At some point in the past week (or five minutes ago after a Google search), you’ve made a resolution to change your life.
Maybe you decided to exercise every day. Perhaps it’s time to start eating better. This is the best appetite suppressant.
Or maybe you decided to stop wearing jorts.
Well my friend, I’m excited for you, and I want you to know you’ve arrived at the right place!
We help folks build healthy habits as part of our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, so you’ve come to the right place to fulfill your resolution.
Here’s what we’ll cover in our Guide to Build Healthy Habits in 2022:
- Why do we suck at building healthy habits?
- The first step of building healthy habits (Know your “Big Why”)
- How to build healthy habits (The three parts)
- The key to sustainable healthy habits (Use systems)
- 5 hacks for effortless healthy habit building
- The secret to fulfilling your resolution (Do less)
- Pick your habit and GO (Next steps)
Let’s get right to it so you can start rocking 2022!
Why Do We Suck At Building Healthy Habits?
“I know what I’m supposed to do, I just can’t get myself to do it!”
Welcome to the club – we all know what we need to do, but we just can’t get ourselves to make the important changes.
We know how to get in shape: move more and eat less!
We know how to exercise: get your heart rate up, do some push-ups, get stronger.
We know how to eat healthy: more vegetables and less sugar.
And yet, we can’t get ourselves to stick with ANY of these things for longer than a few weeks.
Why?
Simple: Building new healthy habits is tough, our lizard brains crave instant gratification, we don’t fully understand how habits are built, life gets busy, and our default behavior is often as unhealthy as it is easy.
As a result, we don’t put the right systems in place in order to make changes stick.
We also rely wayyyyy too much on willpower and motivation.
We tend to bite off more than we can chew, go too fast too soon, and then get overwhelmed too quickly.
Does this sound familiar?
- I’m going to eat 100% Paleo/Keto AND
- I’m going to run 5 miles a day AND
- I’m going to work out in a gym five times a week.
If you’re somebody that eats a typically poor diet, never runs, and hasn’t set foot in a gym since grade-school dodgeball with Mr. Wazowski, changing alllll of these at once is almost a surefire way to succeed at precisely NONE of them.
We’re conditioned these days to expect and receive instant gratification. If we want food we can get it from a drive-through, stick a frozen meal in a microwave, or sit down at a restaurant that’s open 24 hours. If we want a game we can download it to our computers/phones/PS5s within a matter of seconds. If we want to watch a TV show, it’s a few clicks away.
Hell, Netflix even starts the next episode for you without any action required!
We expect getting in shape to go the same way.
And this is why we suck at building healthy habits that stick.
We tell ourselves “Hey, I’ve been dedicated for a whole two weeks, why don’t I look like Ryan Reynolds yet?”, not remembering that it took us decades of unhealthy living to get where we are, which means it’s going to take more than a few weeks to reverse the trend.
And then we miss a workout because life was busy or our kid got sick. And we get disheartened that exercise or giving up candy is not nearly as fun as Netflix and video games and Peanut M&M’s.
This is where everybody gives up:
- They try to change too many habits too soon
- They get impatient the results don’t come more quickly
- They slip up when life gets busy
