Hello, and welcome to Bodyholic with D. I'm your host, Dee, and I have my amazing producer right here behind me, Ben Gonzalez. Thank you so much. And I also want to say a big thank you to you, our amazing listeners who are concerned for your health. You want to make sure that you're living the healthiest, the most fun, the happiest life that you can possibly live. So thank you for joining us. And also, if you feel that this podcast is benefiting you and you're learning things that are better in your life, please won't you share it with someone you love, someone you care about. And in addition to that, if you hit subscribe, if you rate us five stars, that's gonna help us reach more people and hopefully better their lives as well. All right. Now that I've said that, which is, you know, the second most important thing I'm gonna say today, we're gonna get into the most important thing I'm gonna say. And today we're gonna talk about the top 10. I sat down, I read the research, the latest research. I'm always trying to give you the last two years. We don't really go any further back than the last two years, trying to keep you posted as much as possible. And we are going to get into the top 10 tips of habit changing. So a lot of you know that I'm very concerned with health, habit change. Um, what do we need to do to make our lives healthier in a way that isn't doesn't feel like it's a disaster or doesn't feel like it's just fatiguing you or taking up too much time and energy. Um, so I actually identified 10 things that I want to talk about. And I know it sounds like a lot when I say 10, but it's actually not so much. Here's what I want you to do. I want you, if you can, if you're not in the car, I want you to sit down with a pen and paper the way I'm doing right now. And I want you to actually sit down and write this out. Number one, number two, number three, because I believe that once we go through it, you'll see that it's so feasible, it's so easy to do, and it's such a game changer. All right, here we go. Welcome to Bodyholic with D. We don't do fads here. We give you the facts that move your body and health forward. Wait up, hold up, I'm not a doctor. The information in this podcast is for informational purposes only and not medical advice. So kick back and enjoy the show. Number one. We are talking about um evidence-based habit change. So the number one thing is to be consistent with absurdly small changes, absurdly small actions. What do I mean by that? You know, everybody talks about the baby steps, uh, the one step that leads to the thousands of steps. I want to take it a step back. All right. Let's think about I putting out the goal of I wanna I want to really get into shape so that I can do full-on outdoor calisthenic workouts. All right. I'm just giving you an example that literally came up yesterday in a conversation with a client. So start with, you know, doing two push-ups, right? If push-ups is hard for you, right? You're having trouble keeping your back aligned, uh neutral, your core tight, going down low. So every time you walk by your kitchen counter, go to the kitchen counter standing up, right? So it's pretty easy for you, and go for two push-ups at a time. Then continue on to wherever it was or you you were going. Or now you're at your kitchen counter because you're gonna cut up a salad. So drop down for two uh kitchen counter push-ups and finish a salad, make it, drop down for another two. That's how absurdly small we're talking about. Just getting into the habit and then staying consistent with it, right? So it's not like three days of me just trying to do that and trying to keep it up. It's three days that lead to another three days and another and another, and then those uh kitchen counter push-ups turn into regular push-ups. You drop, you get to the kitchen counter, you drop down and onto the floor, and you go for those uh two full-on push-ups. And uh you could if you're if that I'm just gonna use that as an example. I'm gonna continue to use that for a moment. If you go for, if you want to do the pull-ups, right? Because your your goal now, your hypothetical goal is to go in for outdoor calisthenic workouts, why don't you for now just hook up a very cheap bar that you can, you don't even have to screw it in. You can just uh put it into a doorway, make it really tight, and then start by hanging, right? So you can every time you walk through that doorway, you can just hang for a moment and then you can try to pull yourself up and then with time, maybe go for one pull-up every time you walk through that door. That's how absurdly small we're talking about. And uh if we're gonna take it to a place that's not necessarily only fitness, let's just think about overall health. So I wake up in the morning and I drink a glass of water. Maybe that is the only thing that you are going to change over the next month that will benefit your health. Maybe that's it. You wake up in the morning and you're gonna drink that glass of water. And then you move on with the rest of your day and you don't even think about any health or any habit changes. That's how absurdly small you need to start off with. That's it. That's all you need. And then a month later, you're gonna do, you're gonna add something in that is as absurdly small. And that's how you build habit. That's how you make changes because anything that you do that is going to be or feel or seem overwhelming for you, it's gonna be hard to keep it going, right? You're gonna lose motivation if you're an average