Heal Nourish Grow Podcast

In today’s episode, Cheryl shares a simple but powerful habit that can completely change how you handle stress, conflict, and emotional triggers. The focus is on building a short pause between what happens and how you respond, even if it is something small like a frustrating comment, an anxiety spike, or an email that instantly sets you off. Cheryl explains how taking just 10 seconds can reduce rumination, support more consistent decision-making, and help you respond in a way that aligns with the person you want to be, not just your first impulse. She also offers an easy cue phrase you can use in the moment, plus a beginner-friendly option if 10 seconds feels too hard. Takeaways A short pause helps create space between the stimulus and your response Reacting immediately often leads to choices you would not make once you calm down This practice can reduce rumination, meaning you replay the moment over and over later Pausing works in social situations and in private moments when you feel triggered internally Deep breathing during the pause helps settle your body before you respond If 10 seconds feels too long, start with 5 seconds and build from there Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nurse Grow and welcome to day 20. I call it a practice because this one is tough sometimes. It’s something that I have been practicing for a long time in my own life. And that is to today, your habit is to pause before reacting for 10 seconds. So a great example of this is usually better word triggers you or makes you anxious or makes you frustrated. And you may want to just react in that moment. And quite often what you’ll find is if you just take a pause, a couple deep breaths are useful here as well, but take a pause, give yourself a moment to think, give yourself a moment to feel where that comment or conflict or whatever it was, where it landed in your body, where you’re feeling it and just take a deep breath and then respond. And so why this is good. And it’s going to reduce rumination, which is that idea that you just keep playing something over and over in your head. All of this is going to support consistency and create a space between the stimulus and the response. And this usually leads to better choices or better interactions. Another thing, you know, I’m talking about reacting with someone else, but it could also be that you’re alone. It’s a personal thing that you’re just reacting to in the moment. So that’s a time to again, take some time, take a deep breath and just let it settle and figure out what you’re really thinking about it rather than just your initial knee jerk response. Because it could come in the form of an email or something that just happens to you and you’re just anxious and caught up in the moment. Just give yourself a beat. Pause, breathe, and then choose. That’s like a cue phrase. So along with this habit today to take that pause, think of pause, breathe, and choose. what I like to do with a pause. And it’s funny that my my ex actually noticed this about me which I thought was pretty perceptive because if you would say something that was A heavy sigh like. and then just breathe a couple times and then I would respond. So maybe you don’t want to make it so audible or so obvious because this person in my life did notice this, but you could even say, you know, your thing about pause, breathe, then choose. It could be even a choice to say, I need a moment to think this over. I may need a moment to process this. Something like that that gives you just the time. to go ahead and take that deep breath and to give it some reflection before responding. So if 10 seconds seems too long to you, let’s start with five, as this challenge has gone the whole way. make yourself work towards up towards bigger habits, bigger goals, you know, everything like that. The small things will just make it seem more simple and less stressful on you. So if 10 seconds is too long, go for five. As always, the research will be in the email and in the tracker and you can join at any time by going to healnursegro.com. So if you find whatever you find it in the future, please join and you’ll get to take advantage of learning all these fun new things that can help you get to your goals. So I will see you again tomorrow.

In today’s episode, Cheryl revisits one of the most important stress-related topics in the challenge: money. Since financial strain is a major source of anxiety for many people, today’s habit focuses on taking one small action that supports your future financial wellbeing. Cheryl explains why progress on financial goals is linked to better overall health and stability, and she shares simple, realistic examples you can complete in 10 minutes or less. The goal is not to build a full budget or overhaul your finances. It is to make a quick “future you” move that reduces stress, creates more control, and supports your ability to stay consistent with other healthy habits. Takeaways Money is a common source of stress, and reducing financial strain can improve overall wellbeing Small progress toward financial goals can help you feel calmer, more stable, and more in control The habit is about long-term support, not daily spending perfection Financial stability can make other healthy habits easier to maintain because stress is lower Automation is one of the easiest ways to reduce mental load and improve consistency Even small savings can matter, especially over time with compounding interest If money habits feel overwhelming, the best approach is a tiny step and then pause Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan founder of Heal Nourish Grow, and welcome to day 26 of the 30 Days Healthy Habits Challenge. Today we’re back to money. We did this one habit earlier in the challenge and we’re coming back to it again because as we learned from the previous one, if you read any of the research or just listened to the podcast from before, that money is ⁓ quite a source of stress for a lot of people and this is no surprise, right? But it does show in the literature that making progress, making financial goals and taking some of your financial stress away actually creates greater wellbeing. It just helps you feel more settled, less anxious, less stressed. So addressing money things now and again is a good idea. Cheryl McColgan (00:45)obviously I think we should be considering what we’re consuming, what we’re spending money on, that sort of thing every single day. But when you’re doing these future plans or kind of more extended timeframe things for savings, that’s maybe not something that you’re thinking every single day. So I didn’t mean to say that, obviously you shouldn’t be focusing on spending on a daily basis, but these kind of larger goals might be something that’s more a once a week, once a month sort of thing. So back to today’s habit is to make one future you money move today. And so this is going to be something that lowers financial strain and just gives you stronger financial capability in the future. And that’s all associated with better health and wellbeing. It reduces stress, as I said before, creates stability and having stability and having control of your finances supports other healthy habits as well. It gives you the finances and the ability to invest. in other areas of your health if you need to. And it also having less stress in your life makes all the behaviors easier to repeat when you don’t have stress cropping up. So to give you some examples to make this easier, do something like set up an auto-save program at your bank or on an app. So taking $10, $20, $1,000, whatever works in your particular financial situation to automatically save each month. Automated bill. have a bill or two or all of them that are scheduled to pay every single month so that it takes the stress off of you remembering to send a check or to submit your payment online. Maybe increase your retirement contribution by 1%. This is an area that I’m really interested in because I have always been involved in some degree and both my partners have been in finance and I actually ended up doing a speech about it in college. But the compounding Interest is such a huge thing the earlier you start saving even if it’s a small amount and then I say earlier I’m like the younger that you start saying your that money just has more time to double and double and double again over time With the you know compounding interest and if you start saving much later in life It doesn’t have as much time to grow now That’s not to say you still can’t start because like every all of this you can start any time But the younger that you start saving the better it’ll just set you up much more in the future for having some again, gains without having to do anything else. The once in the money is in there and it’s growing with interest, it just keeps building on itself. If the automation seems too much, maybe it’s something like setting yourself a calendar reminder or writing a small financial plan, maybe for the next week or the next month. So we’re doing it in 10 minutes or less. We’re not making a spreadsheet here or creating an empire of things. Of course, if you want to do that at some point, I think that’s awesome. But this is just meant to be, again, a small, doable habit that doesn’t turn you off from it. So setting up an automation, something quick like that, or setting aside more money to save is a good choice here. So if it’s triggering too much stress, just do a small step, something in relation to it, and then stop. And you can always come back to this at a later date or give it some further thought when it comes for the weekly reset and reflect. As always, the studies are linked. in the email that you received and in your tracker. And if you haven’t joined yet, that link to join is heelnourishgrow.com slash habits, you can join anytime. It’s never too late. That’s probably the theme of this series so far. But hope you enjoyed this and I will see you again tomorrow.

In this conversation, Cheryl McColgan emphasizes the importance of strength training for overall health, particularly as we age. She discusses how even short sessions can be effective and encourages listeners to incorporate strength and stability exercises into their routines. Cheryl highlights the benefits of consistency and the need to challenge oneself with appropriate weights to stimulate muscle growth. She also addresses common misconceptions about strength training and reassures listeners that it’s never too late to start. Takeaways Strength training is crucial for functional health and aging. Short sessions of strength training can be effective. Two days a week of strength training can yield significant results. Lifting heavy means finding the right weight for you. Body weight exercises can be a great starting point for beginners. Balance and stability exercises are important for overall fitness. Osteoporosis and muscle loss can be reversed with strength training. It’s never too late to start strength training, regardless of age. Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:01.902)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to a day 25 of your 30 day healthy habits challenge. This is one I’ve been waiting for to send to the very end here the last few days and that is to challenge you to do a short strength or stability session. So this is not going to require any equipment. It’s not going to require going to the gym or anything like that. But I just want you to try it if this is something that you don’t do on a regular basis. because strength training has just so related to so many aspects of health. There’s more and more stuff coming about all the time. It is maybe more important than strict cardio for a lot of reasons, but it supports again, functional health, just moving around on a day-to-day basis. And it’s a lot of longer term, less health risks when you strength train. So strength and stability, it all supports healthy aging, it supports confidence and just again, your function in daily life. I always say, you I’m training to be able to get off the toilet by myself when I get older because these are the kind of things that people lose the ability to do because they lose the strength in their legs. And that is just crazy scary. Also short short sessions are easier to maintain and it builds this consistency, which is an awesome thing for habit building. I’ve actually been following along with this other podcast recently called mind pump. I’m pretty sure that’s right. Like 99.9 % sure. But anyway, these guys have been training people for years and years and years and just a great collective wealth of knowledge. And they have programs that are just 15 minutes a day. Now people do them six days a week for strength training, but that 15 minutes a day, it supports the habit, keeps the habit going. And it’s enough time if you do for 15 minutes, you probably do two to three sets of some strength training exercise, kind of a full body. idea and they’re doing all the big lifts like deadlifts, squats, lunges, that sorts of thing. I don’t have their program unfortunately, but that’s the idea behind it is supporting this daily habit, doing it an amount of time that doesn’t scare people off and that people can fit into their schedule. And that’s all it takes to build strength. You can build strength with that little of strength training a day. And actually if you didn’t want to do it 15 minutes a day, like if you would have to go to a gym to do this and that seems like, oh, that’s a lot of Cheryl McColgan (02:26.766)driving time to go to the gym for just 15 minutes of work, even just two days a week of a longer strength training session that hits all parts of your body is enough to get 80 % of the 80 to 90 % of the strength that you’re going to get anyway. It comes from just two days a week. You’re hitting your muscles two days a week. You’re waking up the muscles two days a week. You’re stimulating the muscles to grow by lifting heavy enough that it puts a signal in your body to grow. If you’re just doing something little and repetitive, that’s not a signal for the body to grow. That’s why you got to lift heavy for you. People get scared when they hear lift heavy because they think it means, you know, for example, that I would go pick up a 200 pound, you know, barbell off the floor. No, that is not. That’s too heavy for me. Right. I’ve got to do what’s heavy for me. And that means something that I can pick up and do maybe six, eight, 10, 12 reps. That’s the kind of range that’s really good for strength building and growing muscle. And so you want to just do something that’s heavy enough for you doing these little two pound weights. If you’re, you know, even the average woman that might that even if it’s heavy for her, like for a week or two, that’s very quickly going to be too little of weight to cause any real change. So sorry for the little that was a bit tangential, but I just to get the idea of you definitely want to do it. If you’re going to go ahead and do it, like at least give yourself enough. of a challenge that it makes some difference. Now, all that being said, I said you don’t need any equipment for this one and you don’t because especially if this is completely new to you doing body weight exercises and things at home are going to be plenty of new stimulus for you to try. If you already lift, you already have access to a gym, then I would just maybe challenge you to try a couple of exercises that you haven’t, don’t normally do or you don’t normally. or maybe if you already strength train, you don’t have the stability part as much, maybe you’re gonna try some stability work for this part of the challenge. So just choose like a little, you can make a little circuit mentally for yourself that you’re gonna spend 10 minutes doing this. And so again, if you don’t have any equipment home or anything, maybe it’s an odd and you can just do this if you find it too stressful to think about figuring this out for yourself. Air squats, so just body weight squats. And if you don’t recognize any of these things, if you look here on look on YouTube, Cheryl McColgan (04:47.554)You’ll find plenty of videos that will demonstrate this for you, but simple body weight squats you can do sit to stand. So if you are worried that even a squat might be too much for you or too stressful, you want to just literally lower yourself down slowly to a chair and then bring yourself back up using the strength of your legs. So not pushing off with your, know, really using the strength of your body and your core to push you back up out of the chair. You can do some hinge work. So just literally bending over or if you have milk jugs or soup cans or things like that in the house, if it’s just way too easy for you bending over pretending you’re gonna pick something off the floor, maybe actually have some milk jugs, something like that. And then you could also do pushups. Everybody knows what that looks like. You can do pushups against the wall if you’re not very strong. And if you’re already very strong, you can just do pushups as many as you can in a row would be a great challenge. also wall sits like literally bending so that your quads, your quadriceps, the tops, your thighs are parallel to the floor and leaning your back against the wall and just sitting there. That’s an isometric exercise, also very strengthening. So those are all just it. So just 10 minutes, you’re gonna move your body in some ways you haven’t tried yet. If you’re looking to create stability, some balance types of things, most people don’t do those on a regular basis. It would always be surprising to me when I was in yoga class, we’d have. obviously a whole section of that that was balance of balancing on one leg in some way, whether it’s stretching at the same time, holding a foot while you’re balancing on one leg or just simply balancing on one leg without the stability of a wall, something like that could be a good option for this part of the challenge too. So there shouldn’t be too much concern about figuring something out because there’s so many videos online now and just Don’t pick anything that looks crazy or out of whack or too, too challenging. Just, you know, pick something that makes sense for where you are in your body right now and your current strength and skill level and just make it a little challenging. Maybe make it something new. But getting out of your comfort zone in regards to strength training, think particularly for some women, this is still a barrier. And it’s just such a shame because the Cheryl McColgan (07:03.362)things that happen with old age, especially to us women, bone loss, bone density, osteoporosis, osteopenia, all of that can be prevented and reversed. There’s some excellent data on reversing osteopenia and osteoporosis through strength training. So that’s pretty amazing. then sarcopenia, that is the loss of muscle mass as we get older. And if you don’t move, if you don’t put that stress

