61. Making Healthy Habits Stick

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 61 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking about making healthy habits stick. I think you all know that in order to become a healthy human being, you need to change your habits, need to break bad habits, stop doing those things, and create some good habits to start doing those things.

The problem really isn’t knowing which habits are bad and which are good. I think we all know that. It’s knowing how to make those good and healthy habits stick. Anyone can eat healthy for a day or two. But how do you do it day in and day out? How do you make it automatic? So in this episode of the Running Lean podcast, I’ve got five pretty simple and very practical steps to making healthy habits stick.

But first, if you haven’t already done so come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. This is a fun group of positive runners who share their experiences with each other, who encourage one another, who ask great questions, and who support one another in their health and fitness goals. I want you to be a part of this group.

And one of the things I’m going to talk about in this episode ties into how being a part of a group like this can really help make your healthy habits stick. So if you’re interested, just come check us out search Running Lean community on Facebook would be super fun to see you there.

Also, people have been asking me about working one on one with me. And if you’re interested in this, it’s it would be awesome for you to engage with me and to create this, this relationship with with you so that I can help you become the person that you ultimately want to become I love doing this, this is what I do.

You’ll get the individual guidance and support that you need to dial in your nutrition plan to become fat-adapted, and to hit your goals, your weight loss goals, your running goals, just overall health, and fitness goals, right? I’m here to help you guide you every step of the way to encourage you to do the things that maybe you don’t want to do,so that you can become the person that you ultimately want to become.

If you’re interested in coaching, here’s how it works, you have to apply. And then you and I are going to get on a call and we’re going to talk about I’ll talk about the program. I’ll talk about how it works. And we’ll discuss all that stuff. Okay. I’ve been getting a lot of messages lately, where people are just asking, like, how much is coaching? And I really don’t like to talk about that over messaging and stuff like that.

Okay, we really want to just have a conversation about what does this look like? What would it look like for me and you to work together? And then you can make an informed decision. And I can answer all your questions on that on that call. So there’s no obligation to jump on this call with me. But you do have to apply. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/coaching and apply and we can work on, we can talk about your goals and we can work on a plan and kind of see if this is something you want to do or not. Like I said it’s free for this cause and there’s no obligation to come and check us out – runningleanpodcast.com/coaching.

Here is a recent five-star review of the Running Lean podcast this is from Nikita Barbosa. And Nikita says, “Great information and tips presented in a creative manner. Thank you for this podcast and the Facebook group.”

Well thank you, Akita for reaching out and dropping in a review. I appreciate that. If you are listening to this and you get something out of it, it would mean so much to me if you would take a moment and just leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts. I guess you can leave reviews on other platforms. I don’t really know about that. I don’t get those reviews. I don’t see them anywhere.

But if you can, great. Leave, leave a review somewhere but Apple Podcasts seems to be the one that most people leave reviews on. And I would be happy to read your review here on the show. All right, cool.

So let’s get into this topic today. This is a fun, fun topic for me to put together. Honestly, I had a lot of fun doing this. And it’s all about making healthy habits stick. And I recently read a book that has been recommended to me for years. And it’s a book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. And it’s a great book, a fantastic read, I would highly recommend getting it and checking it out.

But I noticed when I was reading the book that I was already doing a lot of the stuff that he mentions in the book, you know, there was a lot of new stuff in there too. But I was like, this is really cool. I think this is important to talk about. So it kind of inspired me to take a few of the things that I learned from him in this book and taking a few of the things that I teach to my clients.

And to put them all together into a, I kind of created a five-step process or a five-step action plan, with practical tips that you can kind of start taking some action on strength today. All right, none of this stuff is going to be too mind-blowingly hard or anything like that. But these are things that will really help you to make those healthy habits stick because I know how hard it is.

This is like one of the most common questions I get from people is like, I know what to do, I just can’t seem to make it stick. I can’t seem to do it. I just I always fall off the rails. How do I make these habits stick? So that’s what we’re talking about today. So I’ve been using some of these concepts for years with myself and with my clients. And we’ve been having some really great results with these things. Okay.