person, right? And average meaning like if you're like the general population, like most people, by day three, it's gonna start feeling like it's too much. All right. So just a glass of water in the morning, just two push-ups on a kitchen counter. Uh, I was just talking to a different client of mine who, when he was brushing his teeth, he was going for squats. Like, and I said to him, that is the best text message I ever received ever. While you were brushing your teeth, you were squatting. How amazing is that? That's how small these habit changes have to be. And so that's number one, absurdly small and consistent. Okay. Number two, and this is one I'm really big on. Anchor the habit, whatever it is that you want to change or add into your routine to something that um you do anyway, right? So the one thing that I am consistent with myself, I go for my coffee runs, right? I I'm a coffee drinker, I'm an avid coffee drinker, maybe too much so. But I will go for a run to the coffee. Or I will uh get a coffee after my workout. So it's almost like it's I'm so excited to work out for my uh coffee that's gonna come after. So I have this thing where I anchor things that are hard for me, I anchor it to the coffee. So think about what you feel is gonna help you and generate this innate motivation. What speaks to you? If it's uh a conversation with a friend, maybe you want to get on the phone, maybe you like you. I I have a close friend who talks to her sister every single day. What if she put in the earbud and went for a brisk walk during the conversation? There you go, right? So that's one example. Another thing is also uh when you wake up first of all in the morning, the first thing you do, maybe you want to uh have your first sip of coffee and then have that drink of water, right? And anchor it in with that. So a lot of people, and I find this, I hear this a lot, they can't drink water first thing in the morning. It's really hard for them. It kind of makes them gag. This is something I'm hearing uh from clients. And so, what if you first have that sip of coffee, take a minute, and then put in that cup of coffee or that glass of water. So think about what you really enjoy and what habit you can glue to that uh that habit or that thing that you enjoy so much. This is actually uh something called habit stacking. So it's the more you habit stack, the more you are gonna automatize what it is that you're doing. So I now uh always have this post-workout coffee, and I have found that it almost motivates the workout a little bit more. So I will actually push harder and then go have that win with my coffee. And I find that it really goes hand in hand. It's automatic for me at this point. Same thing with my, I have this little thing in the morning to get the water in. And I'm one of those people I don't really want to drink water, I don't want to really do anything except drink coffee in the morning. Uh, but I also live with kids, and I also have to take care of my health, and I have to do things right when I wake up, even before I wake up. So I have a little trick that I'll share with you. And I don't know how many people are gonna be um, you know, liking what I'm saying, but here it is. I take a bite out of a date, and then it makes me thirsty, and it makes me feel like I can now handle water, and I will then drink about two glasses of water right after that bite of a date. Right. And I and I know a lot of people say, you know, first of all, just have water. And I a lot of people say, um try to work out on an empty stomach, and it doesn't work for me. All right. I have a bite out of a date, and then somehow everything works really well. So I have it stack and that creates this automaticity, which uh I have every single morning. This is what I do on autopilot. Uh another thing is with the automaticity is the brain just loves predictability. So if you give it that same cue, same time, day in and day out, it just starts doing it. It loves it, it responds so well. We've talked about this even this season, where our habits basically look like waterbeds in our brains. They once we create those, those synaptic connections in our brain, the brain just kind of steers you to where it is that it's used to going. It's almost like that thing everybody talks about. You must have also experienced this where you're driving somewhere, but then you're thinking about something else. And then you ended up at your office or you ended up at home because that's just a route you're used to. It's the same exact thing with our brains. So, how hard is it? Think about it this way: how hard is it to change a habit? The reason it's so hard to change that habit is because your brain is almost literally wired that way. You have wired it to do this thing on autopilot, whatever it is, right? Like brushing your teeth in the morning, brushing your teeth at night. You are wired for that. You've been doing it since you were probably one year old. So, what we're doing is we're gonna be small in our changes, absurdly small. We're gonna be consistent, and that's how we're gonna start basically forming these automaticity waterbeds in our brains to change the habit. Am I making sense? So we've got the absurdly small and consistent, we've got the anchoring the habit to something that you're you're gonna do anyway, that you enjoy doing the habit stacking, right? And then we, well, we're gonna say it differently. Let's say it this way: the habit stacking leverages automaticity, right? So we are small, consistent, creating the