For Day 24 of the 30 Day Healthy Habits Challenge, Cheryl shares a habit that makes healthy living feel way easier: planning ahead. Today’s goal is simple, plan tomorrow’s movement and one healthy meal. This helps reduce friction, decision fatigue and makes following through with healthy choices easier. This habit is all about keeping it realistic. Your healthy meal doesn’t need to be fancy or time-consuming, it just needs a plan. If tomorrow feels too tight, you can plan for a healthy meal sometime in the next three days instead. Takeaways Planning reduces friction and helps you follow through without relying on motivation. Deciding ahead of time reduces decision fatigue, especially at the end of a busy day. Meal planning supports variety, helping you include more ingredients and avoid repeating the same meals. Aim for at least 30g of protein in your planned meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner your choice). Try adding one produce item you don’t normally buy to increase variety and support gut health. Planning your movement mean choosing what you’ll do and when you’ll do it so it actually happens. Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.014)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 24 of the 30 days healthy habits challenge. So today is one that I am particularly fond of and I think it’s fun. Some people will not think this is a fun habit to have, but that is to plan tomorrow’s movement and one healthy meal. ideally we’re going to plan one healthy meal for tomorrow, but I will say that if you have a particularly challenging work schedule or this is something that you don’t do on a regular basis, you can really plan for that healthy meal just sometime in the next three days. But the idea is to plan ahead to figure out what it is, how you’re gonna make it, what ingredients you need for it, if you need to find a recipe, all that kind of good stuff. And everybody’s definition of a healthy meal will vary slightly, obviously, depending on your goals and depending on. you know, what that looks like for you. There’s, you know, there’s all kinds of different dietary practices that anybody might be following. So I’m not prescribing a specific one. Of course, you know, I’m going to say that I would challenge you to, for whatever it is to have at least 30 grams of protein in it. And this one healthy meal you can plan, can do it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever that means for you. It’s going to be, you know, if you’re not used to cooking, I don’t want you to plan like a big elaborate thing, unless that sounds fun to you, then yes, you could do something like that. But it would mean just a nourishing healthy meal. It doesn’t have to be necessarily anything fancy or anything that requires a lot of cooking. It just has to have a plan. So planning reduces friction, reduces decision fatigue later. It might be decision in the moment that you have to make, but once that is done and once you’ve already planned for it and gotten the ingredients, you already know what you’re having for dinner tomorrow. So that should make everything really easy through. throughout that next day, not having to worry about that one part of your day, that’s already decided. And then it also, in the literature, the research for today, it says that it supports food variety, which is really also great for your diet, great for your gut microbiome. People that plan meals tend to include more different ingredients rather than if you just, if you don’t do much planning, you just might grab whatever’s available, grab what you typically tend to buy anyway. And so it gets… Cheryl McColgan (02:18.71)you know, can get pretty repetitive. So this planning ahead to try a new recipe or to make something slightly different can also just introduce variety into your meals as well. And then as far as picking your movement, that can be whatever you’ve stuck with for the whole challenge for your 10 minutes, but you’re going to plan like when in the day you’re going to do it, what time, what’s going to work for you tomorrow. So this, this idea of this habit is just the idea of planning ahead just helps make everything run more smoothly. And it can be, again, the minimum. It doesn’t have to be a ton of cooking. Just make it a healthy nourishing meal, whatever that means to you. I will challenge you, like I said, get your 30 grams of protein in that meal and maybe a piece of produce that you don’t typically pick out. Maybe try something different. Maybe just go to the grocery store and be like, this looks interesting. I’ll try making this and then look up a recipe that goes along with that ingredient that you happen to find in the produce aisle. So hopefully that gives you some ideas about how to approach this one. Again, optional journal prompt for you. The links to the research are in your tracker and in the email that you received for the day. And that is it. I will see you again tomorrow.

In this conversation, Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of creating a stress release ritual as part of the healthy habits challenge. She emphasizes the benefits of consistent practice in managing stress, including physiological and mental health improvements. Cheryl shares various breathing techniques and practical applications for stress relief, encouraging listeners to find what works best for them and to incorporate these practices into their daily routines. Takeaways Create a stress release ritual to manage stress. Consistency in practice helps build resistance to stress. Breathing techniques can significantly reduce stress levels. Box breathing and movement can aid in stress relief. Anxiety during breathing practices may indicate shallow breathing habits. Research supports the benefits of meditation and breathing exercises. Incorporate stress release practices into daily life for better mental health. Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.494)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McCogan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to a day 23 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. Today’s challenge is to create a stress release ritual. This is either going to be movement or breath. And this is just going to be something simple. It’s something easy and that you can repeat and that’s about 60 seconds of breath if you’re choosing breath or two minutes of movement. And we’ve had some… of this in the challenge already, you’ve tried different types of movement, you challenge yourself to move in a different way on some of the days. And so maybe if there was something that you tried and you notice like, hey, that’s really good for me. And it does relieve stress. Maybe it’s that maybe it’s if you try to need a mobility exercises we talked about or stretching or something like that to release stress or if it’s 60 seconds of a breath practice, one of the previous days we mentioned the three just three deep breaths, something that simple 60 seconds is going to take longer. So it might be like five deep breaths, 10 deep breaths, but you’re just doing something that’s more extended amount of time. was like a quick stress release in the moment. This is something that is more focused on bringing your heart rate down, just, you know, bringing your stress in your body, your heart, your blood pressure, that kind of things like reducing all of those are really getting the parasympathetic system nervous system to come into play on this so that it relieves your body and your mind of stress. So we’re just doing the minimum, the minimum, the minimum today. We’re just doing the minimum today on this. And this short stress ritual is good for a couple of reasons. It can reduce physiological stress, so your body stress and build resistance over time. And then can also reduce mental stress. So if you do this consistently as a reset, it’ll help you to respond rather than react in the moment. It’s going to make, you know, that makes for better discipline, better decision making. If you’re not just flying off the handle at a moment’s notice, it also helps with your interactions with people. If you happen to notice when you get stressed that you snap people little more often or respond in a way that is not professional or calm. Having this little ritual will give you a way to kind of downshift. And the more that you train yourself on this, you know, you might notice anytime that you take some deep breaths, it helps. But when you train this every single day as a habit, Cheryl McColgan (02:17.43)It is a response that trains your brain to automatically go into that more relaxed state just by the act of you starting to do it. So it’ll become more effective and act more quickly every single time. So here’s some examples. If you’re having trouble thinking of one to do, we can go back to that three breath rate set, but you might do it for longer. Just set your timer for one minute and inhale, exhale, slightly longer exhale to really bring in that parasympathetic nervous system response. You could try box breathing. You could do a quick walk. You could do wall pushups or you could do the stretching routine. Those are all good ones. And if you have something else outside of that that you think of to do, I would love to hear about it in the comments so that we can share that with others. And then, you know, one of the times you want to try it is any time during the day where you’re feeling a trigger or something that’s making you nervous or anxious, angry or anxious. And so maybe it’s like you got an email from your boss and it’s automatically creating stress in your body. That’s a great time to do this stress release routine. Or if you are getting ready to sit down for a meal and you’ve been running around all day before you try to start eating, maybe calm your body. It’s just gonna promote better digestion and better, you know, mindfulness of your chewing and experiencing your food. So again, it’s just to be repeatable. It doesn’t need to be really complex or… long or drawn out, like I said, just 60 minutes for breath practice, two minutes for a movement practice. Some people might notice, and I did notice this when I was teaching yoga a lot, is that for some people, a breathing practice can kind of create anxiety. And usually if that’s the case, it might be that you have, your body is kind of trained to take very shallow breaths and not expand the diaphragm. So really thinking about when you’re breathing to let your… abdomen and belly expand as you’re breathing. So if you were to lay on the ground and put your hand on your stomach, you want your belly to be expanding up as you’re breathing. So that’s really feeling all of your lungs, not just the top of your lungs, but your lungs are going like all the way down almost to your waist. So you want to expand your lungs as fully as possible. And again, that slightly longer exhale, that’s going to really calm any feelings of anxiety. So if you notice that you’re trying to do the breathing, but it’s causing some anxiety for you for some reason, Cheryl McColgan (04:32.376)I’m going to guess it’s because you’re kind of habitually a shallow breather and you’re kind of just breathing almost in the upper chest. So try that low, slow breathing that expands your belly and see if that doesn’t help. So that’s about it for today. Start this stress release practice, whatever that looks like for you. As always, the links to the research are in the notes and my gosh, there are so much good data on meditation and breathing and things like that for relieving stress and anxiety and just doing a whole lot of great things for your physiology as well as your mental state. So definitely check that out if you have time and then optional journal prompt for you there too. So anyway, that is it for today and I will see you again tomorrow.

