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Introduction

Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Looking at this statement, one can deduce how important habits are and how they determine who we truly are. You may not be so conscious of it but your habits shape your life a lot. Habits create neurological cravings that make our brains cling to them and they're a very significant force.

Habits help us grow stronger in what we do and our performance level because they literally shape our everyday actions and they're a part of our lives. We all acquire different habits and habits do play an important role in our everyday living. It's possible to develop bad habits such as escapism, deceiving others, stealing, dishonesty, telling lies, procrastination, lethargy, drug addiction, alcoholism, and lots more. However, it's also possible to develop and foster good habits like meditation, regular exercise, reading, writing, and hard-working, amidst many others.

Habits are an undeniably powerful part of life and we all are creatures of habit. If you can just take a few minutes to ponder, you'll realize that the direct reflection of your daily habits has been very fervent in determining the state and quality of your life. Habit can hinder your progress in life and it can also help to propel you forward to greater success.

Habits help us form our years of repetitious behavior. The deep-seated habits etched into your mind play out in what you think, say, and do. It's not easy to get rid of bad habits because of the willpower and commitment it warrants. Understanding how significant habits are, this book helps you expand your knowledge of all the tangible things you should know about habits and it also explores ideas on how to get better at your habits to achieve greatness, good well-being, and all-round success.

Chapter 1: Habits - Meaning, Characteristics, and Role

Habit can be explained to be the evidence of the practice of one’s preferences. At times, we're motivated to do different activities by our habits, just as we're inspired to carry out several activities by our instincts. Habits are acquired by living organisms and they can be found in both man and animal.

Habits make us restless to have more taste of some past experience and one can as well say that habit is the second nature of man.

What Exactly is a Habit?

Habit can be simply explained to be a regularly repeated behavior. Speaking of the behavior, it could be a lifestyle, a routine, or an action. Whatever you do usually and constantly without thinking about it, most times, is a habit. Habits do help us undertake necessary activities like following the same routes every day, getting dressed for work, taking a shower, and brushing our teeth because they're behaviors and rituals that we carry out spontaneously. Our unconscious habits help us decide what to make for dinner, solve problems, or do other more complex tasks because they help in freeing up enabling resources for our brain. Habits can be the ones that are bad for us, the good ones or the ones that have been part of our lives forever that we don't even notice, such as teeth brushing and tying of shoelaces. We activate several habits every day and we all have habits.

Characteristics of Habit

There are four common characteristics of habits and they are uniformity, facility, interest, and independence of attention.

i. Uniformity

If you check your mode of walking, sleeping, talking, or how you do other activities, you'll realize that there's usually an underlying specific habit. This is simply because habits bring uniformity to our activities.

ii. Facility

Habit tends to help us facilitate our performance of an activity. Imagine you started learning to play the guitar. You'll realize that it will become easier for you once you've been able to form the habit, despite the pain you had experienced while learning.

iii. Interest

Interest is the primary core of habit. Let's still use the analogy of the guitar. Let's say the guitar training is a bit hard for you because you keep having sore fingers but as soon as you're able to find your proper grip on it and form that habit of the correct finger placement, you'll begin to find it more interesting to play the guitar.

iv. Independence of attention

There are several things that don't require any attention but we still do them due to our habits.

Why Habits Are Key to Our Health

Your chances of maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be increased or decreased by the habits you cultivate. Habits are very essential to our health. If you want to promote longevity and increase the quality of your life, it's very important that you practice good and helpful habits like exercising regularly and eating healthily. On the other hand, you can risk developing diabetes, obesity, or other chronic diseases when you cultivate bad habits like low activity levels, excessive fast-food consumption, and increased consumption of sugary soft drinks.

You can lower the risk of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, keep your blood sugars in range, and achieve proper weight with healthy habits. In fact, your health will be grateful to you if you exercise regularly, eat enough fresh foods, take plenty of fruits and vegetables with the healthy habits you maintain.

Why you Must Develop Good Habits

Many, at times, are still struggling to understand why it's important to develop good habits. Forming good habits is very necessary and here are five reasons why you should:

1. Habits are who you are. Habits ultimately become who you are because they grow to be a considerable part of your routine.

2. You can change your habits. This is one of the beautiful things about habits. If you know you have some bad habits, you can always step up to change them. Although your worst habits may be harder to stop and it could be quite challenging to break your old habits, with single and consistent steps and actions, you can successfully change your bad habits.