waterbeds in the brain, creating that synaptic uh waterbed. This leverages the automaticity, and then we just keep repeating on autopilot at one point. You keep doing it, it turns into autopilot pilot. So uh, and I just want to say one more thing about the same cue, same time, because our brain loves predictability. Um, it's just like, for instance, I can't have coffee after a certain hour, even though it actually won't really keep me up. If I have a week or decaf coffee uh at around 7 p.m., it's it's gonna bother me. I'm not, it's not gonna make me feel good. I don't get excited over it. I only get excited over my coffee in the first half of the day, just because I've gotten so used to it. I've my brain is set for that. So, same thing with my workouts. I don't really like working out at the second half of the day. It just doesn't work for me. I always do it in the first half of the day and I'm wired for it. And I can also tell that by the time it's 2 p.m., I'm getting a little edgy. I want to have already moved. So, same time, same cue, predictability. My brain already knows, right? I've been doing it every single day, over and over and over and over again. I work out in the first half of the day. And something feels wrong when I don't. Okay. So there's that. Now let's talk about your environment, literally the space you live in. If I have chocolate all over the kitchen counter, okay, then it's gonna be a lot harder to then change any health habit or uh go for the vegetable. Basically, we want to overcome the block of willpower because willpower is depleted throughout the day. The more decisions you have to make, the more tension you have in your daily life, the more things you've had to uh do, think choices that you've had to make, that actually depletes willpower. It's a thing that is depleted. So there's actually, you can look into the research of Roy Baumeister. This is his big thing. He talks about how it's how amazing it is that when glucose goes down, when you're getting fatigued, your brain is not as sharp as it was, your willpower goes down as well. It's not something that we've made up as a human race, like, oh, he doesn't have willpower, just you know, something to uh beat yourself up about. It's literally something that is depleted. So if we take away the willpower in general, and we just create an environment that is healthy. So you don't really have, you don't have to make a choice. You don't have to tap into your willpower, then that's gonna make life so much easier. So on my table in the kitchen, I have a bowl of bananas, oranges, ginger, and green apples. I always have that bowl right there. My kids are gonna talk to me about chocolate and ice cream all the way home. Trust me. When we get home though, what they see is the apple and the banana, right? So all of a sudden they want it. It looks good, it looks yummy, and we go for it. It's there, right? So do I choose between an environment with um a bowl of candies and cookies right smack in the middle of the kitchen table? Or do I just put the fruits right there, fruits and veggies, and it's just right there. We go for what is in front of us. So if we go about it by just setting everything up in a way that is health promoting, then we will automatically, we don't have to tap into willpower, we don't have to make decisions, we don't have to fight with our willpower and our cravings and et cetera, et cetera. You just go for what is available. And what is available is healthy. So I'll give you another example. If you set up your refrigerator in a way that the first thing you see is the veggies. The first thing you see is the veggies and uh some nuts and maybe uh lean yogurt, lean, uh, maybe you have uh uh chicken breast cut up so that it's kind of like finger food. You're gonna have a beautiful snack right there and you don't even have to think about it too much, right? You don't want to have the chocolate milk right in front and the veggies all the way in the back. You're gonna go for the chocolate milk, right? We always wanna go to the path with the least resistance. And if we have willpower there that we've got to struggle with, we're just making it harder for us. And we're setting us up basically for failure. Again, if you're the general population, that's just something that you have to deal with. You you have to deal with your willpower. Of course, I know the people who um nothing can break them down and they are extreme in once they've made a decision, then it is already a habit. I know. I've I I've seen those people, I've spoken to those people, I've read about those people. Most of us do have to deal with willpower, right? So we take that away and we go for um just creating a super healthy environment. That is that. So we're gonna recap. All right. I want, I want to recap every time I mention um. One of these tips because also will drill it into your brains. And also I want you to see how it's all built into basically creating a simple set of habits that can really just last you uh forever. And also you'll see how easy it is to integrate all these things. So I'm repeating absurdly small and consistent. Okay. Again, it could, it could be the absurdly small and consistent, could be just you working on the on your healthy environment to begin with. Uh anchoring to something that you uh enjoy, the habit stacking, which leverages the automaticity. And uh we also want to tap into the brain's predictability, same cue, same time. And we want to design our space and our environment for just making it a