10 Tips to Make Brain-Healthy Habits Stick

The study team also included behavioral experts who trained clinic staff on how to work with participants and emphasized the importance of connecting in person as a motivation, says Laura Baker, one of the principal investigators for the trial and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Advocate Health.

“Everybody knows all of our participants,” she says. “They know details about their lives. They connected on a regular basis.”

Kelly, who is retired and lives in Aurora, Illinois, has several ways to maintain the habits she learned. There’s her roommate who helped change the way they cooked meals, and the 90-year-old guy at the gym who inspired her to keep exercising. Plus Phyllis. The two women met in the program in 2022 and still talk to each other almost daily.

“She and I have become best friends,” Kelly says. “We have our phones [with trackers] to see whether we’re getting our exercise in. We’re each other’s support in the program, but also support as friends.” Others relied on trackers, reminders and new routines, too.

Top tips for sticking with the lifestyle changes

The study helped participants change their self-image, which was associated with better health habits, Baker says. In the beginning, everyone in the study needed to improve their health and pictured themselves as unhealthy. But by the end of the study, their self-image had changed, and they saw themselves as healthy people who wanted to cultivate good habits, she says.

“It’s about helping the person begin to believe that they are this new healthy person,” she says.

If you’re ready to take that step toward supporting your brain health, here are 10 tips from POINTER participants and researchers on how to stay motivated and on track.

• Love the data. Once she started using a fitness tracker, Kelly discovered she was a “stroller” and not walking fast enough to get her heart rate up to the proper fitness levels. “It was a big opening for me to discover that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was,” she says. And don’t fear or ignore any negative feedback from your devices, says Leroy Quick, 74, a participant who lives in High Point, North Carolina. Quick “loves” his scale. “Seek out feedback,” he says about using data to track your progress.  
• Follow your passion. Hilary Downes Fortune, 64, is a participant who lives in Foster, Rhode Island, grows shiitake mushrooms and is on the board of the Rhode Island Mycological Society. She keeps moving by leading hikes for fellow mushroom hunters and walking her dogs. She keeps her brain busy with mushroom flashcards. 
• Make it visual. Some POINTER participants put a colorful sheet on their refrigerators to track their eating, Baker says. For example, they could check off how many servings of leafy greens they had eaten each week or see if they had kept to the limit on saturated fat. “And they would be so proud of that week at a glance,” she says. 
• Take baby steps. Change can be hard, so start small, Baker says. Participants in both the structured and self-directed cohorts were introduced to changes in diet and exercise slowly. That way, you avoid hurting yourself with overexercise, build your self-confidence and start to see yourself as a different person, Baker says. “We met [participants] where they are. So we say, ‘Okay, what are you willing to do today, and can we push you just a little bit on that next week?’  
• Make brain challenges relevant and fun. Fortune is learning how to manage the mycological society’s website and studies French through an online program. Kelly does exercises on a brain game website three times a week. Quick thought he might learn how to play bass guitar, but it didn’t stick. Instead, he plays games and does puzzles on his phone and reads about golf or anything that feeds his passion for fixing things. “I can fix a lot of things,” he says.  
• Reward yourself. Buy yourself some flowers. Put affirmations about what a great job you’re doing on your bathroom mirror. “To me, it’s starting slow, being consistent, building on it, praising yourself,” says Kelly, who now rewards her healthy diet with a chocolate-dipped cone two or three times a year.   
• Build movement into your day. Even though Quick has been an athlete all his life, he wanted structure to keep himself moving. He plays golf but also works at the course, so he gets his steps in helping in the pro shop, moving carts around and getting things organized for players. So, he’s getting exercise even on the days he doesn’t pull out his clubs or go to the gym. 
• Expand on your strengths. “Sweets are always one of my areas that I enjoy, so if I’m going to go off, it’s going to be sweets,” Quick says. But because he gives up sugar for Lent every year, he knew he could do it for the study. And there was that scale. “I was on the scale all the time trying to see what kind of impact my diet was having,” he says. 
• Cultivate supportive friends (and golf buddies). Quick surrounds himself with people who want to be healthy and have good habits. “I don't have buddies that drink or that do things that are inconsistent with what I do,” he says. 
• Think of the next generation. Quick’s family is his motivation to learn more about dementia prevention and stick to the changes he’s made. “I didn’t necessarily get into the study for me. I got into it because I have a daughter and grandkids,” he says. “You want to do all you can for family.”