The #1 health habit for women that no one considers but that has the greatest impact on our well being is the habit of cultivating a kind, compassion and loving inner narrative.
How we talk in the secrecy of our mind generates the feelings we experience towards ourselves. The range of emotions we experience then generate our behaviors.
The #1 health habit for women
Otherwise, our health habits are generated from the way we feel about ourselves. For many of us who have been under the influence of diet culture the way we think and feel about ourselves isn’t very productive and too often leads to self-sabotage instead of self-motivation.
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- What is the #1 health habit for women no one considers but has the greatest impact on women’s well being.
- How to adopt this health habit easily
Mentioned in the show:
Non-Diet Coaching Certification
Transcript
GBTF378-The #1 Health Habit For Women
===
This is episode 378 of the Beyond the Food Show and today we're going to talk about the number one health habit for women that no one is considering. and why it has the most impact on our well being. Let's do this.
Hey, my sisters, welcome back to the podcast. This is likely going to be one of the shortest episodes I ever recorded, because I want to get straight to the point. And I want to uncomplicate this process of thinking about which health habit is most important for us as women to consider and to work on getting in our habit portfolio.
So I'm going to go straight to the point here. And as a clinical nutritionist who has worked with women who have been dieting for years, what I consider the number one health habit that has the most impact on our well being and that unfortunately no one talks about. You ready? The way we talk to ourselves.
in our mind, the way that we meet ourselves, the way that we cultivate our internal dialogues, our mindset, the way we think about ourselves. That's what I consider to be the number one habit that women have to onboard. Let me explain to you why. So, I'm a 47 year old woman who is in the age of perimenopause and I'm going through perimenopause and when I look at social media, when I read articles and blogs about health for women in my period of age, what I keep hearing all the time is, you need to eat more protein, you need to do muscle building exercise, which is fine and dandy, which is absolutely true.
Right? We talked about that with the menopause nutritionist a few episodes ago. I think it was last episode. Yeah, it is true that we need to consume more protein. And it is true that there's extreme value in having a muscle building workout routine. But guess what? Executing on these habits, these other habits, require one thing.
It requires you cultivating a supportive, motivating, kind, internal dialogue. I've been teaching habitsin my prior career, in the context of working in a corporate structure and working in sales and implementing sales plan, which In order for us to execute the sales plan, we needed daily habits in our businesses that I was supervising in order to generate the revenue.
And it's the same thing when it comes to your health. We know from science that there's a number of habits like eating enough food, like moving your body that we need to implement in our life in order for us to live. a full life to have access to the full potential of our health that is accessible to us.
But in order to create that behavior on a long term spectrum, meaning you're gonna show up moving your body two to three times a week for the rest of your life. Not five or six times a week for six months because you are on a plan, but instead moving your body however, that brings joy to you for the rest of your life consistently.
These are long term behavior that needs to become part of who we are. I have been teaching people how to do that in the context of business and for the last Eight years now in the context of health, specifically for women who have been under the influence of diaculture and have been dieting and restricting for a long time.
So I have a very niche specialty and I can tell you, I have written books about how to like onboard new habits. I've given classes, forums, seminars. I can give the most detailed protocol. for women to onboard health habit, but if they don't have that one habit on generating an inner conversation with themselves that is kind and compassionate, no habit will be onboarded long term.
And we know that, not just from my experience, we know that from science, we know that from research, the field of cognitive behavioral. therapy or coaching in the case of what we do in my world. We use cognitive behavioral modeling, which is a field of research linked to the science of understanding the behaviors of human being.
When you look at the field of research on cognitive behavioral Modeling or coaching, what you find is that human behavior, like walking, moving your body, eating enough food, mental health, emotional health, what creates consistency is not a rigid plan, a list of things to do, it's creating a motivational feeling, a excitement, joyful In looking to create and having the behavior, it's being excited about doing the thing.
It's looking forward to moving your body, not, Oh, I have to do this. Oh my God, I don't want to go there, but I just have to. Go there, which is how I used to be when it came to health behavior because it was associated with shrinking my body and suffering and all the things that diaculture taught us. So having to learn to be excited about moving my body, Oh my God, that took some work.
And the work had to do with me generating. inner feeling of excitement, of motivation, of support, kindness, and compassion towards myself. I needed to change the way I thought about myself, the way I thought about my health the way that I thought about my health behavior. I had to change the narrative from I have to I choose to.
And that was a lot of reprogramming because in my case, 25 years of I have to, I had to, I should, needed a lot. Like literally hundreds and hundreds of repetition of me saying no, no, no, no, I choose to go for a walk because I enjoy walking while listening to a podcast. I had to literally retrain my brain to think about habits to think about myself.
I want to take care of my body. I am worthy to take care of my body. Even if I don't lose weight, I am worthy to invest time and resources in generating more strength in my body, even though I'm going to remain fat. Like I had to change the way that I taught about myself in the context of my health and in the context of me not doing it the way that I thought it should be.
