Here at Day to Day Fitness our motto is “Improving your Quality of Life Day to Day”, and we really strive to do just that. A gigantic part of that is helping people develop healthy habits, or correct unhealthy ones. This blog post will aim to show you two different ways that you can do this. The two phrases we are going to be talking about in this blog come from the personal finance industry, specifically around paying off debt. Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people all over the world have used these two methods to pay off debt, and I think these ideas can help everyone greatly impact their health as well. If you have any questions or comments please shoot me an email at hope@daytoday.fitness !
Snowball Explained
The idea behind the debt snowball is to start small and work your way up, i.e. a snowball rolling down hill. You pay off your smallest amount of debt first, and then whatever money you free up then goes to the next largest debt until that’s gone, and so on. This can also work with building healthy habits by defining the unhealthy habits you’d like to get rid of, and then addressing the small ones first, and moving on to the more challenging ones. For example, maybe getting rid of the frappuccino you drink every day is much easier then stopping smoking. It will have a smaller long term impact, but it’s something you can do now and use to chip away at the next habit you’d like to get rid of.
Avalanche Explained
The avalanche method is basically the opposite of the snowball. When it comes to debt, you start with the highest compounding interest debt, or the one that is going to be costing you the most. You take on that one as quickly and aggressively as you can, saving you the most money in the long term. For healthy habits, we can do the same exact thing. You identify all of your unhealthy habits that you want to change, and attack the one with the biggest impact to your health. This will likely take the largest amount of life change, but with those large life changes comes more commitment to your purpose. Some big examples of this might be eating out every day, smoking, drinking too much, or putting yourself down about your ability to achieve your goals. Usually, taking down these large problems with focus and effort will allow you to make large amounts of progress quickly.
Conclusion
In the end neither method is necessarily better or worse than the other but probably depends more on your personality and what you’ll respond more to. If extreme measures allow you to fully commit to a purpose and get your attention more effectively then the avalanche method is probably for you. If you like slow and steady progress and are a little uneasy with the idea of making big changes to your life suddenly then the snowball method is probably for you.
Both methods require you to start by making a list of your unhealthy habits that you’re interested in changing. Be honest with yourself and make the list as thorough as possible. It may be a little overwhelming at first, but this is why these methods exist. These methods paired with strong goal setting practices (see our SMART Goals post) will allow you to tackle these unhealthy habits like they’re nothing! We believe in you and hope you join us in improving your quality of life, Day to Day.
Hope
@daytodayfitness