non-choice situation. It's just healthy. You don't have to make a choice, it's just right there. That green apple is just right there, okay? Moving on. So uh celebration. Celebration is a big thing. We work well with awards, right? We don't um we we don't necessarily work well with the stick, right? There's the stick and the carrot. The stick can work for some people. Research shows it, it can work for some people, but in general, we want the carrot. We really want the carrot. And also, I find that some people react to the stick, the the self-um-inflicted punishments when we've done something that maybe isn't aligned with our goal. Uh, it some sometimes it can really uh awaken the rebel within us. It's like almost like, oh yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna punish me. Well, I'm gonna make it even worse. And then you've got this like this vicious cycle within yourself that's just talking to you're talking to all these different parts of you and it just triggers a mess. So what if we just have this very clear award system? If you celebrate your micro wins, okay, for instance, you notice at the end of the week that now you have really created a healthy environment kitchen. And you've done it. You did it. The the veggies are in the in the front of the fridge, the fruits are right on the table. You've got, you're filling up your water bottle or your water glass constantly throughout the day, and you're noticing, okay, I've been doing this for a week or three days, or however you want to, you can celebrate it at the end of the day. How are you gonna celebrate that? It could literally just be you saying, let's say I'm saying to myself, you know what, D, you are a freaking rock star for doing that because the self-talk, that affirmation, the positive self-talk, that the pat on your back goes such a long way. Your brain loves it. Okay. So what if you just have that moment with yourself? It doesn't cost anything, right? You you literally are like, you're a badass rock star. And then the next day you'll start noticing that actually you want to do it again and you want to have that moment at the end of the day where you're like, such a rock star. Or maybe after a few micro wins, right, where you're kind of maybe you're ticking something off. Maybe it's a visual win. So you have a calendar and you're saying you've got a little star next to the day where you mastered all that uh healthy environment, all those healthy environment tasks, and you put a little star so you see it. And then after you have like seven stars, what if you go and buy yourself, you know, um pair of sunglasses or uh a yoga class or something that you just really enjoy? You're telling your brain, hey, if I do this, I'm gonna get this, right? I'm gonna get this award. It's I'm gonna get this medal. So we keep celebrating the microwins and then we keep signaling to the brain that this is a great thing to do because in the end, I'm gonna get a medal, right? I'm saying medal just as uh as an example. So um we have the micro habits, right? The micro, the small changes, the absurdly small changes that must be consistent. We have the same time, same cue. We want to basically automatize the all these habits that we're creating. So we keep repeating. Then we have the habit stacking, right? We want to put this new thing that we're trying to get into our habits. We want to basically paste it into one of our other habits that we definitely won't give up because we love them. We love the habit and we enjoy it. And we also have the environment, setting up a healthy environment so you can get diminish the choice making, the willpower, and celebrating our micro wins. So in the micro wins, we were also talking about that gold star you can put down. That's actually called tracking visibly. So we also like seeing the stacked wins. We like seeing the check mark that, and then the other check mark and the other, because it gives us a sense of accomplishment, right? This is how our brain reacts. Our brain is so visible. It loves seeing, it's so visual. It loves seeing the win after win after win. Think about it. When you go into someone's home and or office and you see a shelf filled with trophies and medals, same thing, right? And and why does that person display the trophies and medals? Because it makes that person feel good. And how impressed are you when you walk in and you see all those trophies and the medals? It does something to you. It makes you feel good, it makes you feel accomplished. That's what I want you to do for yourself, right? So again, it could be like cute kid-like gold stickers that just, you know, you see how you're stacking them up one after another after another, and there you've got a beautiful gold, shiny piece of paper or calendar or whatever it is that you're using. And it just makes you happy and it's like you cheering yourself on. Um, it could also be uh, and this is something that I'm doing. Uh, I've been doing this uh challenge where basically what uh I was challenged to do by a friend is do 75 days of choosing however it is I'm gonna stick to my health in a or stick to healthy habits in a very specific way. Now, I could have chosen a type of diet. I could have said, uh, all right, you know what? I want to do the 75 days of paleo or 75 days of keto or 70, whatever. But I I don't, it doesn't resonate with me to really stick to one of these kinds of diets that um are very, very limiting and create a lot of friction with willpower and thinking and decision making. So what I decided