The Healthier Self Club PODCAST - How to Build Healthy Habits: A Step-by-Step Guide

This podcast is for people who want to make a real change in their lives and adopt healthier habits. The host, Meggie, emphasizes the importance of not only focusing on food-related habits but also on activities, psychological health, and overall well-being. She believes that quick fixes and temporary diets are not effective in the long run. Meggie advises listeners to become aware of their current habits, analyze their impact on their health and well-being, and make necessary changes. She shares personal examples of how she discovered that certain eating habits were not beneficial for her and encourages listeners to create their own healthy habits. Meggie also mentions an upcoming online program called Nourish From Within, which offers tools to help people build healthy habits. This podcast is for you if you want a real change in your life, if you are ready to transform your lifestyle into a healthier one, and if you've had enough promising dietary plans that didn't bring you long-lasting results. This podcast is for you if you take your health seriously and want to do it right and once for all. Create your own healthy habits that will support your health and well-being. Hey, it's Meggie, your non-diet dietician, and welcome to the Health Yourself Club podcast. In today's episode, we're going to discuss about how to create your individual healthy habits. If you're with me for a while, especially on my social media, if you're not there yet, check the links in the caption below. You know that I talk a lot about healthy habits, healthy eating habits that are related with food, but as well general healthy habits that are not food-related and are a very important part of a healthy lifestyle. For instance, that can be doing some activities, especially low-intensity activities, like walking, vacuuming house, practicing yoga or hula-hooping. Those last two are definitely my favourite ones. Or habits that are related with our psychological health or mind health, and that can be reaching a good life balance, finding time for self-care and any kind of me-time, meditating, spending time in the nature. You got this. Although I'm a dietician and most dieticians focus on aspects related to food, my experience taught me that our good health is far beyond the food only. Food is a super important part of it, I mean it, but what I want to say is that you can have the healthiest diet on the earth, by the way Mediterranean diet is considered one of those, but if you're chronically stressed, don't expect enjoying great health. Everything is connected, everything is related. You probably heard it a few times in your lifetime, but what exactly does it mean? Why do I have headaches when I get too emotional? Why my tummy is upset before an important meeting? Why my knee hurts after eating gluten? Although we are all aware of how our body is complicated and that everything is related, we can still be surprised with some answers. When we look from the helicopter view and capture a wider perspective, we see that food is not enough to maintain good health, but it's a fundamental part of it. With a huge impact on our well-being, including our mood, and staying motivated to follow your dreams and goals and to make your life change real, personally I see little value in investing effort into something that's only temporary. Take for instance going on a diet solely to shed some pounds, only to revert to all habits of the yo-yo effect. I'm not a fan of quick fixes, as you know, however, if you're still unsure and keen on trying a diet, give it a shot, why not? But consider returning here when you realize, from first-hand experience, that quick fixes don't make sense. And one simple reason stands behind that, or perhaps one simple question. Can you truly expect different results by repeating the same actions over and over again? OK, so if you're on the same page now, let's take a look at how can you create your own healthy habits. A little story first to show you an example. Imagine that you're working in a big company and you have goals that need to be achieved by the end of the year. To reassure your manager, you need to show the strategy for how you will deliver those goals. Your strategy is reviewed, approved, and you follow the plan. Some of the goals can be easy to achieve, while others were more difficult and they require adjustment to the plan. So at the end of the year, most of the goals are achieved, but one remains unmet. And when the goal is not delivered, you need to review the actions undertaken. So what exactly was done and what results did it bring? What went right? What went wrong? What lessons were learned for the future? And when you have all the answers, you can conclude and prepare an improvement plan for the next year. And this is the same as what you need to do with your habits. So first things first, if you want to change something, you need to know what to change, right? So here we go to the first step. Step one, become aware of your habits. This step requires you to put aside yourself and look at what you do throughout the day. You can ask yourself questions. What time do you usually wake up? What is the first thing you do after getting out of the bed? Do you eat breakfast? What time is that? Are you hurrying to work or practicing a slow morning? What kind of coffee do you drink? Do you prepare your meals at home or grab something in a cafe downstairs? Do you eat your meals mindfully? A lot of questions, I