You know, think about it like this, anybody can kind of lose weight, right? Like you can change your diet and lose weight, right? But it’s the keeping it off. That’s the problem. Most people say, oh, yeah, I’ve lost weight a bunch of times. It’s kind of like, oh, yeah, I’ve quit smoking, quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times, you know, anybody can eat healthy for a couple of days.

But how about day in and day out? How about for months at a time, you know, everybody can go for a run every now and then. But sticking to a running schedule, and like finishing a marathon, that’s a whole different deal altogether, right? So we’re going to be taking a deep dive into healthy habits today, and about how we can make these healthy habits stick.

So let’s talk about what a habit is. So a habit, if you look up the definition, there are a couple of definitions I found that I think are really cool. So the first definition I found is, is as a habit is a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior. Okay?

Another definition is that a routine a habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly, and tends to occur subconsciously, that I like I liked that definition a lot. And then the third one I found was a habit is an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary. That sounds kind of cool, right?

A behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary, it’s just like something you do without even having to think about it, you just do it like, tying your shoes is involuntary, you just tie me you don’t have to think about tying your shoes or driving a car. You know, when you’re first learning to drive a car. It’s, there’s a lot of things you got to think about, right? Where do I put my foot? Where do I? How do I adjust these mirrors? You know, where’s the gas? How do I put it into drive? Okay, I gotta use my turn signal, where’s that located?

And you’re thinking about all these things, right? But now you just get in a car and you can drive for like, sometimes you’re driving and you’re like, how did I even get here? I don’t remember the last 10 minutes. And it’s like, everything is become so subconscious, you know. So, I like to think of a habit as a behavior that has become automatic. Right?

So it’s just something you do involuntarily or automatically, right. So obviously, there are good habits and bad habits, you know, so bad habits can be automatic as well. You know, there are a lot of habits that we engage in, that seem involuntary or automatic and that aren’t necessarily healthy, right? We want the healthy habits to stick and we don’t really want the unhealthy habits to stick.

So like a good habit would be you know, taking a shower every day. That’s something you probably do pretty automatically. A bad habit might be that every time you go into the break room at work, you grab a doughnut and eat it. That might be a bad habit that you don’t want to engage in. Okay? So not all habits are good.

Not all habits are bad, but we just want to get we want to start to create some awareness around what habits are and what habits we’re engaging in. What habits do we want to continue engaging in? Maybe some habits, we want to stop doing and maybe make some new habits. So the very first step, step number one in making healthy habits stick is to create awareness.

So what are all your current habits? What are the things that you do? Automatically, out of habit every single day? What are the things you do every single day? Which of these would you consider to be good habits, and which of these would you consider to be bad habits?

So, an easy way of doing this is just a make a list of everything you do every day, you’ve probably never done something like this before. And it may seem kind of weird to do it at first. But it would look something like this, like, here’s my list, I started doing this. And it starts like this, wake up, turn off the alarm, get out of bed, go to the bathroom, weigh myself, log my weight in my journal, brush my teeth, make my bed, make coffee. And then it just keeps going, right?

These are lists, everything single thing that I do every single day. And I just keep going with that list. Alright, seems kind of monotonous or tedious or whatever, but it’s important. So just write down everything you do in a typical day, then you’re going to like look at each one of those habits that you engage in every single day. And you’re going to decide if it is positive, or negative habit or neutral.

So just you can just use like a little plus sign, if it’s positive, write a little plus sign next to it. If it’s negative, make a little minus sign. And if it’s neutral, you could use like a little equal sign. For example, wake up that’s neutral is you’ve just got to wake up, it’s not good or bad. There’s nothing, you know, negative about that. Nothing really positive, but it’s just neutral to wake up.

Next, maybe I don’t turn off the alarm. Maybe I hit snooze. That would be negative habit. Okay, below minus sign next to it. And then I hit snooze. Again, there’s another negative, maybe hit snooze a third time, I’ve been known to do this before. So these are kind of negative habits, I don’t want to do okay, then I turn off my alarm, there’s a positive, okay, so that’s a plus, then I get out of bed, neutral, go to the bathroom, neutral, weigh myself positive.