In this episode, Cheryl McColgan discusses the concept of habit stacking, a technique that involves attaching a new habit to an existing one to make it easier to adopt. She shares her personal struggles with maintaining new habits and provides practical examples of how to effectively implement habit stacking in daily routines. The conversation emphasizes the importance of cues and motivation in forming lasting habits, as well as the value of research in validating health information. Takeaways Habit stacking is a technique to make new habits easier to adopt. Attaching a small habit to a daily routine can enhance consistency. The perceived importance of a habit affects motivation to maintain it. Using strong cues can help in forming new habits. Daily routines can serve as effective cues for new habits. Habit stacking can reduce decision fatigue. Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.174)I’m Cheryl McColgan founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 22 of the 30 days healthy habits challenge. Today is something that we’ve talked about a little bit throughout the challenge, but I haven’t really dedicated an episode to it yet and I haven’t challenged you to actually do it as part of the habit challenge and that is to habit stack. So habit stacking is really simple. It can sometimes be hard to find ones that put together that make sense. But when you can find those ones that go together that make sense, it just really makes this such an easier thing. So today’s challenge is to attach a small habit to something you already do every single day. So I think I just even mentioned this in the last recording for day 21 in the reflection thing is about if you missed habits, know, habit stacking is a great way to do those. Because if you’re finding them challenging to fit in your day, sticking them to something you already do is going to be one of the easiest way that you can make that stick. And then so I’ll give you an example of the one since I started making this challenge, I’ve been thinking about this a lot for myself. And here’s the one that I’m working on right now. So I have had this hair trauma for the last three years. It’s a really long story that you don’t need to hear about in this episode, which I have actually done a podcast episode on it before. But at any rate, it’s, you know, I’ve had a lot of trauma to my hair. I’ve had a lot of hair falling out. I’ve had some scalp irritation, things like that. And so I’ve been very focused on that. And one of the things I purchased to help me deal with this is this OS one supplement. I’ve been using their skincare for a while now. Absolutely love it. I have an article over at the website all about it. He says a peptide science. It’s really cool technology and it actually works and there’s some good clinical data behind it all. But anyway, oh, and just because I mentioned that If you read about it, you do get a little extra discount with my link or something. But anyway, the point of none of that is the point here. The point is that I find it difficult. I bought this hair serum and I bought like I can’t remember if I bought a three month supply or six month supply because you definitely get a bigger discount if you buy more. And plus, if you’re doing anything with your hair, it’s going to take you a little bit longer to actually notice results. Right. So anyway, I’m getting to the point I promise is that I bought that serum, probably a good Cheryl McColgan (02:20.305)six months ago now or maybe even longer. And I’ve only used it maybe a total of five times and I’ll start to think, okay, I’m going to use it today and then I’ll get on the new habit of doing this every day because you got to do it every day for it to really be effective. So I haven’t been able to do that up to this point. I don’t know why it’s such a simple thing. It’s not difficult. You literally split your hair, you put the serum on the scalp, you rub it in, you go to bed. Easy peasy, right? Can’t seem to make myself do it, but The one thing I do every single night is wash my face, brush my teeth and put on my skincare. put on the same skincare by the same brand that I put on my face every single night without fail. Doesn’t matter how late I’m out. Doesn’t matter what else I’ve done. I will not go to bed without washing my face, putting my skincare on and brushing my teeth. That is a solid set in habit that does not fail. for the last few days or since this challenge when I was talking about habit stacking several times, I’m like, this is just ridiculous. have this perfect habit that this pairs with, which is like I mentioned, my teeth and skincare routine in the evening, I just need to put that hair serum like literally where I cannot miss it. And so I had it on the counter next to my toothbrush. I don’t know why, but that wasn’t quite working because the flow. But what I found was I put the hair serum inside of a drawer that has the skincare. I took the hair serum out of the cabinet off the counter. put it in the drawer like literally right next to the moisture. And this is so dumb right, you’re like, why can’t you just put that in your hair every night? I don’t know why. This is why anybody has trouble with habits, right? This is why we’re doing this whole challenge. But put it right next to my skincare so that it’s literally right where I take them both out. I do the skincare part, I put that back and then I take the hair stuff and then I put it and rub it and put it right back next to the moisturizer. So that seems to be working. So that is a habit stack. So that was a very long winded way of telling you. But I also think it speaks to the fact that, you know, obviously none of us are perfect. Even those of us that are very good at discipline, very good habits. And also there’s something about the perceived importance of the habit, I think. So this particular thing, like if I put this stuff in my hair or not, it really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect anything. I’m not even sure 100 % that it will help or that it will work. So it’s not a high Cheryl McColgan (04:40.651)value habit, right? There’s not a whole lot of motivation example for me to continue that habit. Whereas something like changing your nutrition or changing your diet, if you’re say your goal is to lose weight, there’s a lot higher of motivation or importance. I won’t want to say motivation because motivation like we talked about that comes and goes. But the importance of that to your health or to your future goals, looking a certain way or having a certain body composition, the importance of that is a lot greater. than something like putting this stuff in your hair that may or may not work. You know if you change your nutrition behavior, change your eating behavior, that that will have a positive outcome. So I think you also have to look at the importance of any particular habit in relation to how hard that’s gonna be to maintain or how hard it’s gonna be to force yourself to do. So the whole reason this works is pretty obvious. The habit stacking, the first habit, the existing habit is the cue and there’s no motivation there. The second habit just comes right after it, because that’s where you’re sticking it now. And so again, this creates less decision fatigue. It just makes it easier for you to just go ahead and do it. So here’s an example. made this little formula that I wrote out so that we are all on the same page with this. It’s so ridiculously simple. But just for clarity, it’s after I blank, I will blank. So for example, after coffee, I will drink water. But I would put that in reverse, because as we talked about, It’s stacked like that can still be stacked even though we’re supposed to drink the water before the coffee because well the coffee is still the cube. We’ll go to the thing to get coffee and we’ll be like oh yes I’m Annie and I’m going to drink this water first. And the other thing is after brushing teeth I will stretch two minutes. So you’re picking a cue that happens every single day because we want this new habit we want it to be a habit that’s like an everyday habit we just stick it with there. So that is really it for today. If you keep forgetting then you might need a stronger cue. the more automatic the queue is, the easier it’s going to be to get this new habit to stick. So look for those things, like I said, like brushing my teeth or things that you’ve never missed. Those are the ones you want to stick it to. And as always, the links for the research, the links for the research, this week aren’t exactly tied to or for today aren’t exactly tied to habit stacking, but they’re just kind of the. Cheryl McColgan (07:01.517)way that goal setting interacts with habits and things. So I think those are pretty interesting, but those are in your email and in the tracker. As always, the optional journal prompt is there if you want to do that. And the research is always optional to read, but hopefully it’s, know, mostly if you just skim the abstract or skip down to the results, that would be a sup

In this episode, Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of reflecting on progress during the 30-day healthy habits challenge. She emphasizes the flexibility of the challenge, encouraging participants to celebrate small wins and make adjustments to their habits for better integration into daily life. Cheryl also highlights the significance of planning for long-term habit maintenance beyond the challenge, ensuring that participants can sustain their new habits over time. Takeaways You don’t have to be perfect on this challenge. Celebrate the progress and reinforce the behavior. Small adjustments prevent an all or nothing mindset. Keep your focus on being consistent. Choose the habits that resonate with you. Missed days are just data for you. List out three wins this week, even if small. Creating small daily habits supports your core values. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.142)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of HealNourishRo and welcome to day 21 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. So day 21, we’ve made it through the third week and if you’ve been doing the challenge along with us the whole time, then you know that this is time for the weekly reset. We reflect and adjust. So again, you don’t have to be perfect on this challenge. That’s why all the habits have only taken five to 15 minutes a day is so it gives you some things to try, gives you some things that see which habits could really work well in your life, what could help you the most. And knowing that you don’t have to start over again, if you miss something, you can just do the little habit along with the next day’s habit, or you can just jump right back in. It’s not anything, one of these challenges where you have to start over if you miss a day. This is meant to be very flexible, to fit easily into your life, and to just give you some new ways of thinking about habits that might be helpful to you, and that you might wanna integrate. each and every day going forward instead of just trying it on these little five minute, 15 minute intervals. So today’s habit is look at your tracker, celebrate what you did, and then choose one habit to make easier next week. So some of these, if you’ve been going through, you know, I’ve encouraged you, you’re just trying the one habit each and every day. But if you found a habit that speaks to you or that was super easy that you wanted to add in for the entirety of the challenge, maybe you’ve been doing those. And so notice if you told yourself, hey, I was gonna drink that glass of water every single morning before I drank coffee. Have you stuck with that? Have you done it? And just notice what’s making it more difficult to keep that habit in is that you didn’t put the water next to your bed like I suggested, or maybe you go downstairs and you just go straight for the coffee and you forgot one day to do the water first. So whatever it is, just look what’s making these easier. And so I’ve been sending out the emails at 6.30 a.m. Eastern time. Eastern time, that’s probably not the perfect time for everyone in the whole world that decides to do the challenge, obviously. But noticing if it’s harder to integrate into your day because you just got it later, maybe you kind of set it the day behind where you read today’s habit and you actually do that tomorrow so that you can plan ahead for it and know where it best fits in your day, that sort of thing. So again, we’re just looking to make these easy. We’re looking to make them fit with the habits that we already have, trying habit stacking, putting one habit, sticking it with another that makes it easy. Like we had the idea about, Cheryl McColgan (02:19.554)taking supplements when you brush your teeth kind of thing, or putting your running shoes next to the door where you have to see them before you go outside to go to work and remind you to take your bag with you for the gym. know, whatever it is, you’re just trying to plan ahead so that you make things easier and repeat it every day until it becomes a habit. So the consistency is the key. Again, not every day is gonna be perfect, but making these small adjustments on a week to week really prevents you from getting to this all or nothing mindset like, why are you missed three days? So now it’s too late and you just forget about it and you never come back to this. It’s always noticing that evaluating the week. Okay, yeah, maybe I wasn’t perfect this week. I missed this and this. How can I do that better next week? Maybe I’ll come back to those habits because I actually missed them this week and I wanna try them. But just you’ve got to celebrate the progress. and reinforce the behavior so it feels rewarding. So we want to notice the positive. We always want to be training our brain to notice those positive things, have gratitude for the things that did work this well, easy this week, and then set your mind up for noticing which ones were more challenging and figuring out a way to make that easier for yourself the next time. It just, you know, also keeps the momentum going. So we just want these small wins. And I want you to list out. Three wins this week, even if they were small. Ideally, they’re related to the habit that you did. You were able to try this one that you weren’t so sure about. But you can also just start with three wins, period. Just evaluating your week and thinking about the positives. And then choose one way to make it easier. So if you missed some of your 10 minutes of movement every day this week, how can we make sure that you hit that every single day next week? Because really, I think that that is one of the most beneficial habits that if you don’t have already integrating that, you will just do yourself so much good. And specifically, like I mentioned, if you can make sure that you walk outside on a regular basis, you’re not always being in the gym on the treadmill, something like that, but being outside, connecting with nature. So if that was one of the friction points when you were having your habits this week, maybe plan out next week where you look at your calendar, you figure out what’s your biggest, busiest day, and then figure out where you’re going to fit in your movement. Cheryl McColgan (04:34.85)figure out where you’re gonna fit in your five minute habit. And then again, we’re just resetting the miss days, they’re just data for you. We’re just observing, we’re not judging, we’re just noticing what went well, what didn’t, that’s it. So don’t look for, you know, I didn’t do enough, I didn’t, you I messed up, no negatives like that. We want to keep it all positive and just frame it in a way of learning and noticing the data so that we can make it better the next time. So keep your focus on being consistent. doing the little habit every single day. We’ve got seven more days to go at this point. And I hope you’ve enjoyed it up to this point. Like I said, there’s gonna be habits where you might do them and you think, okay, that’s not really for me. That doesn’t resonate for some reason. Or maybe there’s some habits that really do resonate. And then you look in the literature on it, you look at the research. I just gave two links, but most of them, there’s many more links that you can look at for these habits. So just choose the ones that you want to dig into and notice what might be better for you going forward. We’ve got, like I said, only about a week left. So at some point you’re going to come out of this and you’re going to need to have a plan for maintaining these habits. Because I’m assuming if you’ve practiced this the entire time, you really want to create new habits in your life. So we want to figure out a way that we can keep carrying that forward, not just after 30 days, but 60 days, 90 days, a year, year after year, repeating those small habits that are going to get you to your bigger. goals. And I think I mentioned it before on one of the other podcasts is I have the 10 year core values and goals worksheet for you. So that’s at the website. If you go and search what is ultimate wellness, the link for that form is in that article. And it also just talks about, you know, figuring out what is wellness for you, figuring out what habits work for you on a day to day basis. So the article is kind of all about that. And the worksheet helps you notice like, what are your core values? What’s important to you? And it kind of goes back to the very beginning when we picked the three focus areas for this challenge. You know, that’ll give you a good hint into what might be your core values and what might be these overarching things where you want to plan out for the next five years, 10 years going forward. know, creating those small daily habits that will support that. So anyway, that is it for day 21. I hope you have a nice little reflection and reset. And as always, I would love to hear in the comments what you found challenging, what Cheryl McColgan (06:56.652)What were your wins? It’s just always exciting to celebrate along with you. So th