know. You can choose a few for the beginning not to get overwhelmed or, for example, focus only on your morning at first. And when your morning habits will be satisfying for you, then you can go through the rest of the day later. This step needs time for observation. Observation with no judgments. You need to focus only on facts. What are your daily habits? And make a list of activities that you usually do. Let's look at an example. Suzy wakes up at seven every day. She dresses up, makes her breakfast. She eats breakfast, drinks coffee, brushes her teeth, leaves the house at eight and goes to work. So these are all activities she does in the morning and those are her morning habits. So now you can write down your own on a piece of paper or on your phone, whatever is suitable for you. And when you get all of them, you are ready for the step two. Analyze your habits and define which are supportive for your health and well-being and which are not. In this step, you need to focus on your emotion and well-being in a present moment. This is essentially a mindfulness exercise because we're focusing on the here and now. So ask yourself, how do I feel today? And observe how your feelings change throughout the day or morning if you decide to focus only on the morning at first. This will help you define which habits are beneficial and supportive for you and which are not, simply. Why focusing on emotions? Your emotions are like a compass, a compass that will guide you through the process of analysis. If your general well-being is not satisfying for you, if you don't feel great, you can be tired most of the day, have lack of energy, or you can experience energy drops. Generally, you see the room for improvement. This is the sign that something needs to be changed. What exactly needs to change? You'll know once you finish this exercise. I'm going to show you a few examples of what to pay attention to. One of them comes from my own life when I did this analysis for myself. Another example is from a client's life. And the last one is about Susie. I presented her to you in the first step. I hope that these examples will help you understand the background and make it easier for you to complete this step with better understanding. So first example from my life, my experience. I used to eat five meals a day. I was taught like that, that is the healthier way to have more of smaller meals throughout the day rather than less of big ones. I've been practicing that feeding schema for a pretty long time, more or less eight years. And I've never ever thought that general World Health Organization guidelines cannot be right for me. Just a little clarification here. Don't understand me wrong. I'm not saying that WHO guidelines are wrong. I mean that those recommendations show the direction, direction on what and how often average man should eat a specific group of products. And that's fine for an average man. But we have our individual requirements and need to consider them while adjusting our tailored way of feeding and creating healthy habits. When I started analyzing my day and my habits, I realized that having a meal every three hours makes me think about food all day long. Where I'm going, where I'm going to be in three hours. Is there anything to eat? And do they have anything dairy free? Yeah, that was my problem. I was planning my meals at least one day in advance and I became super stressed when I didn't have anything prepared. I knew that if I become stressed about food and it became my major focus, I would not foster a healthy relationship with food. And I realized that I need to work on that. In addition, I started having serious gut issues. When I dug deeper into the topic, I found that these issues, they can be caused by short breaks between meals. That's the only one of many possibilities, but this is a broader topic for sure I will share with you another time. Thankfully, I started living more mindfully. I started observing my body. I started observing how I feel in specific moments. That's exactly what step two is about. And I've made a conclusion. Eating every three hours is not supporting my health and my general well-being. If I would simply follow what I've learned and I did not consider myself and my body's needs, probably my relationship with food would get worse and worse and my upset tummy would become more and more upset. And I would wonder, what the heck am I doing wrong? I eat exactly how I'm supposed to eat, after all. This is what my studies were about, right? Come on. Well, apparently, I'm not an average man. A little out of promotion. I'm thrilled you're here with me, because it shows that you're really serious about your health and ready to create your own healthy habits. Honestly, introducing my healthy habits into my life was an absolute game-changer. That was the best decision I ever made, really. My goal is to help you through your process so you can enjoy life as I do now. So starting this Friday, June 21st, join the Nourish From Within 14 Days Online program. I've gathered all the essential tools that helped me on my journey to building healthy habits. You can join for free until Friday, but don't worry if you're catching this podcast later, because the program will be available for purchase on my website. This program will help you connect with your body and work towards a healthier you. You'll uncover your true motivation and understand the deeper reason behind your desire for change and just make the process much easier. So join the program through the link in this episode's