Because I’m trying to keep track of, you know, making some gains, you know, or maybe trying to lose some weight or whatever it is that you’re trying to do. For me, I’m trying to actually gain a little bit of weight by increasing my muscle mass. So I’m weighing myself positive, I logged my weight positive because these things are our positive habits that are helping me become a healthier person.

Brush my teeth. I will say that’s positive. Make my bed? Some people don’t make their bed. I don’t get that. How do you go through your life without making it? How did you just like leave your bed unmade all day long. I don’t understand that at all. That’s a positive. Make my coffee, I put two pluses next to that, that’s super positive.

Okay, and then you can just go on like that. Okay. So at the end of your list, what you basically have is you have a list of all the habits that are good habits that are bad, some that are neutral that are neither here nor there. So go through your whole day. And what we’re trying to do is just create awareness of what’s going on with you right now? Go through your whole day. What positive habits do you want to keep? And then keep reinforcing? Maybe there are some negative habits that you want to drop.

You know, for me, it’s the hitting the snooze, I want to just get up when my alarm goes off. Some days I hit snooze. Typically, once some days more than that, that might be something I want to stop doing. What new habits do you want to add? You know, maybe you’re not running right now. And running is something you want to do every morning, you know, or every afternoon or whatever it is, you can add that in as one of your habits.

But this first step, it’s all about just creating awareness, creating awareness of what’s good, and you want to keep what’s necessary, you know, not necessarily good, maybe what’s bad and you want to drop and some new things you want to add in okay. But without this awareness, you have no idea what your current habits look like, what you want to keep doing, or what you want to stop doing. Okay, so step number one is to create a massive awareness of all your habits okay.

Now, step number two, in making healthy habits stick is to plan ahead. So there was this study they did back in 2001. In Great Britain, they took like 248 people and they were trying to see if they could build better exercise habits for these people. And they divided them up into three groups.

So the first group was the control group. And they were asked to just track how much they exercised. The second group was what they called the motivation group. So these were these people were also tracked, asked to track their exercise, but they were also told to read some material on the benefits of exercise. And then they were presented with some information and kind of lectured on how exercise could help resist reduce their risk of cardiovascular heart disease, and how it could improve their heart health and stuff like that. So that was the motivation group.

And then the third group was the same as the second group. So they were also asked to track their exercises, and given the motivation materials, but this group was also told to plan their workouts ahead of time. What specific day and time were they going to work out where were they going to work out for how long etc.

In the first and second groups, around 36% of the people exercised once a week. And by the way, the motivational presentations did not seem to affect their behavior one way or the other. The third group, however, the group that was that had planned ahead of time specifically planned out their workouts 91% of them exercise at least once per week, 91% versus 36%, who did not plan ahead.

So this tells me there’s something to this. You have to have a predefined plan if you want to make these healthy habits stick. So I’ll have clients come to me and they’ll say, hey, I want to get stronger. I want to do some strength training. I want to work out more. And I’m like, Okay, how specifically? I don’t know, I just know I need I want to work out more. So I’m going to work out more. Well, how many times a week are you gonna do it? I don’t know. Well, which days? I don’t know. Like, this is not gonna work, right? This is not a plan.

I want to work out more is not going to move the needle for you at all. Okay. We want to get specific. All right. So here’s what I would tell them to do. I’ll say, let’s, let’s think about this. How many times a week do you want to work out? Twice. Okay, you’re gonna work out two times next week. Which days? You’re gonna do it? Tuesday, Thursday. Perfect. What time, 8 am? Okay, great. Where are you going to do it? At your local gym. Perfect.

Now put it on your calendar. I will strength train two times next week on Tuesday, and Thursday at 8 am. At my local gym, it’s on my calendar, guess what that person is going to do those two workouts, I promise you, right. That is how you get very specific, and plan ahead, which is much different than oh, I want to work out more. It’s just not going to work. All right.

A lot of times people think they lacked the motivation to do something like this like to work out more, they think they’re lacking motivation, what they’re really lacking is a clear plan of action. Planning ahead is crucial. It’s crucial to making any habits stick. And I talk a lot about this when I talk with my clients about sticking to their food plan.