So as I'm recording this episode right now, and for those of you who perhaps are watching me on video, I'm looking in a different direction right now. I'm looking at my habit. Tracker, because I track habits at the beginning of my journey of learning habit. This is something that I'm teaching to people when I teach about health habit.
By the way, if you are joining on Diet Your Life, if you're joining us live the 13th, you will be able to attend live. We're talking 2023, by the way. I don't know when you're listening to this, but if you're joining on diet your life before October 13, 2023, you'll be able to join us in October and November as I teach health habits school.
And that's one of the thing I'm going to teach in there is pick one habits, one, not 10 or 15. One habit and then set a goal with something called minimum baseline. That's a tool that I teach. And then track it. And the reason why you want to track, so I'm tracking right now two habits that I've unboarded over the last six months.
One being as a result of a knee injury that I had, we diagnosed, the physical therapy team diagnosed a bunch of imbalances in my legs and they gave me a series of mobility exercise to do and strengthening and stretching exercise and, Quite honestly, this is going to be for years to come that I'm going to have to do them.
So about four months ago, I started to build a habit to do these mobility exercise, once a day. So four months ago, I emboarded this new habit of doing these exercise. And about a month ago, I wanted to on board the enjoyment of walking. Not walking to exercise or to move my body as a way of regulating my nervous system, calming down, processing my thoughts.
It's more of a mental health and emotional health than it is for physical health. Long story short, I started to track that. So I'm looking at my wall right now with my habits, and I have a goal for each habit, right? I want to walk three times a week at the end of the day, and I want to stretch once a day, six days a week.
And I don't do it. I don't stretch six days a week. I just started walking for nervous system regulation and I don't walk three times a week. How do I meet myself when I don't achieve the goal? That's part of habit building. That's this whole number one health habit I'm talking about, how we talk to ourselves.
I used to track habits in the past and the concept some of you probably know about that smart goals, right? The corporate world was all over that 10 years ago when I was there. I don't know if it's still the case today, and we used to track it and we used to shame ourselves. for not achieving our goal or we oppositely used to like put people who achieve their habit on a pedestal those who executed a hundred percent we need to celebrate them and we need to like cheer them on and they were the best people in the world and by shamed.
And as a result, I built the habit that if I wasn't perfect in my habit, I would shame myself. So looking at my habit tracker is training myself to meet myself with compassion, kindness, and understanding. So I'm looking at last week's habit. There's two days that I didn't stretch. One day, it's because I decided to go out with friends, to go out for dinner and to go out for social time, and when I came back home, I just wanted to go to bed, and I prioritized my sleep.
I made the decision to not stretch that day. The second day I didn't stretch, again, I made the decision to not stretch because I wasn't feeling well. Good. And the last thing I want is execute on a habit from a place of I have to when really I don't want to. That's the old way of habit from my culture and there's no way I'm repeating that pattern of I have to because I know where it leads to.
It leads to doing it until you don't do it and then spending months. and years not doing anything. That was my pattern for exercising the whole time I was part of diet culture. I would exercise, and I would hate it, and push myself to do it and push myself to do it and push myself until I'm like, fuck it, I don't want to do it anymore I hate this.
And then I would spend a year or two without moving my body. Does that sound familiar? The antidote to that is being able to look at the results with understanding and compassion, knowing that you made choices and saying, okay, we start again next week.
How easily does that come to you? What I have found over the years of working with my very specific niche is that conversation that how we talk to ourselves, how we treat ourselves, isn't easily compassion, kindness, and understanding. That's why I say it's the number one habit because when we can have This narrative, these thoughts in our brain of kindness and compassion towards ourself and understanding and belief and trust, then we can create excitement for the habits and not I have to.
We can create motivation. Many people want more motivation towards their health habits. Motivation is a feeling. It's a feeling that we create by the kind of thoughts we think about ourselves. So if we want to create motivation, we need to have kind thoughts, belief thoughts that we believe about ourselves.
We're going to get there. I'm going to do it. I believe in myself. So to me, the way I teach health habits, I talk about the four bodies of health, mental health, emotional health, physical health, and spiritual health. For me, that mindset, that inner narrative, It's part of the mental health bucket of habit.
And for me, that's the number one thing we need to onboard. There's no point of moving your body. There's no point of thinking about your nutrition if the inner conversation is really shitty. That's what we need to tackle first. That's what we need to hunt board. That is why inside of Undyett your life The very first module is the module where I teach you on how to manage your thought More specifically your thoughts about yourself.
So I wanted to put that in a podcast. So as people scroll through The feed and they see the number one health habit. I want to get it out to the world the number one health habit you can on board is cultivating an inner narrative about yourself one of kindness one of love one of support and one of compassion Do that first Cultivate that Make that something consistent and solid and watch yourself Pick Any health habit afterwards and kicking butt onboarding those health habit with ease, joy, and trust.
