Don't Break Habits, Untangle Them

The right way to think about a habit that you want to get rid of is not breaking it, it's untangling it. Breaking, like a lot of things in the world of behavior change, we're using the wrong words and we're setting the wrong expectations. Breaking is the wrong expectation. You don't suddenly break a habit like that. So she looked at what her sugar, her specific habits around sugar, like, oh, I need a snack here, I need ice cream here, whatever. And then she found what was prompting and motivating those, and she untangled it piece by piece. And so think of it as a big tangle, and you take the easiest tangle first and get rid of that, and you work your way toward the middle until it all comes free and clear. So that's the overall way to think about it, how an individual might do it, I think is very individual, which is why it's a system and you use the system. And so the way Junie did it might be different than other people struggling with sugar. But certainly look at the sugar addiction not as a single habit, but as a tangle of habits. Understand what's driving those and then take the easiest one first and tackle that.