If you know what you’re gonna be eating tomorrow, if you’ve planned it ahead of time, and you’ve even written it down in your food journal. Today, you know what you’re doing tomorrow, you’re way more likely to stick to that food plan tomorrow, you’re not just going to be like planning in the heat of the moment. You’re not just winging it every day, that that doesn’t work. Plan ahead. It is crucial.

And the reason for this is that we have these two parts of our brain we have the amygdala, which is our primitive brain. This is the part of our brain that’s responsible for primal urges, you know, our fear center fight or flight, that kind of thing. The amygdala is going to make decisions in the moment.

So if you’re like standing in front of the fridge, and you have no idea what you’re gonna be eating, and there’s like a chocolate cake sitting there, you’re gonna just eat the chocolate cake, right, let’s be honest.

But then there’s this other part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, and this is your plan and planning plan ahead. You know, the organizing part of your brain the more modern part of your brain. This is responsible for cognitive behavior. This is the part of your brain that you use when you make decisions ahead of time.

And when you use that part of your brain, you are way more likely to stick to that decision that you made. So oh, that’s kind of the science behind it. But basically, what you want to do is just make sure you have planned ahead, and you have a very structured, very clear plan. And I’ve encouraged people to write it down or put it on the calendar. When it’s on the calendar, it’s like it’s done, you’re gonna do it, you know. So the second step to making healthy habits stick is to plan ahead, get specific, and plan ahead.

Step number three is to change your environment, you are way more likely to stick to a healthy habit if your environment supports it. So they did this experiment at a hospital in Massachusetts, Massachusetts General Hospital, and they wanted to see if they could change the eating habits of the 1000s of hospital staff and visitors by just making a few simple changes to the environment.

So they used the hospital cafeteria as the environment they were going to change. And in the hospital cafeteria had all these had a couple of drink stations located in it, okay. And there were like two places in this in the cafeteria where they had water available to people, like just two places. Mostly they had soda, which doesn’t make sense, you know, for a hospital to have nothing but soda. But yeah, it’s another conversation.

So the one change they made is that they added more water to the cafeteria. So they added bottled water options to where these couple of drinks stations were. But they also added baskets of bottled water next to all the food stations, and they added bottled water next to the cash registers. And so instead of just having two locations in the cafeteria, where there was bottled water available, there were now 10 different locations where they had bottled water water available.

And they didn’t make any announcements about this, they didn’t, you know, make a big campaign, you know, oh, we’re all gonna be drinking more water. No, they just made this little modification to the environment. They didn’t put up signs or anything like that. And then they tracked some things over the next few months. And they noticed that sales of soda, so the soda sales dropped by like 11.4%, during the next three months, in that same amount of time, bottled water sales increased by 25.8%.

So this is kind of cool, right? Just making a simple change, the environment can have a big impact. It’s kind of like the impulse buying, that we do at the grocery store, you know when you’re standing in the checkout line, and there’s all that stuff right there, like candy and gum and mints, and the trashy magazines, like you don’t need that stuff, you really don’t.

And you don’t even want it right you didn’t, you didn’t come into the store going, I can’t wait to be standing in line so that I can get the trashy magazines and a candy bar. But because it’s sitting there, it’s just because of the way it’s presented to you. You buy it, right? You don’t need it, you don’t want it but you buy it anyway.

It’s why they put end caps at the grocery stores. Because as you walk by them, you know, you’re it’s going to really jump out and people are more apt to buy that stuff and the end caps because of the way it’s presented to you because it’s in your environment. They also, you know, put stuff on the shelves like down low, they don’t want you to buy and they put stuff right at eye level that they do want you to buy, right, it’s all very intentional.

So then, you know, it becomes a habit. Like every time you’re staying in line at the checkout, you’re buying candy bars and trashy magazines or whatever. Okay, so your environment has a profound impact on your habits.

Another example is if your pantry is full of junk food, what are you going to be presented with each time you open those doors? Junk food, right? If you always have a plate of cookies out on your counter, in your kitchen, what do you think is gonna happen each time you go into the kitchen? Or if there’s always a box of doughnuts in the break room, you’re probably going to be eating a lot of donuts.

