Since starting my business, I’ve promised to keep it real. Health related content tends to lean idealistic. I mean, I’m a dang Health Coach and I find myself rolling my eyes at 90% of the articles and blog posts out there. One of the reasons (and perhaps THE main reason) so many people give up on behavior change is because they feel like it requires drastic habit transformation. When the Health Coach you’re following on Instagram is only posting pics of being in the gym and eating lean protein and veggies, well – it feels entirely out of reach for most of us. I’m here to say you can make progress (and sustain that progress) without giving up bread or Hazy IPA’s forever. To be fair, if your goal is to be fitness competition … [Read more...] about Behavior Change Doesn’t Have to Suck
Habits
Make a Move
If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve felt somewhat paralyzed over the past few months. The pandemic restrictions are lifting (hooray) at the same time I’m making frequent trips to New Jersey to help care for my Mom. Planning ahead has been tricky at best. Should I reactivate my gym membership?Plan for a vacation? Commit to that party? Take my business back to full capacity? (This one is happening SOON!) It’s a weird place to be. Not knowing is downright disorienting. But indecision and staying stuck feels TERRIBLE. So last week, I decided to make one simple decision around fitness. To commit to Pilates twice/week when in Colorado. My first Pilates session felt like an act of self-love. Like an important vote cast in favor of … [Read more...] about Make a Move
You Probably Won’t “Conquer” Emotional Eating – and That’s Okay
Many of my clients tell me they want to eliminate emotional eating forever. As someone who has struggled with emotional eating, I completely understand the desire to make this behavior go away forever. To never feel compelled to turn to food for soothing or stress relief or out of boredom again. Some people get there, but most don’t – and that’s okay. You can make mountains of progress without conquering emotional eating altogether. In my opinion, it makes more sense to work towards less frequent and less intense episodes of emotional overeating. Attempting to “end” emotional overeating once and for all sets us up for disappointment. Any time we overeat, we feel as though we’ve failed. And feeling like a failure is not … [Read more...] about You Probably Won’t “Conquer” Emotional Eating – and That’s Okay
Eliminating Triggers
The path to changing our behavior has very little to do with resolve. We achieve control, not through willpower but by finding ways to take willpower entirely out of the equation. The central force for eliminating bad habits, according to social psychologist Wendy Wood, author of “Good Habits, Bad Habits,” is friction. In other words, making bad habits inconvenient. She cites the ways in which increased friction has produced a decline in smoking: laws that ban it in restaurants, bars, airplanes, and trains; taxes that have helped triple the price of cigarettes in the U.S. in the past twenty years; the purge of cigarettes from vending machines, and of tobacco ads from TV and the radio. We can apply the same concept to eating … [Read more...] about Eliminating Triggers