Unhealthy habits come in all different forms, from eating junk to smoking. While we often know that these habits are bad for us, it can be difficult to give them up. Here are just a few reasons why people struggle to give up unhealthy habits, and what can be done to correct this. 

Nothing to fill the void

Unhealthy habits can be a form of stress relief or even a way of coping with boredom. When we break these habits, we’re often left with a sense of emptiness. To fill this emptiness, it’s worth adopting a new healthy habit (or at least something healthier). 

For instance, many people give up smoking by switching to vaping. Vaping provides a similar action to smoking, helping to fill the gap. You can look into vape products at sites like bloomfarmswellness.com. 

Other examples of healthy replacement strategies include trading alcoholic beers and wines for non-alcoholic beer and wine, chewing gum instead of snacking, or drinking flavored sparkling water instead of sugary sodas.

Failure to track and reward progress

Many of us find it hard to motivate ourselves to pursue challenges without a sense of progress and reward. When giving up an unhealthy habit, think of how you can track your progress and reward yourself.

Tracking progress could be as simple as marking off days on a calendar or using an app (this post at Lifehack.org lists a few great apps for this purpose). Being able to look back and see how many days you’ve gone without breaking that habit will help to motivate you.

You can also set future milestones to aim for and have rewards for when you reach these milestones. If you don't make these milestones, you don’t get the reward. Make sure that reward doesn’t involve breaking your habit (don’t reward yourself for giving up alcohol with a night of binge drinking). Sometimes punishments can be used as a form of motivation, such as putting money in a swear jar every time you swear, but quite often rewards are a better strategy.

Too many temptations

It’s easy to relapse if you’re surrounded by temptations. By removing these temptations, you can more easily give up your bad habit for good. For instance, if your bad habit involves gorging on sugary snacks, make sure that you’ve got rid of all sugary snacks from your home.

Sometimes you may have to put physical barriers in place or get help from other people. If you stay up all night watching YouTube videos or playing video games online, consider looking into router time limits or possibly asking other people to set passwords so you can’t turn the internet back on again.