If you want your healthy habits to stick you need to create an environment or make changes to your environment that supports your healthy habits. And your environment is way more than like doughnuts in the break room. It’s more than just how you stock your pantry.

Your environment includes things like the books you read, the shows you watch the podcasts, you listen to, and the people you hang out with. If your environment is made up of healthy eaters and dedicated runners, you’re going to feel supported, and you’re going to be way more likely to make your healthy habits stick.

And like I mentioned earlier, the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook, is a great example of surrounding yourself with people who are focused on their health and fitness. Another great example is my local running group. So I’m part of a running group with you know, I don’t know a couple of 100 people who are all motivated and focused on running.

And so every Saturday, we meet, like, twice a week, but you know, Saturday mornings are the ones that are I always talk about that, because it’s like, it’s early in the morning, it’s cold winter day, and the alarm goes off, and I’m like, oh, my gosh, do I really want to go run right now?

But I know that there’s a whole group of people out there, that I’m going to be surrounded with. So I’m like, Yes, I’m gonna get up, I’m on a run. And I’m way more motivated to stick to that healthy habit of running on Saturday mornings, because I know, there’s this whole group of people that’s out there doing the same thing, right?

I surround myself with health and fitness experts in the way of the books that I read, and the podcasts that I listened to, you know, think about my coaches, my mentors, and all day, I’m talking to runners who are focused on their health and fitness. And all day, I’m recording podcasts and trainings and putting together training materials, and talking to my clients about their health and fitness.

So for me, sticking to my own health healthy habits is a breeze, you know, because my environment is nothing but people. And information that’s coming into me is all health is focused on health, good eating habits, running, how to improve running, working out strength training, all these things, okay. So your environment is more than just you know, how you own the food that you have in your fridge, okay.

And then even like small changes to your environment, like, if you layout your running clothes the night before, or you prep your meals for the week, these things can have a big impact on making a healthy habit stick. Because if you wake up in the morning, and you see those running clothes are sitting there, you know what you’re going to do, you’re gonna put those running clothes on and you’re gonna go for your run.

Or if you open the fridge and you’re not sure what to eat, and you see all your healthy meals all prepped and ready to go. You don’t have to wonder you don’t have to make a decision, you just grab it and eat it, you’re gonna make that healthy habit stick, okay? So make sure your environment supports your healthy habits. So the key to making a healthy habit stick.

Number four, the fourth step is to practice, practice, practice. So the definition of practice is to carry out or perform a particular activity method or custom, habitually or regularly. It’s just doing something over and over again. So there are things like a yoga practice, a meditation practice, even a medical practice, you know, they talk about doctors practicing medicine.

You know, I have a coaching practice. I’m a metabolic health practitioner. A practitioner is someone who practices a profession. The key though here is the habitually and regularly parked, right, anybody can do something every now and then. This does not create a habit. Habit formation is when the behavior becomes automatic.

Habit formation is when your behavior becomes automatic. The more you do something, the more automatic it becomes. Right, we’re talking about driving a car or tying your shoes. The first few times, tying your shoes was, you know, you probably did it wrong. I know I did. I was like, this doesn’t make any sense.

The first time you drive a car, it’s like it’s hard. You know, it’s just it’s not automatic. But the more and more you do it, the better you get, and just becomes automatic. And this is how you create healthy habits too. You just gotta keep doing them. You have to practice, practice, practice, you got to get your reps in. And when you do this, you start to rewire your brain, you can actually change the way your brain functions.

The more you engage in a behavior, whether it’s good or bad, the more automatic that behavior becomes right, your brain actually can rewire itself, and you create new neural pathways. These are just like patterns of thought. And these neural pathways are automatic. The thoughts and the behaviors become automatic, even subconscious, sometimes you don’t even know you’re doing them.

Neuroscientists call this long-term potentiation. And this is referring to creating strong neural pathways through the repetition of behavior. So an example of how this kind of plays out, scientists studied the brains of London taxi drivers, I think this is fascinating. And they noticed in these people that made their living driving taxis around London, that their hippocampus, a part of their brain, that is, plays a key role in spatial memory, their hippocampus was much larger than non-taxi drivers.