description anytime if you feel it's right for you. I'm excited to guide you and support you on your journey. See you. One of my patients observed that she felt heavy in the morning and had real big trouble waking up and getting ready for work. By analyzing her daily habits, she discovered a correlation between having a late dinner around two hours before going to sleep and her low energy levels in the morning. So the late dinner affected her sleep quality because her body didn't have enough time to finish the digestion process. For a bit more science behind this, food needs to be broken down into small molecules. Then it can be absorbed in the intestines. Eating food can make it difficult to fall asleep and that can lead to waking up tired. Additionally, when you fall asleep, the digestion process slows down and undigested food can ferment in your gut causing a heavy feeling and low energy in the morning. When we identify this issue, my client made a really small change. She was eating dinner a bit earlier and this adjustment brought significant results and making her morning much and much better and improving her overall energy throughout the day. Amazing. Okay, example number three. Let's go back to Susie and her morning routine. So Susie, she's in a hurry to work. Susie eats her breakfast in a rush. She's thinking about not being late and leaving home just on time. Later on, she experienced stomach issues and she assumes that this problem can be caused by eating in a rush and not mindfully. Susie doesn't enjoy her morning. They are filled with stress and the pressure to do everything as quickly as she can. I shared Susie's example because it highlights how often we live in our lives on autopilot. So you see, unless Susie takes a moment to breathe and analyze her morning routine, she will continue to live in significant stress, not enjoying at least five or seven mornings each week. And that can lead to unpleasant consequences in the future. Because living in a stress significantly affects the body and its functions, slowly causing harm over time. Each of us have different habits that shape our routines, obviously. When you focus only on habits themselves, considering the fact, only the fact, so what we did in the first step, you can't say whether they are good for you or not. Of course, you can compare them to general guidelines and recommendations, but they simply won't be tailored for you and your body needs though. Observing yourself, observing your emotions and well-being is the key to create your own healthy habits. So ask yourself, how am I feeling now? And write down all your observations. Look for correlations between those observations and your daily habits and routines. So what you notice in the first step. It would be perfect if you put them all together in one table. So you can put the first row for your activities, second for how do you feel in a specific moment of the day, and that will help you capture the bigger picture and find correlation between what you do and how it affects your day. Connect the dots and you get there, I'm sure. Once you've completed these steps, you can go to the next one. Step number three. Pick a habit that you would like to change and replace it with a new one. Pick a habit. I mean it, just one, one habit. And I have a proposition for you. Let's start with something easy. As changes can be hard and stressful, so let's keep it as simple as possible at the beginning. You will see how it works, if it works for you, of course. And when you succeed, you will be highly motivated to work on the next ones, the harder ones. Let's come back to our examples. First one from my life, my experience, my personal experience. In big shortcut, I had been eating five small meals a day, what made me feeling stressed about food, and I started having gut problems. So that's the fact. I added one to two and decided that I want to change this habit and it doesn't bring me positive effects in both physical, my gut issues, and psychological aspects, becoming stressed about food. I started reducing the number of meals a day. Firstly, I had three main meals and one snack, which gave me four meals in total. And after a few months, few months, it was a process, I started having three main meals and this is what I'm currently following. Having fewer meals and longer breaks in between has helped me stop thinking about food all day long. And moreover, I am able now to prepare homemade meals for takeaway. I did just two, just two meals out of four I used to have before I started working on my healthy habits. It's much easier. Wow. Especially since my lunch is often an extra portion of dinner from the day before. Easy peasy. Furthermore, my digestive system has now improved and, yeah, just my body has time to digest and I eat only when I'm truly hungry. My body tells me so. So I feel this feeling in my stomach that I'm hungry and I'm just going to have a lunch or dinner or whatever. My mind is free from constant thoughts about food. Oh my gosh, finally. Allowing me to easily focus on my daily tasks. And I no longer experience these unpleasant gut symptoms I used to have because my digestion has improved. Certainly, you can find inspirations in these tips, but don't treat them like a general guideline or something, one-size-fits-all solution, because always remember, you have your own individual requirements and needs, and you need to discover what works best for you. Allow me to provide a simple example to illustrate my point of view. Not the point of view, just my