Our lives are a culmination of our choices, circumstances, environment, and how we’ve chosen to react. But more than anything else, the quality and enjoyment of our lives is a function of our habits. Those seemingly little things we do nearly automatically each day add up to an important determiner of our existence.
In fact, a Duke University study found that about 40% of what we do is determined by our preset habits, not by our conscious decisions. For women navigating the hormonal and metabolic shifts of perimenopause and menopause, understanding how to build healthy habits becomes even more critical. When your body is changing, the daily routines you establish can either support your hormonal health or work against it.
So what do we need to know about habits, why is it so hard to break bad habits, and how can we build new, healthy habits that actually last?
What Is a Habit?
A habit is a behavioral routine that’s become automatic in our hard-wired search to maximize pleasure and minimize pain in response to a certain context or goal. Habits are also described as unconscious rituals or practices that free up our brains to make more important, complex, and pressing decisions.
Our habits may be negative or unhealthy, such as eating when stressed, checking our phones too frequently, or skipping meals. Habits can also be positive and increasingly healthy, like eating balanced portions that support your metabolism, hitting the gym every morning, and taking time to meditate or practice mindfulness.
Habits vs. Goals and Motivation: Why Willpower Alone Fails
Many of us confuse habits with goals or motivation. But while motivation is enough to get you started and take the first step, most goals will fall by the wayside without forming new habits.
The reality is that if we fail to set new habits, behavioral change is usually ineffective at best. A good example is when many of us set resolutions for the new year, only to abandon them by the time the calendar flips to February or far before. This is especially true for women dealing with fatigue, brain fog, or mood changes during perimenopause, when willpower alone simply isn’t enough to sustain change.
Like most things that dictate our behavior, habits can be credited or faulted to our nervous system, which is always seeking a hit of dopamine as a reward. In that way, we’re hard-wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. According to renowned clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist Dr. Sanam Hafeez, “Any habit we develop is because our brain is designed to pick up on things that reward us and punish us.”
How Your Brain Sets New Habits: The Role of Neuroplasticity
Our brains are essential pattern recognition machines, sorting through incalculable stimuli and messages from the outside world every day. When your brain recognizes a connection between action and reward (dopamine), it sorts that information into its filing cabinet area of the brain, called the basal ganglia.
While the basal ganglia is the part of the brain where we process memories and emotions, it’s not the conscious, rational, decision-making area of the brain (that’s the prefrontal cortex). So the basal ganglia is responsible for initiating new habits as well as reinforcing existing habits. But that also means our habits are not always logical, rational, or even conscious decisions. That’s why habits are so hard to break, especially those bad habits, but that can also work in your favor once you establish good habits.
The key here is neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to rewire itself. This is particularly relevant for women in midlife, because the same brain adaptability that allows habits to form also means you can create new neural pathways at any age, regardless of how long old patterns have been in place.
How to Build Positive New Habits
Anyone has the power to set positive new habits, thanks to the brain’s self-directed neuroplasticity. During that process, we can intentionally rewire our brains to create new, healthy, or positive habits.
According to multiple studies, it takes between 18 to 254 days for someone to form a new habit. Of course, that’s a very wide range, with the variance due to factors like the habit being sought, lifestyle, existing bad habits, health, age, and existing neuroplasticity.
The good news is that the more you exhibit the discipline to create new habits, the easier it becomes, the faster it becomes ingrained, and the stronger the new habit becomes. For women managing hormonal shifts, starting with small, consistent habits, like taking your supplements at the same time each day or tracking your symptoms in a health app, builds the neural foundation for bigger changes.
The Habit Loop: Understanding the Science
In 1999, a team of psychologists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered a feedback loop between cues, routines, and rewards. Much later in his 2012 book, “The Power of Habit,” author and journalist Charles Duhigg called this “the habit loop,” coining the phrase.
Remember that our brains are hard-wired to find patterns that make things easier and more pleasurable for us, delivering hits of dopamine whenever possible. Here is how the Habit Loop works:
Cue: We first experience some sort of stimulus that acts as a trigger, such as an emotion, interaction, location, or even a physical state like a hot flash or energy crash.
Craving: That trigger causes us to seek a specific outcome that we’ve found rewarding in the past, motivating us to act.
Response: Seeking that dopamine rush that we’ve achieved in the past with the same behavior, we then entertain those same thoughts, actions, and behaviors in search of that outcome.
Reward: Once you’ve achieved that desired outcome, you feel a sense of reward or satisfaction. That pleasure or relief you experience reinforces the original cue, reinforcing that cue the next time you are faced with the same stimuli.
This becomes a self-perpetuating loop, which is why bad habits are so hard to break and it takes significant time and discipline to set new, positive habits.
The Three Categories of Habits
All of our habits can be lumped into at least one of three categories:
|
Category |
Description |
Examples |
|
Healthy habits |
Behaviors that support your physical, mental, and hormonal |
Morning movement, balanced meals, consistent sleep |
|
Unhealthy habits |
Behaviors that work against your wellbeing, often driven |
Stress eating, doom-scrolling, skipping meals, ignoring |
|
Unnoticeable habits |
Automatic behaviors you don’t consciously register |
Posture patterns, breathing habits, how you respond to |
Of course, what is healthy or unhealthy can change over time based on context, environment, age, and where you are in your hormonal journey.
The Benefits of Building Healthy Habits for Women in Midlife
There are profound benefits to initiating new habits in your life, and for women in perimenopause and menopause, these benefits compound because they directly support your body’s ability to adapt to hormonal change:
Physical health: Improved metabolic function, better sleep quality, more stable energy levels, and support for hormonal balance through consistent nutrition and movement.
Mental and emotional health: Reduced anxiety and stress, better coping skills, improved focus and mental clarity, and a stronger sense of confidence during a time when your body may feel unfamiliar.
Long-term wellness: Lower levels of chronic inflammation, better bone density support through weight-bearing exercise habits, and improved cardiovascular health, all of which become increasingly important as estrogen declines.
Quality of life: Deeper relationships, higher levels of happiness, increased professional success, and the self-esteem that comes from knowing you’re actively investing in your health.
Where to Start: Small Habits That Support Hormonal Health
If you’re a woman navigating perimenopause or menopause, here are evidence-based habits worth building into your daily routine:
Morning consistency: Wake at the same time daily and get morning sunlight exposure to support your circadian rhythm and cortisol patterns.
Nutrition timing: Eat balanced meals with adequate protein and fiber at regular intervals to support insulin sensitivity and stable blood sugar.
Movement: Incorporate resistance training and daily movement to support muscle mass, bone health, and metabolic function.
Symptom tracking: Use a health tracking tool to log symptoms, sleep, and cycle changes so you and your care team can identify patterns and adjust your plan.
Evening wind-down: Create a consistent pre-sleep routine that supports progesterone’s calming effects and promotes restorative sleep.
Your Habits Are Your Destiny
Are there bad habits you’d like to break? New, healthy, and positive habits you’d like to start? Chances are that there are more than a few good habits you’d love to form, and the effect on your life can be transformative, especially during the hormonal transitions of midlife.
At Menrva, we believe that personalized, data-driven care works best when it’s built on a foundation of daily habits that support your unique biology. Our approach combines treatment, technology, and research to help you understand what your body needs and build the routines that deliver real results. Because the science is clear: your habits shape your hormones, your metabolism, and ultimately, your quality of life.