I hope this helped you, my sister. If you need some help with both the mindset and health habit, join us inside of On Diet Your Life. podcast.
.
The #1 Health Habit For Women
This is episode 378 of the Beyond the Food Show and today we’re going to talk about the number one health habit for women that no one is considering. and why it has the most impact on our well being. Let’s do this.
Hey, my sisters, welcome back to the podcast. This is likely going to be one of the shortest episodes I ever recorded, because I want to get straight to the point. And I want to uncomplicate this process of thinking about which health habit is most important for us as women to consider and to work on getting in our habit portfolio.
So I’m going to go straight to the point here. And as a clinical nutritionist who has worked with women who have been dieting for years, what I consider the number one health habit that has the most impact on our well being and that unfortunately no one talks about. You ready? The way we talk to ourselves.
in our mind, the way that we meet ourselves, the way that we cultivate our internal dialogues, our mindset, the way we think about ourselves. That’s what I consider to be the number one habit that women have to onboard. Let me explain to you why. So, I’m a 47 year old woman who is in the age of perimenopause and I’m going through perimenopause and when I look at social media, when I read articles and blogs about health for women in my period of age, what I keep hearing all the time is, you need to eat more protein, you need to do muscle building exercise, which is fine and dandy, which is absolutely true.
Right? We talked about that with the menopause nutritionist a few episodes ago. I think it was last episode. Yeah, it is true that we need to consume more protein. And it is true that there’s extreme value in having a muscle building workout routine. But guess what? Executing on these habits, these other habits, require one thing.
It requires you cultivating a supportive, motivating, kind, internal dialogue. I’ve been teaching habitsin my prior career, in the context of working in a corporate structure and working in sales and implementing sales plan, which In order for us to execute the sales plan, we needed daily habits in our businesses that I was supervising in order to generate the revenue.
And it’s the same thing when it comes to your health. We know from science that there’s a number of habits like eating enough food, like moving your body that we need to implement in our life in order for us to live. a full life to have access to the full potential of our health that is accessible to us.
But in order to create that behavior on a long term spectrum, meaning you’re gonna show up moving your body two to three times a week for the rest of your life. Not five or six times a week for six months because you are on a plan, but instead moving your body however, that brings joy to you for the rest of your life consistently.
These are long term behavior that needs to become part of who we are. I have been teaching people how to do that in the context of business and for the last Eight years now in the context of health, specifically for women who have been under the influence of diaculture and have been dieting and restricting for a long time.
So I have a very niche specialty and I can tell you, I have written books about how to like onboard new habits. I’ve given classes, forums, seminars. I can give the most detailed protocol. for women to onboard health habit, but if they don’t have that one habit on generating an inner conversation with themselves that is kind and compassionate, no habit will be onboarded long term.
And we know that, not just from my experience, we know that from science, we know that from research, the field of cognitive behavioral. therapy or coaching in the case of what we do in my world. We use cognitive behavioral modeling, which is a field of research linked to the science of understanding the behaviors of human being.
When you look at the field of research on cognitive behavioral Modeling or coaching, what you find is that human behavior, like walking, moving your body, eating enough food, mental health, emotional health, what creates consistency is not a rigid plan, a list of things to do, it’s creating a motivational feeling, a excitement, joyful In looking to create and having the behavior, it’s being excited about doing the thing.
It’s looking forward to moving your body, not, Oh, I have to do this. Oh my God, I don’t want to go there, but I just have to. Go there, which is how I used to be when it came to health behavior because it was associated with shrinking my body and suffering and all the things that diaculture taught us. So having to learn to be excited about moving my body, Oh my God, that took some work.
And the work had to do with me generating. inner feeling of excitement, of motivation, of support, kindness, and compassion towards myself. I needed to change the way I thought about myself, the way I thought about my health the way that I thought about my health behavior. I had to change the narrative from I have to I choose to.
And that was a lot of reprogramming because in my case, 25 years of I have to, I had to, I should, needed a lot. Like literally hundreds and hundreds of repetition of me saying no, no, no, no, I choose to go for a walk because I enjoy walking while listening to a podcast. I had to literally retrain my brain to think about habits to think about myself.
I want to take care of my body. I am worthy to take care of my body. Even if I don’t lose weight, I am worthy to invest time and resources in generating more strength in my body, even though I’m going to remain fat. Like I had to change the way that I taught about myself in the context of my health and in the context of me not doing it the way that I thought it should be.
So as I’m recording this episode right now, and for those of you who perhaps are watching me on video, I’m looking in a different direction right now. I’m looking at my habit. Tracker, because I track habits at the beginning of my journey of learning habit. This is something that I’m teaching to people when I teach about health habit.