In this conversation, Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of adopting small, manageable habits to improve mental clarity and reduce stress. She emphasizes the benefits of a five-minute decluttering practice, which can lead to a calmer environment and a sense of accomplishment. Cheryl shares insights on how clutter can increase anxiety and how small wins can build trust in oneself. The conversation encourages listeners to embrace these habits as part of a broader 30-day healthy habits challenge. Takeaways Clutter increases your stress. It creates a calm Zen mind. You get to check it off your list and it’s done. Touch it once, that’s the practice. Don’t be tempted to deep clean. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.62)Cheryl McColgan founder of HealNourishGrow and welcome to the day 20 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. Today is one that I use pretty frequently and I think it is so helpful and actually looking into the research about it I always knew that there was a reason that this was a thing that was good for you. But today’s habit is that you’re going to declutter one small area for five minutes. So you’re just going to set a timer on your phone or in the kitchen time or something like that and stop when it ends. Now, I will say what happens to me when I use this little habit is that sometimes I kind of get on a roll and I don’t really want to stop. So if you want to keep it super manageable and not let it go kind of taking over other parts of your day, if you have a really busy day, you might want to just take a five minute section that’s right before you need to do something else. So you definitely have to stop. And it’s interesting how it almost leaves you kind of craving more because once you get started, quite often you get a little bit in a flow and then a rhythm or you want to do a little bit more. And it’s kind of like the other habit that I shared with you, I mentioned how I would kind of trick myself when I used to have to get out the door to go run or go exercise or something like that. And so it’s kind of the same with this. saying I’m only going to declutter for five minutes and then I’m going to stop. So it takes away the resistance to that. Because I know a lot of times if I have a big cleaning project or if I have an area that’s a big mess and I just I want to reorganize it and I want to deal with it, but I just I will mentally put it off forever because it seems like it’s going to take too much time. And it creates a lot of mental stress for me specifically. So I think that this habit is a really good one to take on. It is something that, again, like all of these habits has research to support why it’s good for you. But basically clutter increases your stress. So like I just described, for me, it definitely creates, it’s more like anxiety for me, what it creates when I have a messy space. And a calmer space also supports calmer routines. It makes it easier to carry through on your other habits because you’re not looking around thinking about all the things that you need to clean up or organize or do. It’s just a calm Zen space really creates a calm Zen mind. So this small reset can also help reduce visual stress and make your environment just more supportive for everything that you’re going to do in that space. For example, right now, if I look at my desk, there’s a few papers and things on it that aren’t making me so happy in the moment, but Cheryl McColgan (02:22.466)That’s probably what I will do for my five minute little clutter cleanup today. So you start these short sessions and it really helps you build trust with yourself because again, it’s a small win. And so in this scenario, the way that we set this up, decluttering a small space, you’re going to have the small win where you finish what you started and you get to check it off your list and it’s done. And that always feels great, right? So that’s another way it’s really supportive. So as far as picking a tiny zone, Here some examples or ideas that you might want to use. So for example, a counter space, maybe the kitchen, junk drawer. I don’t know, my junk drawer would probably take more than five minutes. I might not pick that one for this particular one. One specific shelf, or maybe it’s a part of your car. Maybe it’s like just vacuuming. You know, this one’s not really decluttering per se, but say you had trash or work things or piles of paper or something in your car, you can declutter that space. And then the simple rule is just you only want to touch the things once I think that is a really good practice as well I try to get my husband to do this with the mail, but he just he’ll sort through it He’ll kind of look at it and then I’ll put it down. It’s like touch it once So that’s what we’re doing with this declutter habit and you just trash it donate it or relocate it That’s your choices. So it’s either trash donate put away just you’ve got to deal with it though in that moment and So again kind of stopping at that five-minute mark even when you want to keep going the reason this is important for this particular habit is it’s about repeatability. So you can’t, you know, you can’t put it off as easily when it’s only five minutes. If you get into a whole thing where you try this five minute habit and then it takes you 20 minutes because you didn’t stop and then you’re kind of annoyed by it because it took over some other space in your day that you needed. That is so I think it’s good to sit mentally that parameter at the very beginning and then that way when you stop again you get to check off. that thing off your list, you did it the way that it was supposed to be done, and that’s it. So if you have problem with that touching it once kind of thing, or something you really need to give it more thought, because even Marie Kondo, is that her name? I think she’s the one that’s the lady that’s the declutter lady. But a small decide later, Ben, is OK. And this is only for one day, so you probably won’t need that. But if you’re going to carry this habit forward into the future, Cheryl McColgan (04:43.958)maybe have a small side later been that way you can put some little things in there when you’re feeling overwhelmed, but you can still put it out of the way and make the one space that you’re focused on actually being, you know, completed like we’ve discussed. So even just if it’s one square foot, that is it. It’s like, don’t be tempted to deep clean. Just remind yourself that this is a small little habit that you’re going to start repeating over and over. And that’s why we want to keep it super manageable. And this one is again, you can tell I’m talking about this one a lot because it is definitely something that I find challenging, where if I would practice this habit every single day, these small five minute cleanups, I’d be in so much better shape than when I ignore it or I wait until I have enough time to do the whole thing, because you easily keep putting it off and keep putting it off. So anyway, hopefully that was useful for you today. As always, the research links will be in the tracker and in your email for the day. And if you haven’t signed up yet for the challenge, if you’re just running into this video on YouTube and you’re like, what is this all about? This is a 30 day healthy habits challenge. you can sign up at any time. And that link is healnursgrove.com slash habits. And so that’s it for today. I will talk to you again tomorrow.

In this conversation, Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of setting digital boundaries to improve mental and physical health. She highlights the negative effects of excessive screen time, particularly from social media, on anxiety and overall well-being. Cheryl offers practical strategies for implementing a digital detox, such as uninstalling apps and creating physical distance from devices, to foster healthier habits and reduce stress. Takeaways Setting digital boundaries is crucial for mental health. Excessive screen time can disrupt sleep patterns. Social media contributes significantly to anxiety levels. A digital detox can free up valuable time. Uninstalling distracting apps can help focus. Physical distance from devices can improve well-being. Using Do Not Disturb features can reduce interruptions. Awareness of screen time can lead to healthier habits. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00)Cheryl McColgan founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 19 of the 30 days of healthy habits challenge. So today’s habit is that we’re going to set one digital boundary for the day and why this matters is probably obvious to you. There’s so many so much information and so much research now on screen time and how it’s affecting people and there’s so many reasons it’s not healthy. So the number one and we talked about this before in relation to sleep is the blue light that emanates from your phone. You’re holding it very close to your face for a great part of the day. So it definitely interferes with your circadian rhythm and sleep. In addition, you know, just the act of looking at your phone, having it in your hands can create wrist carpal tunnel kinds of issues. It creates a hunch in the shoulders and this forward head lean that is very hard to counteract. And then saving the probably the most important one to talk about for last. is that it really affects depression and anxiety. And we’re seeing a lot of research come out on this having to do with social media specifically and young children and screen time. And there’s kind of two separate things just screen time in general for children is less clear, I think in their literature, because I saw at least one research study recently that was saying something about it. wasn’t really the screen time itself necessarily interfering with neural development so it can be a positive in some cases but screen time as far as social media for both adolescents and adults is not healthy. It creates a lot of anxiety and depression and some of this is by design. So the app designers and if you ever listen to any of the interviews with people that talk about this stuff it’s really interesting how they purposely want to make you scroll more and spend more time on the app and now I think TikTok has gotten to be especially the worst because now it’s all like live streams of people trying to sell you something. So it’s also become a means by which you can, you know, lose some control of your financial situation. And, know, TikTok in particular, they’re just making it so, so easy to click on a live video and purchase the product immediately or put it into a cart where you’re still can watch the video and then prompts you to buy. So there’s any number of reasons giving yourself a digital detox is a good idea. In addition to just freeing up some of the time during your day, if you ever look at the stats on your phone about time spent on social media, like unless you’re scrolling social media while you’re on a treadmill or working out or something like that, that’s probably about the only other thing you could really reasonably do at the same time. But if you ever look at your screen time on your phone for specific apps, it can be really interesting and give you a big clue as to whether you need to do this type of detox a little more often or not. those, the links to that, some of the research will be in the email, of course, for you to read all about that if you want to do something extra. But today’s only habit is to just set the one digital badge boundary. So I want to give you some ideas about what that might be. It could be to uninstall. the app entirely from your phone for the day. That’s one really easy way to do it. There’s also some different apps and features, I believe, on either Android and iPhones that can put on a Do Not Disturb where you don’t get notifications for a certain period of time. You can also take it at a specific time of day or kind of have it stack it with other things. So for example, there’s also some literature that says maybe having the Wi-Fi next to your head at night or things plugged in next to your head, the EMFs, is not that great. So instead of plugging in your phone next to your bed, maybe today your digital boundary is you plug your phone in another room and just leave it in the other room. And then that way you also aren’t having that instantaneous access to it when you wake up first thing, you can kind of wake up more naturally and maybe take a few breaths and do some of your gratitude practice or one of the other habits that you’ve been working on throughout this challenge. And so those are just some ideas about how you can do this. Now, if you need for your phone for work, obviously, or you have apps that you use specifically for work on your phone, you might need to figure out how to let those specific notifications come through. Or like I said, if it’s just one app that’s particularly problematic for you that you tend to spend too much time on or let it distract you, maybe just uninstall that one from for the day. So hopefully that gave you some good ideas to set your digital boundary. As always, you’ll be doing your 10 minutes of movement, which is amazing. And then optional. are the extra reading, but I do think these are two pretty good ones, although it seems maybe obvious to you at this point that because it’s been in the news so much that too much screen time or too many apps and social media can create a lot of anxiety and depression. But those links will be in the email. And yeah, I think that’s about it for today. So I hope you enjoy trying this little detox, digital detox, and be sure to let me know in the comments if this is something you practice already on a regular basis or it’s something that you’re Going to try, would love to just hear your thoughts about the digital media space and how you’re taking any steps to mitigate that. So I will see you again tomorrow.