3. You can easily reach your goals with good habits. One of the things that draw most people back in life is bad habits. Do you still remember the saying that bad habits are like flat tires? Trust you do. Well, if you don't fix those flat tires, my dear, you'll remain where you are.

4. Habits set a foundation for life. You'll end up becoming a healthy person if you foster the act of eating vegetables often. You’ll end up becoming a joyful person if you cultivate the habit of joyfully greeting your family. The tone of your life is set by the habits you develop because these habits get to become you. Choose to develop good habits and you'll realize that you're setting yourself up to live happily and healthily.

5. Habits can replace motivation. There are usually some days when we can be low on motivation. During those days, we may find it difficult to do what we should do but at times, our habits tend to stand up for us and propel us to do what we need to do. Habits are what we do without having to think and because they get to become our second nature. There's this unconscious push they give us to get up and do what we must do.

Chapter 2: Habit Formation

Acquired normally consequential to learning and repetition, habit is an automatic response to a specific situation. It's a change of behavior with experience and it's a simple form of learning. Habit doesn't necessarily demand our conscious attention.

How We Form Habits

It takes about 18 to 254 days for someone to form a new habit. This is according to a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology in the year 2009. Before a new behavior can become automatic, it will take 66 days, on average. This is also in accordance with the study. The cue, the routine, and the reward work together for habit formation as the three main components. Habit loop is the process by which new habits form.

Starting with the first component, which is the cue, it could be a scent, an event, a feeling, a person, an object, or any other thing at all. The cue is whatever reminds you of the habit or prompts you to take an action. Simply put, the behavior you're about to develop is encouraged by a trigger which is the cue.

Next, we move on to the other component which is the routine. The specific routine that your brain has developed is what you'll start following whenever a cue triggers your habit. It's more like you're prompted to do something and then you started taking action to do it. Your habit includes what you do before and after the habitual behavior. This is to tell you that your habits are also connected to your other actions because habits aren’t just one action.

Now, moving to the last component, which is the third, whatever outcome you accomplish is the reward. Your reward may be feeling better emotionally with the habit and because of the satisfaction you derive from the reward, you'll have a higher tendency of constantly repeating the habit unconsciously.

Basis of Habit Formation

Physiological and psychological bases are the two terms that can be used to explain habit formation.

The physiological basis

It affirms that there's a pathway we get led to when there's a connection formed by a clear nervous signal prompted by several repetitions of an action. The connection gets strengthened when the response is elicited and a stimulus is repeated.

The psychological basis

This affirmation focuses on how individuals retain any learning process or experience. Habits are acquired dispositions and this is what the psychological theories explain. We form a habit with our ability to keep retaining and getting it strengthened. What are Examples of Habits?

There are series of examples of habits and several of them will definitely be explained in the course of this book. As earlier mentioned, some habits can be health-promoting and some may be harmful. If you buckle your seatbelt without thinking about it or pick up a pair of running shoes after getting home each day, that's a habit. There are some people who wake up and the first thing they do automatically is to reach for a cigarette — it's a habit too.

Why do Humans Have Habits?

Without having to ponder over what to do or waste time and energy, people can easily perform useful behaviors — all thanks to habits. Habits are efficient and we all are creatures of habit. Habits offer us the beautiful advantages of quick and efficient responses but they can be compromised when we let them get overridden by destructive habits such as consumption of unhealthy food or usage of addictive drugs.

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With the coronavirus pandemic in full swing you need to do everything that you can to boost your immune system so that you have the maximum protection. There are a number of ways that you can do this and one of the easiest is to change your diet so that you eat the right foods. In this special report we will show you the very best foods to eat to give your immune system a boost. We will also provide other tips to help you protect your immune system and the food and beverages that you need to avoid as well.

Changing your diet is never an easy thing to do but your immune system is vital to your health and wellbeing and to fight against deadly viruses such as COVID-19. So always bear this in mind when you are tempted to revert back to your old eating habits.

We recommend that you introduce these foods into your diet gradually. It is a good idea to replace foods that do not support your immune system with these super foods so that you help your immune system to grow stronger. So let’s get right into it shall we?

Before we reveal the 20 super foods that will boost your immune system there are some general guidelines that we want you to be aware of when it comes to your diet and consumption of foods and beverages.