By the way, if you are joining on Diet Your Life, if you’re joining us live the 13th, you will be able to attend live. We’re talking 2023, by the way. I don’t know when you’re listening to this, but if you’re joining on diet your life before October 13, 2023, you’ll be able to join us in October and November as I teach health habits school.
And that’s one of the thing I’m going to teach in there is pick one habits, one, not 10 or 15. One habit and then set a goal with something called minimum baseline. That’s a tool that I teach. And then track it. And the reason why you want to track, so I’m tracking right now two habits that I’ve unboarded over the last six months.
One being as a result of a knee injury that I had, we diagnosed, the physical therapy team diagnosed a bunch of imbalances in my legs and they gave me a series of mobility exercise to do and strengthening and stretching exercise and, Quite honestly, this is going to be for years to come that I’m going to have to do them.
So about four months ago, I started to build a habit to do these mobility exercise, once a day. So four months ago, I emboarded this new habit of doing these exercise. And about a month ago, I wanted to on board the enjoyment of walking. Not walking to exercise or to move my body as a way of regulating my nervous system, calming down, processing my thoughts.
It’s more of a mental health and emotional health than it is for physical health. Long story short, I started to track that. So I’m looking at my wall right now with my habits, and I have a goal for each habit, right? I want to walk three times a week at the end of the day, and I want to stretch once a day, six days a week.
And I don’t do it. I don’t stretch six days a week. I just started walking for nervous system regulation and I don’t walk three times a week. How do I meet myself when I don’t achieve the goal? That’s part of habit building. That’s this whole number one health habit I’m talking about, how we talk to ourselves.
I used to track habits in the past and the concept some of you probably know about that smart goals, right? The corporate world was all over that 10 years ago when I was there. I don’t know if it’s still the case today, and we used to track it and we used to shame ourselves. for not achieving our goal or we oppositely used to like put people who achieve their habit on a pedestal those who executed a hundred percent we need to celebrate them and we need to like cheer them on and they were the best people in the world and by shamed.
And as a result, I built the habit that if I wasn’t perfect in my habit, I would shame myself. So looking at my habit tracker is training myself to meet myself with compassion, kindness, and understanding. So I’m looking at last week’s habit. There’s two days that I didn’t stretch. One day, it’s because I decided to go out with friends, to go out for dinner and to go out for social time, and when I came back home, I just wanted to go to bed, and I prioritized my sleep.
I made the decision to not stretch that day. The second day I didn’t stretch, again, I made the decision to not stretch because I wasn’t feeling well. Good. And the last thing I want is execute on a habit from a place of I have to when really I don’t want to. That’s the old way of habit from my culture and there’s no way I’m repeating that pattern of I have to because I know where it leads to.
It leads to doing it until you don’t do it and then spending months. and years not doing anything. That was my pattern for exercising the whole time I was part of diet culture. I would exercise, and I would hate it, and push myself to do it and push myself to do it and push myself until I’m like, fuck it, I don’t want to do it anymore I hate this.
And then I would spend a year or two without moving my body. Does that sound familiar? The antidote to that is being able to look at the results with understanding and compassion, knowing that you made choices and saying, okay, we start again next week.
How easily does that come to you? What I have found over the years of working with my very specific niche is that conversation that how we talk to ourselves, how we treat ourselves, isn’t easily compassion, kindness, and understanding. That’s why I say it’s the number one habit because when we can have This narrative, these thoughts in our brain of kindness and compassion towards ourself and understanding and belief and trust, then we can create excitement for the habits and not I have to.
We can create motivation. Many people want more motivation towards their health habits. Motivation is a feeling. It’s a feeling that we create by the kind of thoughts we think about ourselves. So if we want to create motivation, we need to have kind thoughts, belief thoughts that we believe about ourselves.
We’re going to get there. I’m going to do it. I believe in myself. So to me, the way I teach health habits, I talk about the four bodies of health, mental health, emotional health, physical health, and spiritual health. For me, that mindset, that inner narrative, It’s part of the mental health bucket of habit.
And for me, that’s the number one thing we need to onboard. There’s no point of moving your body. There’s no point of thinking about your nutrition if the inner conversation is really shitty. That’s what we need to tackle first. That’s what we need to hunt board. That is why inside of Undyett your life The very first module is the module where I teach you on how to manage your thought More specifically your thoughts about yourself.
So I wanted to put that in a podcast. So as people scroll through The feed and they see the number one health habit. I want to get it out to the world the number one health habit you can on board is cultivating an inner narrative about yourself one of kindness one of love one of support and one of compassion Do that first Cultivate that Make that something consistent and solid and watch yourself Pick Any health habit afterwards and kicking butt onboarding those health habit with ease, joy, and trust.
I hope this helped you, my sister. If you need some help with both the mindset and health habit, join us inside of On Diet Your Life. podcast.