Today’s habit for the 30 day healthy habits challenge, is a seriously under appreciated part of health. However, it’s one that impacts both how you feel now and how you age over time: connection. Having supportive relationships and a sense of community isn’t just good for your mood, it’s strongly linked to longevity, resilience, and overall well-being. For today’s habit, you’re going to reach out to someone. Call or text, but take it one step further and make an actual plan. Suggest a specific day and a specific activity, even if it’s simple and free, like a walk or a coffee. If you can, I want to encourage you to call. Hearing someone’s voice or even leaving a quick voice message creates a deeper kind of connection than a quick text, and it’s something we’ve gotten away from over time. Relationships require communication and follow-through, and today is about being the person who makes it easy for connection to happen. Takeaways Connection and supportive relationships are linked to mental health and longevity Isolation can negatively impact health over time, and reaching out helps reduce that A quick message is good, but a real plan is better Suggest a specific date and a specific activity so it doesn’t stay vague Consider calling instead of texting to create a more meaningful moment of connection It does not have to be expensive or complicated, a walk, coffee, or casual catch-up counts Relationships require communication and consistency, and someone has to initiate it You can build a strong support system with just a few key people, but you have to invest in it Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.394)Cheryl McHogan founder of HealNourishGrow and welcome to day 18 of your 30 days healthy habits challenge. Today is one that is such an underappreciated part of health and that is to reach out to someone and having connection in your life and having a supportive community is really just so key not only to your mental health but also it’s highly related to longevity. So if you want to be healthier Creating a small circle or a large circle of people that you have in your life that are available to you is just really important and an underrated aspect of health. So today’s activity, today’s habit is to reach out to someone. Now I’m gonna say call or text, but plan something. Plan to meet, plan to meet in person, plan to go somewhere. It doesn’t have to be somewhere where you spend money necessarily, maybe go for a walk or just grab a coffee or it could be dinner. just anything like that. And I am going to encourage you, I said text or call, but I’m going to encourage you to call because we all have gotten maybe a little lazy with that over time. And it’s just nice to hear people’s voices, even if I’m not able to pick up the phone for some reason in that moment, I always love getting a nice voice message because it’s just something we don’t do that much anymore. Why this matters again, social connection, it’s protective for your mood and longevity and It’s just going to make you less isolated, which is also related to health over time. And if you don’t reach out, you’re not going to have those connections. You’re not going to have a actual relationship like relationships require communication. It requires touching base. And I have to say, I’m really impressed. There are certain people in my life that are just so very good at this. And I really admire that quality. They’re always the one to reach out or just say, thinking about you or let’s get together soon and throw out a date and throw out an idea. That’s another thing. mean, people, I feel like that’s one thing when you say, yeah, we should get together soon. That’s not a plan. That’s why that’s part of this conversation of this habit is to get you to be the one that says, how does next Thursday work or throwing out a date and an activity? Because a lot of people, you were the one to reach out. You’re the one that was thinking of them. And so I like for that to be kind of the way that you connect is to actually put an idea out there and Cheryl McColgan (02:22.99)not make it so ambiguous because quite often I have people in my life that will say that, we should get together. And yet they never suggest a time or an activity or a date. And it’s just kind of, I don’t know, it falls flat, I think in the realm of relationships. So it shouldn’t always be one sided. You shouldn’t always have to be the one to do that. But for this habit for today, I’m going to say, I’m going to put that on you to make that challenge to just reach out to somebody that you miss, that you want to catch up with, that you want to see and make some plans. And so that is today’s habit. As always, the research behind this, if you want to dig into it a little bit more, you’ll just find that it’s so related to many aspects of health. And I think you might really enjoy reading that if you need any encouragement about staying in touch with people, because it doesn’t have to be a big group. You just have to have somebody that’s got your back, somebody that you can rely on. And you have to create that. You have to put some energy into it. So that is it for today’s habit and I will see you again tomorrow.

Today’s habit might surprise you, but it’s one of the most important for overall well-being bring some attention to your finances by creating small win. Financial stress doesn’t just live in your bank account, it aksi shows up in your body and your mental health, too. For a lot of people, the biggest stress isn’t even the numbers, it’s the avoidance of financial related tasks or thinking. So today, we’re keeping it simple: one small money action that helps you feel more in control, builds momentum, and makes bigger financial tasks feel less overwhelming. Key takeaways: Financial stress is closely tied to mental and physical health, this is wellness, too. A tiny step helps break the avoidance cycle and builds confidence fast. Keep it small and doable. Ideas: cancel a subscription you don’t use anymore, move $10–$100 into savings, pay a bill you’ve been putting off, review your expenses for the week or month, look at your credit card statement and spending categories, use your card’s built-in tools to spot patterns. Even a one-day change (like skipping a habitual purchase) can be a helpful reality check and can add up over time. If you want extra support, I’ll include a tool I’ve been testing (Rocket Money) in the show notes (free trial link if available). Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Watch on YouTube Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.43)Cheryl McCogan founder of Heal Nourish Grow and today is day 17 of the 30 days of Healthy Habits Challenge. So today is an interesting one and I think it’s one that people don’t always think about when you’re thinking about your health and wellness but it is actually so important especially for your mental health and just for overall well-being and that is today’s habit which will be to do a small financial win. So this could be anything really just a small money action that’s going to lower your financial stress because financial stress is really linked strongly to mental and physical health and taking a small action can help build confidence and reduce the stress of avoidance because a lot of people don’t do financial stuff because it’s like they just don’t want to think about it they don’t want to take the time to deal with it they think if they ignore it it’ll just go away something like that but you can have this tiny win today that will create some momentum and make bigger challenges feel less overwhelming. Is it like anything else? Like all of these habits we’ve talked about, you got to start small and build on it. So to make it easy, here’s some few options and examples of things you might do. One might be to cancel a subscription that you’re no longer using. That’ll save you maybe $10 a month, $20 a month, something like that. The streaming services have all got us crazy lately because everything you want to watch is on a totally different channel. So take a good look at that and maybe consider pairing that down. You might move $10, $20, $100 to your savings account, a pay a bill that you’ve been putting off, review an account, maybe review your expenses for the whole month or review your expenses for the week. Review your credit card bill. Really just take time to actually look at it and see where your money is going. There’s actually some good tools in most of the credit card things. If you log on to your account online, it’ll kind of… break it down into categories like, you know, bills and utilities. You might be looking at Amazon specifically, it’ll give you the whole amount that that has. If you look at whatever card that you have, it tends to have some good tools along with that that can show you how you’re managing your finances or where you’re spending. And then noticing once you see where you’re spending, that’s how you have been able to like create one of these small wins, see if there’s something that you can eliminate or something that you can change. Cheryl McColgan (02:28.586)Also an app that I’ve been testing out lately. I believe it’s called Rocket Money, but I’ll I think I have a link for now for a free trial period or something like that. But I’ll find that and put that link in the show notes for you. But it’s just a nice tool. can help you keep track of some of these things and give you some ideas on how to, you know, look, start looking at your finances a little bit more critically. You don’t want to do a big overhaul here. Don’t get into a whole thing about, you know, doing a grand evaluation of everything that you’re spending, everything you’re doing, try to just identify something that’s simple. Some of the things I mentioned, maybe it’s like skipping your $7 Starbucks for the morning, something like that for a lot of people that can really add up. But we’re just trying it for one day to day and just giving a little bit of attention to this. You can see if it’s something that is alignment with your priorities that you set at the beginning of the challenge, those three focus areas, you know, depending on what those are. your finances could be a really big part of that and part of the big key to keeping those moving in the direction that you want to move them. So as always the links for the studies will be in the email and in your tracker and so if you’re interested in diving a little more deeply into this you can find those links there and like I said it’s strongly related to mental and physical health a lot more people a lot more than people really realize. So taking a look at your finances and having the small win today, where can you cut back a little or where can you save something for your future will be a nice little mental uplift. So that is the habit for today and I will see you again tomorrow.

Today’s habit for the 30 day healthy habit challenge is simple, powerful, and genuinely fun: set aside 10 minutes to do something creative or playful. As adults, we often stop making time for “silly” or purely enjoyable moments, but those short creative breaks can lower stress, boost your mood, and make it easier to stay consistent with healthy habits the rest of the day. Whether you put on music and fully immerse yourself, try painting, cook, take photos, knit, or explore something totally new. This is about giving your brain a reset and letting yourself experience a little joy. Takeaways Today’s habit: Do 10 minutes of fun or creativity, in addition to your daily movement. Fun isn’t “extra”, it can lower stress and support your overall well-being. Short creative breaks can improve mood and stress resilience, making healthy choices feel easier. As adults, we often forget how to play, making fun a habit helps bring that back. If you work in a creative field, choose something different from your job to truly reset your brain. Aim for an activity that helps you enter a mini flow state. This allows you to be extra focused and not thinking about everything else. Try something new you’re not “good” at. Being a beginner can actually make it more immersive and fun. If you’re too tired for “fun,” choose something restorative (like a relaxing read) and still count it. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.558)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 16 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. Today is fun because it actually is doing something fun or creative for 10 minutes. So this is of course, in addition to your 10 minutes of daily movement, but you’re going to take a separate 10 minutes at some point today and set that aside to do something creative or fun. So this is often challenging for people. When I even think about it for myself, I’m like, what do I find fun? What would I actually do with this 10 minutes? Well, the beauty is it can be anything. And hopefully you have a hobby or a thing that you do, whether it’s art or singing or dancing or just something that speaks to you and creates fun. This fun or creative activity, it can lower stress, it supports your well-being, and it just makes healthy habits throughout the day easier to maintain if you always have a little bit of fun. Short creative breaks can also support your mood and it creates stress resilience. fun, we don’t always make time for it, but you can make that a habit too. And that’s why I wanted to include this one in the challenge because I definitely think it’s something that when we become adults, that we do this less and less. And it’s too bad because those times that you’re silly, and I find, at least for me, it’s often easiest for me to do this with friends, is that the silly creative or just fun times, it creates so much joy and you almost forget what it’s like. Whereas I feel like when we were younger and kids, we were more carefree and had less responsibilities. it was easier to just say pull off work and do something fun for 10 minutes. But it really will pay you benefits if you look at it in terms of your work, because when you give yourself that little mental break, and especially if you’re in a creative field, it is nice to take a break and do something fun or different from whatever it is creative that you do for your actual job. So I would encourage you if you are in a creative field, if you do, for example, you do some people call it I do creative, I don’t know if I really think that it’s because I don’t. Cheryl McColgan (02:12.332)I don’t think of writing creativity in the same way that I think of like drawing or painting or things like that. To me, that seems more like creative activity, but it is, it really is creative. And even when you’re doing it kind of more in a work component, that it’s not, you know, I’m not writing fiction or anything like that. So it’s not creative in that way, but it is still a different kind of skill of creativity. So for mine, I would not choose writing, obviously, I would do something completely different. And for me, I’m more likely to choose fun. for this challenge. So I would probably just maybe put on some music and you know really just take a moment to immerse myself into it and listen to it. I find that very fun and very rejuvenating and very refreshing break from work. So here’s some other ideas for you if none of that is resonating with anything so far but I already mentioned music. I mentioned drawing or painting. There’s also cooking. or taking photos or some other hobby that you have. Maybe it’s knitting, crochet, maybe it’s, one of my friends does this thing with these little like sparkly crystal things, putting them into pictures and stuff. just anything like that. And ideally also something that you can get in a flow state with if you can within 10 minutes, because it’ll just give you that stress relief because you’re totally focused and you’re not thinking about anything else. And in the past when I’ve done this, I haven’t thought it was fun. cannot draw or paint at all. Just was never a skill of mine, but I had bought this inexpensive acrylic set from Hobby Lobby. think those are pretty all over the US anyway. And it’s just a place that has a lot of different creative supplies and housewares and things to decorate with and stuff like that. So a lot of stuff for creativity. But being a person that doesn’t paint or draw at all bought this little inexpensive paint kit with how to canvas and spent the afternoon on my patio and started, I had an inspiration piece that was a flat perspective thing that I had seen somewhere that I had a photo of and I got so immersed such in a flow state, was unbelievable. Excuse me. And I think that it was even more so of a flow state because I didn’t know what I was doing. So. Cheryl McColgan (04:30.67)Extra bonus points if you try something new with this challenge that you’re not used to because I think it can create an extra fun thing. So if you’re extra tired when you’re doing this and this fun doesn’t seem like the thing go for relaxation whether it’s just a 10 minute break to do something you don’t normally get to do like reading something like that. That would be fine as well. So that is your habit for today. And if you’re not yet signed up, you can always start at any time. We’d love to have you and that’s it for this one. So I’ll see you again tomorrow.