Choose Whole Plant Based Foods

Your immune system is constantly fighting against different harmful pathogens. It is an incredible system that works to protect you 24/7. You can help your immune system by providing it with the right antioxidants and nutrients from the food that you eat to be even more efficient.

This is where whole plant foods come into play. The following are rich in antioxidants and nutrients that your immune system needs to fight against infections and diseases:

• Fruits
• Legumes
• Nuts
• Seeds
• Vegetables

All of these food groups contain antioxidants which assist in the reducing of inflammation in your body. The antioxidants fight off free radicals which are unstable compounds that will result in inflammation if there is enough of them built up in your body.

It is essential that you help your immune system fight against this inflammation because chronic inflammation can result in health conditions that you must avoid such as certain cancers, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

The other good news about whole plant foods is that they contain fiber which will feed your gut microbiome. This is a collection of healthy bacteria contained in your gut. When your gut microbiome is in good shape it will increase your immunity and keep out pathogens from getting into your digestive tract.

You need Healthy Fats

This is another largely misunderstood area. Healthy fats are good for you. Do not subscribe to the belief that all fats are bad because they are not. Healthy fats are required by your immune system to boost its response to harmful pathogens by reducing the amount of inflammation in your body. An example of a healthy fat is olive oil. There have been studies that show the anti-inflammatory powers of olive oil and how it decreases the risk of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Also the anti-inflammatory properties of healthy fats can help your immune system fight against viruses and harmful bacteria.

You need healthy fats such as omega 3 because they are very anti-inflammatory. If you have chronic inflammation then this will significantly reduce the effectiveness of your immune system.

Go for Fermented Foods

You should choose fermented foods in your diet because they have high levels of good bacteria called probiotics. These will populate your digestive tract and protect it. Examples of fermented foods are:

• Kefir
• Kimchi
• Natto
• Sauerkraut
• Yogurt

When you have a flourishing community of good gut bacteria it helps your immune system make the important distinction between healthy and normal cells and invader organisms that will cause you harm.

There was a study of 126 children conducted over 3 months where they drank fermented milk on a daily basis. The results showed that they experienced 20% less infectious childhood diseases. In another 28 day study with 152 participants that had rhinovirus, it was discovered that those who took a probiotic supplement, Bifidobacterium animalis, induced a stronger response from their immune system and experienced lower levels of virus symptoms.

Keep away from Foods with added Sugars

It is amazing the amount of food products available today that contain added sugars. There has been considerable research in this area which concluded that the consumption of foods that have added sugars or refined carbohydrates could contribute significantly to people becoming overweight and even obese.

If you are overweight or obese then this can reduce the effectiveness of your immune system. There was an observational study with around 1,000 participants where obese people were given the flu vaccine. These people were twice as likely to still contract the flu than people that were not obese and had been given the same vaccine.

When you reduce the amount of sugar that you consume you will help to reduce inflammation in your body and it will help you to lose excess weight as well. This will increase your resistance to chronic problems such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Both of these chronic diseases will weaken your immune system. So our advice is to limit your intake of sugar to less than 5% of your daily calorie intake. So if you are on a 2,000 calorie a day diet this would equate to limiting yourself to around 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Keep Hydrated

It is very important to your overall health that you keep hydrated. If you are dehydrated this can provide a number of complications that will reduce your immunity against diseases:

• Reduce your heart and kidney function
• Impair your focus
• Cause headaches
• Impair your digestive system
• Reduce your physical performance
• Cause mood swings

When you are hydrated your urine will be a pale yellow color. The best liquid for hydration is water as it does not contain any sugars, additives or calories. You can drink teas and juices for hydration but we recommend that take these without sugar.

The rule of thumb is to drink when you are thirsty and stop drinking when you are not thirsty. Your thirst will increase if you sweat due to exercise or being in a hot climate. As we get older we lose some of the urge to drink because the thirst signal weakens. So you need to drink water regularly even if you are not thirsty when you are older.

So now we have got that out of the way it is time to look at the 20 super foods that you need in your diet to boost your immune system.

Blueberries really are an immune system boosting super food. They are something that you can eat every day and are delicious so it should be easy for you to incorporate them into your diet. Why do blueberries work so well in boosting your immune system?

Well the answer is that they have excellent antioxidant properties. They contain anthocyanin which is a flavonoid that can really bolster your immune system. A study in 2016 concluded that flavonoids play a critical role in the defense of the respiratory tract.