Because they’d spent decades memorizing the complex London street systems, you know, they essentially rewired their brains and created all these new neural pathways that other people just didn’t have. And something that I found kind of interesting about this is that when they retired, their hippocampus actually shrank back down to normal size.

So those new neural pathways that they had created unwired themselves after they had retired because they were no longer, they no longer needed that. So that was kind of interesting. So you can actually rewire your brain by doing something over and over and over again. So if you want to make healthy eating habits, something you do automatically, you just have to, really, you have to just do it, often, you have to stick to your plan every single day.

You know, if you want to get bigger muscles, you’ve got to lift weights, you’ve got to do it more than once, you know, you gotta keep doing it, you got to get your reps in, right? If you want to run a marathon, you have to get your training runs in all of them. Right, you have to get your reps and you have to practice, practice, practice.

You know, on average, it takes around 90 days to break old habits and establish new ones. So the more reps you get in, the more likely that these new healthy habits are going to stick. And here’s the important part, you have to do it even when you don’t feel like it. Because the behavior that you practice over and over again, is the one that’s going to stick.

So if you constantly say, screw it to your diet, or your strength training schedule, or your running schedule, then that’s the habit that’s going to stick. If you consistently don’t follow through with what you said you were going to do, that’s the habit that’s going to stick. So even when you don’t feel like it, you have to stick to that habit. Keep doing it, it’s hard. This is the hard part. I know it’s hard, but you got to do it, even when you don’t feel like it. And that’s how you create a habit that will stick right but you got to practice, practice, practice.

Alright, and then step five in making healthy habits stick is to track your progress. So this is so simple, but it is so powerful. And most people just don’t do it. So for example, I used to work out at a gym, and I would lift weights, and I didn’t keep track of anything, right. I just showed up I did whatever. And I wasn’t getting any results I did so for years, years, I even did like small group classes and things like that, I would just show up, do whatever.

And the results would be like a, you know, no gains. For years, I did this and it was very frustrating. I spent a lot of time and a lot of money and put in a lot of effort for nothing. I was not getting any returns from this. I wasn’t making any progress. So I decided pretty recently. Listen, you guys, I am 54 years old and I’m still learning new things.

Okay, some of these things may seem really obvious to you. You might be thinking like, Well, yeah, duh, Patrick, you have to track things, but I wasn’t doing it. Okay. Until very recently, and I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna start tracking my workouts at the gym. All right. And so I started a strength training log. This is a very simple thing to do. Just took me a little while but I finally decided I was going to do this.

Okay, so now I’m tracking everything. Every exercise, how many sets the number of reps I’m putting in, And the amount of weight, I’m lifting all that stuff, right? And it only takes like 30 seconds to jot these things down. So I’ll do an exercise and I’ll just jot down how many reps. What did I do? And then you know, what was the weight?

And then did I take it to failure or not? I like to record that it literally just takes a second to do this. But just in a few weeks, it’s only been a few weeks, I’ve been doing this, I just made this one minor change, I started tracking, I’m seeing improvements, I’m increasing the number of reps at the same weight. It also gives me a target to you know, it’s so if I did eight reps last time, I want to do nine this time, you know, I’m able to increase the amount of weight lifted.

So if it was, you know, 185 pounds last week, it’s going to be 190 pounds this week, I can see that I’m able to lift heavier weights or do more reps, I’m getting stronger, I’m getting bigger muscles for the first time in my life. All because I did this one tiny little thing, which is started tracking it.

One of the most powerful behaviors that I asked my clients to do is to track their food intake. And here’s why I do it. And they did this study, which I think is so cool. They did this study with over 1600 people and they divided them up into two groups, one group was told to write down everything they ate every day, and the other group was not told to do anything.

And neither group was given any kind of dietary advice, they weren’t given any instructions. They just, you know, told one group to write down everything you eat every day. And then they went after some time, I don’t know the time period on this particular study. But there was some period of time where they looked at the weight loss between the two different groups.

And the people who had tracked their food lost like twice as much weight as the people who did not. They didn’t tell him to do anything differently. They didn’t offer them any, like nutrition advice or anything like that. But the people who wrote down what they were eating, lost twice as much weight as those who did not.