Setting an intention for the day can help keep you focused on what’s really important. It gives you the ability to make decisions that are in alignment with what you’ve chosen to focus on for the day. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.142)everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 15 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. This morning is going to be simple. We’re going to pick an intention, just one priority. So at the beginning of the challenge you identified three areas that were your top priorities. So let’s set one intention that’s related to one of those priorities. You don’t have to do all three, just one. So. You will do this, write it down like we said before, there’s something about hand to real paper, actually writing something out that is very different than writing in the app. But if you’re using the app or you’re using a simple note in your phone, something like that, that is totally fine as well. But if you’re keeping a journal or you’re using that throughout the challenge, I definitely recommend actually handwriting this one. You could also write your intention for the day on a post-it note and put it somewhere where you’ll see it often throughout the day so that it keeps reminding you. So whether that’s on your computer, if you’re working or maybe putting in your purse, or if you’re in the kitchen a lot, dealing with your kids throughout the day, putting it on the refrigerator, something like that. So just one thing, and this thing about choosing a priority, or choosing an intention for the day, it really reduces decision fatigue. So if you’re really trying to stay mindful of that intention throughout the day, it’ll just make your decisions. easier. So you’re like, okay, is the decision I’m about to make in line with that priority, that intention that I set for the beginning of the day or not, and you definitely want it to be one try a whole day where you’re just really being in alignment with what it is that you want for yourself. It also just helps you reduce mental clutter and it directs you gives you some attention to your purpose. And it just makes the chances that you’re going to follow through a lot more realistic when you set that intention at the beginning of the day and actually Like I said, keep reminding yourself of it. Another thing you can do is actually set a timer or a reminder on your phone so that it pops up every once in while and again, just brings it back to the forefront. So you can keep it as easy as two sentences if you need it some kind of more, a little bit more direction around this, but it’s today I will blank and I will show up as blank. Cheryl McColgan (02:16.576)Again, having those little reminders around are a great way to approach it, but you could also attach it to some cue that you do something that you do throughout the day. You might be like every time I open my laptop, top, I’m going to repeat that intention and then just bring it to top of mind. So however it is that you’re going to be able to keep it in the forefront, do that, whether it’s the writing, the putting it on the phone, the attaching it to a cue. It’s kind of like the attaching it to you is like that idea of habit stacking that we’ve talked a little bit in the past. If warnings are too hectic, you could always write this intention the night before, or if you get stuck and you’re just can’t figure out something, maybe choose from being calm, consistent, present, kind, focused. Those are all ways that you could show up. Or today I will be one of those things, something like that. As always the links for the research are in your tracker and in the day’s email. If you’re not signed up yet, healthy habits challenge, be sure to go to healnourishgrow.com slash habits. You can easily sign up and start anytime that you find this. So you don’t have to wait till the beginning of the new year, the beginning of the new week. You just sign up for the challenge and then you’ll start getting emails the very next day and you’re off to the races. So I will see you again tomorrow. That’s it for today.

This is the end of another week of the healthy habits challenge, and Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of evaluating the week in order to identify ways to improve for the rest of the challenge. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.846)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Feel Nourish Grow and welcome to day 14 of your 30 days healthy habits challenge. We made it to day 14, that’s the end of week two and now it’s time for the weekly reset. So every week we do a reflect and adjust. It’s not a time to make any judgments about yourself or to be sad or unhappy with yourself for not doing a particular day or anything like that. You’re not perfect, you don’t need to be perfect. We just need to keep repeating the habits and not get stuck on, you know, this idea that we, you know, there’s the streaks and stuff are fun. And I, again, I made this challenge to be manageable so that it’s five to 15 minutes a day. So that ideally you’re getting those wins every single day. But if you do miss a day, it’s totally okay. You’re just jumping back in. So for the weekly reset, we’re going to go back to the same thing that we did on day seven. And that is to list one win. one challenge and one small adjustment for next week. Again, we’re doing always the 10 minutes of movement every day. I hope you’re enjoying that. I’d love to hear how it’s feeling in your body, what you’ve been doing for movement, what’s different for you with that. And then also going back to your focus areas. Ideally every day when you are looking at the habit that we’re doing, and I’ve tried to mention this a few times throughout the videos, but it’s not always easy for me to remember to do it on every single one, but to… Keep the habit in the framework of your, the three things that you identified at the beginning as your focus areas, trying to integrate that in some way that supports those focus areas. And if it just doesn’t fit for you, maybe that’s not one of the habits that you’re going to keep going forward. But those focus areas, again, ideally when you have these kind of focus areas in mind, and I like to take the focus areas and eventually, you make them into goals that are maybe a monthly goal or a five-year goal or a 10-year goal. things that are much bigger goals, you have to take these small steps to get there. And so, but these focus areas in, I have this other thing that I wrote up a long time ago and it was just about your daily or your goals and habits and kind of identifying what things are most important to you in your life. And, Cheryl McColgan (02:23.566)So was this program that I wrote about and it’s still on the website. I’ll include the link in the show notes for you, but it’s a goals and kind of identifying things in your life. Like what are you about? What are your primary drivers and what are some big goals in the future that you want to get to? You might have a five-year goal, a 10-year goal, but these daily little habits that we’re creating should all support your focus areas, your future goals, things that you’re gonna get to. the… Example I always like to use is the marathon. You know, you’re not going to go out and run 24 miles, 25 miles, 26.2 to be technically correct in a day. I’d like just do that tomorrow. You’ve got to build up to it. Ideally, if you’re going to run a marathon that’s four months in the future, you’re starting out by running a few, you know, maybe it’s even minutes at a time if you’ve never run before. And maybe it’s a six month build up to this or a year build up to this goal. But it’s these little daily habits that get you there. So anyway, all that is to say to just take these into account every habit that you try in this challenge, notice what’s speaking to you and then see how you can apply that to your focus areas. So hopefully that all makes sense. And as always, if you have any questions or anything, you can always reach out. But sometimes these things want to have a little bit of ambiguity around it because everybody’s got different goals in mind and different things that they’re doing. And so it’s nice to have a little bit of interpretation of it for yourself. But again, if you’re struggling or having trouble or just have questions, always feel free to reach out. And if you’re not doing this challenge yet, I encourage you to go ahead and sign up. It’s healnourishgrow.com slash habits. You can start any time, no matter when you’re finding this, it is never too late to start again or to just get started. Going back to your three things that you’re doing, your one win, your one challenge and your one small adjustment. If this week was messy, and you had a lot of little loops along the way. The win can be I did not quit. So it can be as simple as that. Again, this is not meant to beat you up or to be something that you yet again failed at like a New Year’s resolution. It’s nothing like that. This is all just bringing more awareness to your habits, giving you some things to try that will hopefully be useful in your real life after the challenge is over and that you can keep going for Cheryl McColgan (04:48.174)months, weeks, years, however much it supports your goals and your personal well-being. So that is it for today. I will see you again tomorrow.

For day 13 of the healthy habits challenge, Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of emotional check ins for mental health and behavior change. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.046)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 13 of the 30 Days Have Healthy Habits Challenge. Today we’re doing a quick emotional check-in. So this is something that I noticed that when I’m just, you know, in work mode and I’m kind of moving through my day and I’m just checking things off my to-do list, you often don’t take time to just kind of check in with yourself and see how you’re actually doing. So it can be useful just to make sure that you know what’s going on. You can check in and see if you’re you notice you’re overly stressed overly anxious if you’re doing too much and it’s just a simple one-sentence thing that you’ll do for this emotional check-in and that is to say right now I feel blank and we’re also noticing if there is any feeling in the body that’s associated with this. So it’s just taking kind of an overview of both your physiological and emotional state at the same time. Quite often when we experience certain emotions, whether it’s stress or anxiety or excitement, you know, they don’t always have to be negative emotions that we’re feeling, but you’ll notice that you feel it somewhere in your body. And so that can just be useful to notice where you’re holding extra tension. And again, it just gives you some bullet points or some things to notice that you can try to counteract them. So for example, yesterday’s habit was the movement stack. And if you take an emotional check-in and you notice that you feel anxious in that moment. Well, it might be useful to do one of our breathing exercises that we’ve checked in as a habit or to do a little bit of movement to, you know, move some of that anxiety out of your body, but to first notice it, you have to notice it if you’re going to be able to do actually address it and do anything about it. So the cue is right now I feel blank and just notice where you feel it in your body. So the reason this matters is that labeling emotions can help reduce anxiety and help you respond with more intention. And then it also reduces the intensity. So especially if it’s a negative emotion, this naming it and noticing it will help you calm down and actually respond instead of overreact or react in a way that is not helpful for you. It also strengthens just self-awareness and mindfulness. So this is also something that we do sometimes in a meditation practice that you are Cheryl McColgan (02:19.957)you know, people’s minds are going everywhere, but you’re just observing thoughts and noticing them in a meditation and not necessarily trying to change anything, but just getting this idea of self-awareness. So if you get stuck and you’re not like can’t name what you’re feeling, you can use this simple list. This is or some of the most common ones that people might experience in the moment is stressed, calm, anxious, excited, tired, hopeful, frustrated, happy, sad. all there’s all kinds but those are kind of the typical ones that people might feel and then add one sense to this and say I feel this because so you might again it’s this idea of tuning in so that you can be more aware of actually what’s happening to you in the moment and an example might be I might feel this way because I’m frustrated with my boss or I might feel this way because I’m excited to go on my trip tomorrow or something like that. And if you want to go even a little bit deeper, you can ask what do I need right now? So if you are feeling stressed or anxious again, that’s what do you need? Maybe it’s some of the tools that we’ve practiced so far that help reduce stress and anxiety. So if you can’t, again, if you don’t know, what you feel exactly. And this is this is really challenging for a lot of people. Start with a sentence of say something and see if it resonates with you say like I feel tired. And then, you know, think about that for a second. Is that it or I feel overwhelmed? Just pick any one of those things that I named off earlier in the video and try it on and see if that works out for you. But if you have trouble, that’s probably a sign that you need to take this on as a more more practice that’s every day and something that you might want to keep because if you’re having trouble naming it, then that just is kind of identifying that maybe you’re not present in the moment and you’re not in tune with your emotions or feelings. So of course, there’s the links for the studies associated with this in the challenge emails and in the tracker. They’re always in the tracker, which is a great tool. So you’re checking off these days. Cheryl McColgan (04:37.151)of habits that you’re trying and kind of creating little streaks. And that’s also a great way to keep your habits intact and going from day to day into the future. So if you’re not signed up yet, the link is heelnourishgrow.com slash habits. And for those of you that are doing the challenge right now, I will see you tomorrow.