point. Individuals who suffer from diabetes shouldn't have long breaks between meals because their blood sugar levels can go dangerously low. Therefore, my healthy habit of having only three meals a day could be dangerous for them. Coming back to my client's example, so the second one, she had a problem with low energy in the morning when she ate dinner shortly before going to sleep. When she started eating dinner at least three hours or more before bedtime, the problem disappeared. Magic. She wakes up rested and doesn't have a problem with getting ready to work anymore, has more energy throughout the day, and is more likely to work on her next healthy habit. Bravo to her. One simple change that was so easy to implement for her just like that. The day after we made this conclusion and it was right. She enjoys her life much more today. Much more. Sometimes this kind of observation needs time and patience with yourself, of course. But let's be honest, the prize to win is big and definitely worth going through that process. What you can do at the beginning, you can start by writing down what would your perfect day look like and focus on both. What would you like to do and how would you like to feel? For me, more important is the second question. If I would decide that I want to wake up rested and feel relaxed in the morning, I could focus on things that disrupt my inner peace. So for example, if I'm hurrying to work and feeling stressed about getting late, waking up a bit earlier could help. I could eat breakfast at my pace, not worrying about coming late to work. And this is exactly what refers to Suzy's example. This little change could help her live a healthier and healthier life. Slow mornings can improve the quality of your life a lot, especially when eating breakfast in a rush causes that problem later on. Yeah, we need to connect the dots. When we have digestive problems, we often focus on, what have I eaten today? Oh, that makes me feel so bad. And start digging in mind, trying to remember what that can be. And meanwhile, the root of the problem can lie totally in another place, like a stressful morning because everything is connected and stress has a huge impact on our body. As we briefly spoke at the beginning of the episode. Some of our habits can be easy to replace, like my clients having dinner an hour earlier or Suzy setting an alarm clock 30 minutes earlier. But the other one, like adjusting the number of meals in my case, they will take more time. I'm saying you right now. At the beginning, you need to do everything mindfully. And this is a process of unlearning first, what you have been doing in the past. And then you have to learn new skills. You can't expect to do something another way than you were used to do for months, maybe years. You need a plan for that, a good plan. The good thing is that after time, your new healthy habits will become your new normality. And you won't have to think about doing them right anymore. It's like driving a car. First, you need to learn how to do it. And then you do it automatically, not even thinking about it. My other client had a problem with drinking water. When I first met her, she was only drinking around 300 milliliters, a big glass per day. She didn't get thirsty. So her body didn't send her signal to drink. But she started working on her healthy habit of drinking an additional glass of water first thing after getting out of the bed. And today she has made it a habit to drink half a glass of water right after waking up. So in this case, half a glass of water represents 50% increase in her daily water intake. Nice. Everyone has its own challenges and path to achieving their goals. And I am super proud of her for making the effort to remember to take little sips from time to time despite not feeling any need to drink water at all. And you know what? After a couple of meetings, she told me that she had started feeling thirsty. Oh, I was so happy to hear. I hope all of those examples show you what you got to do and will help you go through the process. Take your time. There is no rush, as rush is often associated with stress. If you have a moment of weakness or that's a worse day, keep in mind that brushing your teeth with the other hand is not as simple as we think it is. Although you know how to do it, theoretically. Using the other hand requires time to learn it once again. And the same is true with healthy habits. You can know how to do it right, but then you need to practice until you become a pro and healthy habits will become your healthy habits. I would love to say I keep my finger crossed for you, but I won't as it's not a good luck related process. But deep in my heart, I know you can do it if you only want to. Those who fail are those who gave up. So keep swimming, keep swimming and you get there. And of course, if you need any support from me, you can schedule your appointment on my website maggiedietitian.com.au. Also keep in mind that you can join Nourish from within 14 days online program and it's dedicated to all who want to create their own healthy habits and healthy lifestyle. The healing starts in our everyday choices and in this program I will guide you through your process. Whatever that is, weight loss, healing upset tummy or any other symptoms. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you a lot that you spent this time with me. I appreciate a lot and you can thank yourself for choosing health in the first place right now. I'm not saying goodbye as it's always better to say hello and have a good day.