to do was take the way I eat every single day and train every single day. And I also have cognitive training that I do every single day and do it through the weekends because I wasn't doing it through the weekends. So I was trying to understand and figure out how I can go with her flow. How can I do this challenge? Because I love a good challenge. And then I was like, I really don't like the extremism. So I'm just gonna take what some people actually might consider extreme, my regular day-to-day life, and paste it onto the holidays, paste it onto my birthday, paste it onto the weekends, and basically create a situation where I have 75 days straight, one after another of the same habits. We'll get to it at the end of the 75. I'm still in the middle of it, but it's interesting because I'm documenting it and I'm taking a picture every single day. And there are some days where I the picture part is a little bit of an issue, but seeing the pictures over time, it's very, very interesting. I'm learning a lot. I'm also journaling what I'm feeling. And I it's the the seeing it, the seeing one day after another, the fact that it's not only in my mind, the fact that I'm also writing what I'm feeling, how what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, that's really interesting to me. It's like I'm going for a full-on research and I'm the subject. So visible tracking. Very interesting. You can also use apps, right? There's um My FitnessPal is like one of those very basic, very famous apps. You can visibly uh make notes and track. And uh, I think there's even an award system built into that. That's just an example. All right. Now another habit is my actually, this might be my favorite habit. I want you to prep for the messy, disastrous shit show of the middle. That's what I want. I want you to prep for the messy middle. What happens is that two to six weeks into um trying to change habits, we tend to decline with our motivation. And this is almost this is this is really general population. Again, this is so common. I'll tell you even more than that. The the fact that people beat themselves up so much around that two to six week mark is amazing to me because it's so natural. It's it's the messy middle. It's what everybody deals with. There is this point where, like, you're motivated, motivated, you're on it, you're all over it, and then you're kind of done. Or you fall down, you're off that wagon. And I'm doing that with quotation marks. You're off the wagon. And then you basically beat yourself up, you talk to yourself in a really nasty way, and uh sometimes so nasty that it's actually hard to get back on the wagon. So let me just offer a different perspective. What if we didn't fall off the wagon and that was just part of the road? So you're on the wagon and you're about to go downhill, and then you're gonna go uphill, and it's just part of the whole thing because it is. It is part of the whole thing. So you can actually build in reset days, if you will. Like you can call, I don't even want to call it cheat days because then it feels like you're gonna end up beating yourself up on the cheat. Like, what if we just reset, refresh, right? So this tip, let me let me put it in a in a more distinct way. Um, just prep for the messy middle. Just prep for the messy middle. Call it, put it into your calendar and call it um, you know, a reset day. Or just know that the reset day might come, right? It might not come, but if you're like most people, it might come and but it's okay. It's totally okay. It's not even a cheat day, it's a reset, and then the next day you can get back on it all over it, or the next week. Okay, that's also okay. If it's a few days where you're just kind of just all those habits went out the window, you've already built enough of a foundation, right? One day after another for a week, for two weeks, for three weeks, and then you had a reset moment, you can go right back. It's really okay. It really is okay. And that positive self-talk is so crucial during that time. And that leads me to reframing setbacks. Do we want to call it a setback, those reset days? I think setback is I just it's it's like falling off the wagon. It's it's just not the right term. How about we call it data? Just reframe that setback, that I'm doing again, air quotes, that falling off the wagon. Reframe it. It's data. What around that point, what happened? Maybe there was something very specific that triggered it. How can I change it for next time? Right. Sometimes family events can actually be uh a little bit of a point where all of the habits we were building just went out the window. Maybe, so maybe next time I go to a family event, I'm gonna have a green smoothie before that's super filling with lots of protein. And I'll go in with the mindset of A, my tummy's full. I'm happy. And B, how about I listen to the people I'm talking to as opposed to think about thinking about, you know, the next thing I'm gonna put in my mouth. These are all just examples. And our days and our lives are so filled with dynamic uh points, dynamic aspects that we have to tailor it. And it really is gathering data. It really is. It's not a setback, it's maybe just Thursday night, right? It maybe is just the Monday morning um meeting with the I have no idea. It could be anything. So just notice where you are a little bit more vulnerable to uh change or to not listening to what your body needs, not being attentive or being mindful to uh your health habits that you're trying to form and see what around