Cheryl McColgan discusses day 12 of the Healthy Habits challenge with the idea of a “movement snack.” Getting up from your desk on a regular basis and adding in small bouts of movement throughout the day has a number of benefits. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.11)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of HealNourishGrow and welcome to day 12 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. Today’s habit is to do a movement snack after for sitting too long. So I love the name of this and normally I’m not a big, not opposed to snacks generally, but you’ll do better if you just eat real meals, but movement snacks, we’re all about those for sure. So all this is going to do is do some kind of movement after you have been sitting for a while during the day. a lot of us have desk jobs where we sit in front of a computer. If you’re very active throughout the day, you have an active job. Maybe this is more like a movement snack in the evening after you’ve kind of wound down. You’ve been sitting around on the couch for a little bit. But anyway, just any time that you’ve been sitting for, you know, say maybe 45 minutes. For some people, you might get antsy quicker than that. For other people, you might want to sit longer. but try not to sit longer than 45 minutes. So you’ll just do like a two minute little movement break. Ideally, you want to stand up if you’re working in front of the desk, doing stretches like I’m demonstrating here on camera. So if you’re watching audio only, I’m pulling back my hand with the other hand just to stretch out my wrists. I do a lot of typing. So that is a really good one for me. You can also put your arms behind your head and grab one elbow and do a nice stretch there. So that could be the first part of your movement snack. And then to just get up for a minute, maybe go get a glass of water or just take a walk down the hall, maybe step outside for a minute, something like that. So your body is just really designed for frequent movement. And these long times that we’re sitting just really aren’t good for us. So especially if you’ve been sitting at a meal for a little bit, having that little bit of movement after. a meal, whether it’s a walk or something like that is really good for blood glucose. So doing something like some air squats that there’s also a recent study on that where it showed doing some air squats. When I say air squats, I just kind of mean like body weight squats where you don’t need any equipment or anything like that is as effective as walking for blood glucose control. So that’s pretty cool. It also just can support circulation, energy, focus. These are just Cheryl McColgan (02:19.24)nice way to break up your day and again just not have yourself sitting all the time. Eventually when you sit for long periods you don’t counteract that it’s know shortens your hip flexors it create a lot of issues in your body. We all get this kind of forward head when we’re working in front of the computer so things that you can do to counteract that like bringing your arms behind your back and interlacing your hands and then really stretching back to create a stretch in the front of the chest is a way that you can kind of counteract some of that you know, hunched forward movement. So I am mentioning a lot of stretching, but I do want you to get out of the chair for sure. Again, try to keep it to 45 minutes. If you get up more frequently, of course, that’s always amazing. But that is the habit for today. So try not to sit for too long. As always, if you’re not yet part of the challenge, you can go sign up. The link is in the show notes or in the comment box below. If you’re looking at YouTube in the description box, it’ll be there. And yeah. Let me know if you find this helpful and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Cheryl McColgan introduces the idea of tracking one thing during the day for the healthy habits challenge. Tracking brings awareness to your behaviors and gives you a powerful tool for habit change. This link is for the free Cronometer food tracking app mentioned in the episode. The habit tracker we recommend is Griply. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.014)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow. Welcome to day 11 of the 30 Day Habits Challenge. And today we’re going to start a practice that is something that’s useful for a lot of parts of your life. It may be something that you’re not used to doing yet. For a lot of people, this is a very foreign thing to them. But the habit for today is to just track one thing. And so that could be tracking your movement, that could be tracking water, it could be tracking your mood, something like that. Again, this is all about learning the skill of discipline. So it doesn’t need to be perfect. You just need to do it. So pick a thing that you’re going to track. Maybe it’s steps, maybe it’s water, maybe it’s like your mood, like I said, or maybe it’s protein. We talked about protein a lot, so maybe you want to track protein. But you’re just keeping it neutral. You’re just collecting data. You’re not judging yourself. So if you’re tracking steps, you’re not shooting for a certain amount. Or if you’re tracking calories, you’re not trying to restrict or anything. You’re just… tracking what is and using it as a simple data point. So that’s the minimum today to just track one single thing. If you need tools for tracking, I’ve mentioned to you the couple of apps before that we have in the resources for journaling, for tracking things. One that I have not mentioned yet, if you’re going to use… If you’re going to track things like protein or calories or things like that, an app is super helpful. mean, back in the old school days, we literally used to write it down and try to find ways to look up calories and stuff. It was a lot more challenging. Now it’s super easy. My favorite, one of the ones that people know a lot is my fitness pal, but I find that one to be very inaccurate, just not that good. Chronometer is amazing. I use the free version for years. I pay for it now because it’s that good. I love it. It’s not super expensive. But if you go to https://healnourishgrow.com/cronometer that’ll give you the link that gives you access to the app. Like I said, it’s a hundred percent free. You get really access to most things you need without ever having to pay anything. It’s just if you want more advanced tracking features like tracking. I think one of the advanced things is more like tracking your micronutrients kind of things, but for just everyday calorie tracking and things like that, it’s a great app and it’s super easy to use. Yeah, so one thing, whatever it is, pick that. That’s your habit for the day. It should be super simple as always. Cheryl McColgan (02:17.922)Hope you’re keeping track of these things in your tracker. If you ran across this and you’re not part of the challenge yet, just go to healnourishro.com slash habits and you can join at any time. It’ll set you on day one. And so whatever time of the year it is, whenever you find this, would still love to have you join. So that is it for day 11 and I will see you again tomorrow.

Cheryl McColgan discusses the habit for day 10 in the Healthy Habits Challenge, a simple 3 breath reset. Breathwork is a great tool for stress relief and attention. Watch on YouTube: Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.414)I’m Cheryl McColgan founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 10 of the 30 day healthy habits challenge. So today is going to be a habit that I have been practicing for a really long time because it’s a little bit based in yoga, which if you know a little bit about my background, I’m a certified experienced yoga teacher, tons of hours teaching, have been doing yoga since… gosh this is… tough to say, but like over 30 years now I picked it up while I was in college. But anyway, it’s about a breathing practice. And this one’s not a structured breathing practice. This is just to try this one time today. And that’s just to practice a three breath reset. So at some point during the day where you’re either tired or feeling a little stressed, or you’re having an interaction that is making you tense up, you’re simply going to take three deep breaths. Now the one thing I want to teach you about this because there are a lot of structured breathing programs and they all have maybe slightly different purposes. There’s box breathing, there’s alternate nostril breathing, there’s a ton of different breathing practices. And we are going to talk about another one I think later in the series that’s for a different purpose. But really this is just a practice to just get you thinking about breathing. And the thing I just want to bring home is that the most One of the more important parts of any breath practice, I think if you’re using it to calm down or to fight stress, which is what we’re trying to do with this one, and that is to extend the exhale slightly longer than the inhale. So if you inhale for a count of four, for example, you want to exhale for at least a count of five. And the reason that this works and there’s plenty of data on it, like you know, with this whole challenge, there’s always research and the links for those are in your tracker and emails. But the slightly longer exhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system. And that’s the part of your nervous system that’s for calm, that’s for rest and digest. And it’s the one that a lot of people really have trouble accessing. So just having that slightly longer exhale is a great way to do that. So today, like I said, one of those times you’re just going to do that slightly longer exhale. Cheryl McColgan (02:18.487)This is gonna cue your nervous system to be more calm and it’s gonna help with stress and impulsive decisions. So it’s particularly useful in situations maybe with your significant other or at work or with your children. Anytime you’re feeling a little frustrating, just take a moment, three deep breaths, slightly longer exhale, and then deal with whatever the situation is. So you might wanna use some kind of trigger moment today. that makes you think of it. Like again, if we do this habit stacking thing, the thing that’s going to help you do it most easily. Now that’s most useful when you, it’s something that you want to accomplish every single day. And I certainly think taking this time, any time of day, doing it at a specific time is really good, but I think it’s really more useful even, like I said, in those little situations where you might have some stress, like before a meeting or when you’re driving in traffic or something like that, or just using it to really settle yourself down before bed, you could make it. part of your bedtime ritual if you wanted to do that. So that’s today’s thing. Super easy. Just breathe. If you want to read the signs, make sure you’re signed up for the challenge. You’ll get all the links in the tracker and in the emails. And that’s it for today. I will see you again tomorrow. I was almost going say next week, but man, we’re only on day 10 here. So we got a lot to go.

