while you’re using your computer. Choose one of those triggers – perhaps the foods you find hard to resist – and get rid of them. Keep the change going for three weeks. Next, ban the use of your computer when eating, again for three weeks.

Finally, replace the bad habit with a positive, more enjoyable activity. In our example, you could fill your snack cupboard with fresh fruit and pack a healthy lunch to take to work to eat away from your desk.

Remember, no one is born with bad habits. We learn them all. That means we can also unlearn them – and replace them with more adaptive beliefs and behaviours.