it you can change, what happened that triggered it. Whew, that was nine. That was nine. So I'm actually not going to um recap just yet. I'm gonna take a sip of my coffee and we're gonna jump right into 10 and then we're gonna recap. So here's the coffee that I I've talked about almost every episode. Number 10, guys. Number 10. I'm pausing because I actually want you to kind of guess what it is. I feel like maybe you're gonna say to yourself, ah, she's gonna say accountability. It's that thing that, you know, everybody talks about accountability. So I actually wrote a book called Rip It Up for Good uh five years ago in 2020. And I've changed a little bit since then. And actually, I wonder if we could turn the accountability of really asking for support and creating an accountability uh system with a buddy or a sibling or whoever it is or a friend, maybe turning it around and making the accountability system in autonomy accountability system, like you own it. What happens is these accountability systems that we create with people who are not ourselves, okay, a friend, a sibling, etc., it almost may seem to fade at one point. So just one person has to not show up because their life just went completely, you know, turned to one eighty-degree opposite situation. Or, you know, there are tough moments in life, there are uh breakdowns, there's uh grief, there's so many things that can happen. There could be a relocation. What if you only relied on yourself? But in a super powerful, empowering, autonomous, accountable kind of way. So you are accountable to yourself. And it's almost like, you know, if you're religious, it could be between you and your higher power. I am not religious, so I actually will say that I'm accountable to myself. And I find it so empowering when I'm like, D, you own it. This is yours. You're gonna smash that workout. You're gonna uh try to go to sleep earlier, you're gonna uh try to drink all that and and you own it. This is yours. Really taking on the identity of I am that person that takes care of her health. I'm that person who takes care of his basic physical needs. I'm attentive to my emotional needs and I act on it, right? I'm I'm responsible for my health. How empowering is that to say, you know, I am responsible for my health. Nobody's gonna go and build the muscle for me, right? So that's actually number 10, which is which is interesting because, like I said, I had been talking about support, uh, social support for years. And this is really kind of almost a breakthrough moment for me. So I want to know what you think about that. Please share with me what you think about the autonomous accountability. Hmm. Yes, I was almost afraid to talk about that today, but there it is. I I put it out there. So let's recap the 10 tips that I find uh really surfaced from the latest research and also my twist on uh my and my understanding on things. Let's go through. It start absurdly small and be consistent. Absurdly small and just keep coming back over and over and over again. Anchor to something that you enjoy doing, a habit that you enjoy doing because habit stacking leverages automaticity, right? Our brains love predictability. Same cue, same time, over and over again. Our brains love that. Then design your space for success. So environment is way more powerful than willpower. Environment is more powerful than willpower. Set up your environment for your health success. Okay. Remember fridge, remember a bowl of fruit as opposed to a bowl of cookies or candies. And then celebrate your micro wins because that is you signaling to your brain to do it again. Right? The brain loves winning. So we're signaling, yes, that that's a win. I love doing what brought me to the win and track visibly. You want to see the tracking, whether it's that gold star that I just made up, or whether it's it's like I said, I actually take selfies as much as I possibly can one day after another, after another. And in the end, I'm going to be able to see, you know, point A to point B. And finally, uh actually, no, this is not finally, but this is this is definitely the one of my top two favorites is prep for the messy middle. Prep for the messy middle because our lives are messy middles. That's that's what the juice of life is. It's just messy middles, one after another. And it could be that there is plenty of uh neatness between one mess and another, but the messy middle is coming. So we want to prep for it. We want to make sure that it's not falling off the wagon, not framed that way, but it's actually just a reset moment. And with that, you know, from that, we have the reframing of the setback and just calling it data because that really is what it is. It's just understanding ourselves a little bit more, understanding what triggers what, understanding our needs, our wants, our very basic physical needs. And then finally, and this is the one where really I'm I'm leaving you with a question mark here. Can we turn that accountability that is dependent on others? Can we make it more autonomous? Can we just take a moment and be like, you know, say to yourself, you know, self, you are so badass and so responsible and you've got this. And so you are accountable to yourself or your higher power or however you want to call it. That's it. That is it. And with that, I want to say that I do believe you own it. And I do believe that you can absolutely take ownership of your health and your well being and your wellness. And you've got this. So with that, I'll see you next time. And thank you.