In this conversation, Cheryl McColgan discusses the significance of prioritizing protein intake in meals, particularly as one ages. She emphasizes the benefits of starting meals with protein to enhance satiety, meet nutritional needs, and support muscle health. Cheryl explains the concept of anabolic resistance and the importance of leucine in protein synthesis, providing practical advice on how to incorporate more protein into daily meals. The discussion highlights the challenges of meeting protein requirements and offers strategies for achieving a balanced diet without feeling restricted. Takeaways Eating protein first can help you meet your protein needs.Protein is highly satiating and can prevent overeating.As we age, our protein absorption efficiency decreases.Aim for 30-40 grams of protein per meal for muscle health.Leucine is crucial for stimulating muscle protein synthesis.Tracking protein intake can help ensure adequate consumption.Eating protein first can change your overall eating habits.It’s important to balance protein with carbohydrates and fats.Consider adding a protein snack before bed for muscle recovery.One meal a day focusing on protein can be a great start. Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. CONNECT WITH CHERYL Shop all my healthy lifestyle favorites, lots of discounts!  21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart: Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight  Dry Farm Wines, extra bottle for a penny Drinking Ketones Wild Pastures, Clean Meat to Your Doorstep 20% off for life  Clean Beauty 20% off first order DIY Lashes 10% off  NIRA at Home Laser for Wrinkles 10% off or current promo with code HealNourishGrow Instagram for daily stories with recipes, what I eat in a day and what’s going on in life Facebook YouTube  Pinterest TikTok Amazon Store The Shoe Fairy Competition Gear Getting Started with Keto Resources The Complete Beginners Guide to Keto Getting Started with Keto Podcast Episode Getting Started with Keto Resource Guide Episode transcript Cheryl McColgan (00:00.524)I’m Cheryl McColgan founder of Peel Nourish Grow, and welcome to day nine of the 30 Day Healthy Habit Challenge. So today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite things, one of my favorite hacks, if you want to call it a hack, and that is today’s habit, and that is to eat protein first at one meal. So you don’t have to do it every meal, just one meal today. It’s not about perfection. This is just about sequencing. So doing this one meal totally counts, if all you do is that, you win today. The reason that you want to start with protein is because it really highly satiating, it increases fullness. And one of the things that I’ve been working on my protein intake, I’ve been tracking it for about the last five or six years now, where I’ve really been more focused on intentionally getting more protein each day. And even after all that time, if I am not focused on it, I will tend to not get enough protein on any given day. So one of the things that eating protein first does for you is if you’re if you’re one of those people that they’ll say when they learn what their optimal amount of protein is, you’re like my gosh how would I eat that much protein it’s so difficult. Well it’s probably difficult because you’re eating other things first that take up this, I always say when I’m talking about a salad or bread before meals, I’m like, no, that’s just gonna take up the space where the meat should be, right? So I always keep that in my mind. That’s how really I approach every meal is I know how much protein I’m supposed to get each meal. I get that out of the way, I put that on my plate, I weigh it out, and then I know that I’ve gotten that. And then I use carbohydrates and fats to fill in the energy calories after that. So that’s… Really the main reason to do it is because protein is very satiating. Most people don’t get enough of it. And eating it first really allows you to make sure that you get it in. This is important for a few reasons. First of all, as we age, there’s this thing called anabolic resistance. So basically it means that the protein that we eat is not absorbed properly or might not be broken down effectively. I don’t know if they really know what the exact mechanism is, why that happens. Cheryl McColgan (02:17.934)But basically, it’s like if I eat 30 grams of protein as an 18-year-old person, that’s almost getting 100 % utilized in the body. Whereas if I eat 30 grams of protein as a 45, 55, 65-year-old person, maybe only 80 % of that gets broken down into amino acids. so especially as you get older, that getting the proper amount of protein is really important. Unfortunately, what tends to happen, people’s appetite sometimes get less or over time or they just don’t eat as well as they get older and they just get less and less protein and that just creates a number of health problems. Sarcopenia is low muscle mass that can happen as you age without strength training and without the proper amount of protein. There’s also this other idea called the protein leverage hypothesis, which is basically that your body will keep seeking out. eat until your protein needs are met. So if you are eating a lot of either processed foods or a lot of foods that might be good for you, but don’t contain a lot of protein, it tends to make you overeat because your body will still be telling you, no, I still need protein. I still need those amino acids. And so you just keep eating and eating until you get to that point. So that’s some of the reasons that it’s very important. And since we’re on the topic, I’ll just go ahead and talk about that. You know, you heard me mention 30 grams. 30 grams of protein is basically what’s required to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. again, if you’re an older person, you might need more like 35 to 40 grams per meal. the real key there is not necessarily the grams of protein, it’s the amount of leucine in the protein that stimulates muscle protein synthesis. And they say that that’s two to three grams of leucine required to start that process. So again, as we get older, it might not be broken down as efficiently. So you really want to get like 35 to 40 every time you eat a meal. Every time you eat is an opportunity to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. And for most people, even the smallest women, you need about 100 grams of protein a day. An easy way to figure this out and kind of what’s been going around in the health space and people that are focused on this work, people like Dr. Don Lehman that do this kind of literature about protein, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Cheryl McColgan (04:36.558)is that so the minimum is about one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So say you are a woman, you might have a few maybe your 10 or 20 pounds of weight, you have little weight to lose. And so whatever you weigh now, you feel like your ideal weight for your height is 150. Well, that’s the amount of protein you’d be trying to get in a day is 150 grams of protein. So for me, what that has meant is I’ve had to add a fourth meal into my day, basically like an afternoon protein hit. Because I find it challenging to, number one, wake up and get something like 50 or 60 grams of protein. I mean, that would be ideal, but I just don’t have the appetite for that. So I always go for like 35 to 40 my first meal of the day. And then lunch again, it’s kind of hard to eat something that’s going to be that amount of protein. So it’s usually lands around 40 to 50. And you can see how that’s still by the end of the day, if I’m shooting for 150 grams of protein, I’ve still got like 60 or 70 to eat and you don’t want to be eating ideally a giant meal before dinner. having that little afternoon protein and then the evening meal is kind of how it’s worked out for me. I’ve also had people talk or heard interviews where they talk about having, you know, a protein snack in the evening before bed is very muscle stimulating and just kind of If you’re a person that’s working on your body composition, working on building muscle, working out a lot, maybe having, you know, that eight o’clock protein shake or something before you go to bed might be a good way to get that extra amount in. I did just mention protein shake. Ideally, that’s not what we’re leading with in this challenge. You’re eating a real food protein for your first part of your meal, and then you’re filling in with carbs and fats. Anyway, that is all the reasons why you want to start working on eating protein first. And you’ll see that if you do that, it really changes the way you eat pretty naturally. So instead of having to restrict a lot of things or change a lot of what you eat, if you really just eat the protein first, you’ll find that the things, the rest of it kind of balances itself out pretty easily. And it also becomes very hard to overeat on protein because say you’re eating a chicken breast, you’re not really going to, you know, magically overeat chicken breast. It’s pretty hard to do. Cheryl McColgan (06:51.106)But we quite often magically overeat other things like that have that carbon fat combination. If you just start eating some chips or you know, those kinds of foods, bread or whatever it is, those are much easier to overeat for that reason. And also I think going back to the protein leverage thing, that’s probably why as well. So that was probably more than you wanted to know about protein, but I really wanted to make a good case for why eating protein first is a habit that you really should take on in your life. And Hopefully you will maintain this one. I think doing it one meal a day at first is pretty dang easy. So maybe you carry that out for the rest of challenge, or again, maybe this is just one of those you try, you’re not sure it works for you, or maybe come back to it later. But for to

In this conversation, Cheryl McColgan emphasizes the importance of daily movement, particularly through walking outdoors. She discusses the health benefits of connecting with nature, the accessibility of walking as an exercise, and the significance of discipline over motivation in maintaining a consistent exercise routine. Cheryl encourages listeners to take a 15-minute walk as part of their healthy habits challenge, highlighting the positive effects on mood and energy levels. Takeaways Walking outdoors connects you with nature.Daily movement is essential for health.Discipline is more important than motivation.Walking is an accessible form of exercise.Fresh air and sunshine benefit your well-being.Getting outside can improve your mood.Consistency in exercise leads to better health.Small steps can lead to significant changes.Enjoying the scenery can enhance your experience. Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here. Watch on YouTube: Episode Transcript: Cheryl McColgan (00:00.174)Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day eight of the 30 Day Healthy Habits Challenge. Today’s challenge is going to be something, you’ve already been doing movement every day as part of the challenge, but today I’m going to task you with taking a 15 minute walk. There’s specific reason that we wanna do a walk. So it doesn’t have to be any fast kind of walk, it doesn’t have to be a specific pace, but ideally I would like for you to walk outside. And there’s a good reason for that. It is really a healthy and important thing to connect with nature on a daily basis. And I realize, you know, depending on what part of the country you live in right now, as I’m recording this, it is the end of December. And so it was about 25 degrees today here in the Midwest. And I realize it might not seem like the most pleasant thing to do, but if it’s cold, bundle up. get outside if it’s too warm where you are, go earlier in the day where it’s cooler. Obviously be safe if there’s ice, if there’s an excessive amount of heat, maybe walk inside on the treadmill instead. And if you can’t walk outside for whatever reason and you don’t have a treadmill and you can’t go to the gym, then you’re just going to do whatever the movement you’ve been doing. So you’re still gonna keep your habit of daily movement. But the walk outside is so great because you’ll get some fresh air, you’ll get sunshine, getting real sunshine on your eyeballs outside is so important for your circadian rhythm. It allows you to connect with nature, like I said, so just observing the trees. I’m looking out the trees outside my window right now, not in how many leaves, but just noticing the sights, being outside, breathing the fresh air. is so wonderful to actually get outside and get out of your office. Now, For most of us, walking is pretty accessible. So just about the most accessible exercise that there is. Even people that are seriously deconditioned or very, very overweight can have small little walking snacks as part of their routine. And mostly people can handle this pretty well. It really supports heart health. So you’re doing cardiovascular work whenever you move, you’re making your heart pump harder. And I said, you know, there was no… Cheryl McColgan (02:16.206)speed or intensity kind of goal with this walk is just meant to be a stroll and get outdoors. But if you take on walk as kind of your normal daily movement activity, you can definitely make it a heart healthy activity if you go a little bit faster. And it’s really one of the it’s it’s just so like I said, it’s so accessible to everybody. It’s so easy. It’s free. You just walk outside your door and do it. And I realize There are parts of the country where maybe it’s not so safe to walk for various reasons. Like don’t have sidewalks in my neighborhood, so that’s bit of a challenge. Here’s a tip for walking outside. If you don’t have sidewalks, you’re always supposed to walk against traffic, right? Because you want to be able to see the cars coming out, you know, so that you can easily jump to the side if needed. But, you know, and there might be, you know, maybe you live in an area that’s higher crime or something like that. So maybe it’s not as safe to walk outside, but you can possibly drive to a park or, you know, just take some time to get outside. Ideally daily, but definitely weekly and I know that in cities it can be more challenging, but it’s definitely going to help with your energy. It’s going to help with your mood. It’s like I said helps heart health and it’s probably one of the easiest habits to repeat which makes it perfect for a discipline practice because you can almost always convince yourself to go for a walk if you have to convince yourself to go for a run or go to the gym and strength train or get in a cold pool to swim in the morning. Those can all be very challenging, but just to go for a walk, I think most of us can convince ourselves to do that. I do have, since we’re talking about what’s more challenging, what’s easier or not easier for exercising, and I may or may not have mentioned this before because I think I told you guys that I, some of the recordings for whatever reason didn’t have sound. And so I may have mentioned this previously or I may not have. It may have been one of the recordings that are lost, but for years I just used this little trick for motivation or actually, It’s a discipline trip more than motivation. Motivation, like I said, the whole reason we’re not talking about that this much in this challenge is because motivation comes and goes. I it’s great when you have it because it helps you get started on projects or started on a new exercise regime. But it quite often doesn’t help you maintain that. That’s where discipline comes in. Discipline is just doing the thing, right? So when I was a runner for 17 years, quite often there’d be many days I didn’t feel like doing. I didn’t particularly actually even like running, yet I did it because of the whole discipline thing. It’s one of the things I… Cheryl McColgan (04:37.784)have cultivated pretty well over the years. But it would be like a conversation with myself. If I really didn’t feel like it, I would just say, okay, well, just put on your running shoes, put on your outfit and go outside, you know, just get started for five minutes. And if you really don’t feel like you can come back in, I mean, you can convince or chew it, whatever it is, it’s the getting out the door or getting to the gym part. That’s the hardest part. Once you’re there, you’re gonna do something. I almost. Guarantee it in all the years. I’ve tricked myself like this It has never ended up that I didn’t actually do something and I’d say 95 % of the time I did the whole Workout or routine or whatever it was I had planned so it might always been to the Perfect speed or the perfect intensity or anything like that, but I did it and that is Discipline that is all it is is just repeating it being consistent Of course, there may be times where you need to honor your body and take time off and that’s totally fine. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just talking about when you know you should do it, you set aside the time to do it and you just don’t want to. That’s just a little trick there. So anyway, I hope wherever you are that you are able to get outside and take a walk today. Like I said, 15 minutes. So it’s a little bit longer than the amount of movement that we’ve been doing. It’s not going to increase every day from here or anything like that. We know that that’s not what this challenge is about. It’s still going to be 10 minutes of movement a day. But I just wanted to challenge you on this one. Get the outside, get that extra little five minutes outdoors, get your heart rate pumping a little bit, breathe in some fresh air and enjoy the scenery wherever you are. Like I said, my scenery right here, right now is not all that exciting, but there’s always things that you can find to observe once you get outside. And even it’s just noticing how the clouds look today, because it’s a dreary overcast day here in Cincinnati. But hope you enjoyed today’s challenge, today’s habit that we’re trying and I will see you again tomorrow.