So what’s happening here? Well, awareness is part of it talked about that earlier, you know, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Right. So the simple act of writing things down and creating that awareness and tracking their progress actually allows you to continually improve something, okay. So that’s one of the big reasons why tracking is so important is creating that awareness, you have to be able to measure it if you want to prove it.

Secondly, making progress is very satisfying. Like it feels so good to see the number, the numbers go up or down or whatever it is you’re trying to do. Like, it’s fun to see me be able to lift more weight or do a couple of extra reps. Like that’s fun to see, it gives me a little bit of satisfaction, it’s very satisfying. Or if you’re tracking your weight, and you’re logging it, and you can see, oh, I can see that my weight, you know, goes up and down every now and then. But I can see over time it’s going down like that’s very motivating, right? Feels good.

These tiny little indicators of progress, help to reinforce healthy habits. And speaking of motivating, yeah, making progress. Even tiny, little incremental progress is very motivating. You’re way more motivated to stick to a healthy habit when you see these little tiny incremental improvements. Right.

Another example I’ve been trying to make morning meditation, a daily habit I did this years ago, I was a diligent meditator. And I’ve used this app to track my meditation progress. It’s called Insight Timer. It’s a great app, it’s got a lot of cool features. And in the past, I’ve gotten up to like 500 consecutive days of meditating. And then I just stopped doing it for a while and I wanted to get back into it because it does help me feel better. It does help with my mental and emotional state.

And so as of today, I hit 40 consecutive days of meditating. And you get these little stars that track your progress, and it says you’ve meditated, you know, X number of consecutive days. And just seeing these little tiny indicators of progress keeps me motivated to keep the habit going. Because I don’t want to break the streak. Like I want to keep the streak alive. You know.

I remember back in the day is a long time ago. I used to smoke cigarettes, okay, a long, long time ago. And when I quit smoking several times, (btdubs), but when I quit smoking, like one of the first times that I was like, I’m serious about it this time, I had this wall calendar. And every day I didn’t smoke, I put a big red X on that day of my wall calendar to mark each day that I did not smoke cigarettes.

And it was so satisfying to see those x’s add up. And I kept seeing more and more of those X’s on my calendar. And after, you know, a month or so of that, I was I had kind of broken the habit and I no longer had the desire to smoke cigarettes. So I was motivated each day because I wanted to keep that streak alive, I wanted to keep those x’s multiplying on that calendar. And to see that visually, it was kind of cool.

So just tracking something like that to break a bad habit is a cool idea too. And by the way, kids don’t smoke, don’t do it. It’s bad. It’s so bad. I can’t believe I used to smoke, it’s so funny. Think about who I am today and who I used to be. So we can change, we can always change. So here are a couple of suggestions for you as far as tracking goes.

Number one, keep some sort of a food journal or some way of tracking your food. You can use a notebook, you can use an app, some people like my fitness pal, or carb manager or something like that. But just make it simple, make it easy to do and make it fun. Tracking your food creates massive awareness.

So you’ll see exactly what you’re eating every day because you might think you’re doing pretty good. But when you start tracking it, you might be kind of surprised by what’s really happening. It’s a great, great way to also track your progress and keep you motivated to stick with that healthy eating habit.

The second tracking idea I have for you or suggestion would be to keep a running journal. So keep you can do this again, in a notebook or an app. Again, make it easy, whatever it is for you, if you if it’s easier for you to plug things into an app, do that. But if it’s just as easy to write in a notebook or a journal, do that. Just make it simple. But then just record each run that you do your time, your distance, your pace, how you felt the weather, stuff like that.

Any notes you want to add, shouldn’t take too long after each run, but this is so good for not just creating awareness and motivation, but also for helping you get progressively faster, or run longer. Like let’s say you want to run a faster half marathon, you’re going to need to improve your speed. Right?

So how do you know if you’re getting faster unless you keep track of it? Right? So you’re gonna want to track your progress. So you know you’re on target for that PR pace. You can’t just show up on race day, and expect to magically pull off some kind of PR. I’ve done that before where I’m like, I’m going to PR this marathon. Oh, yeah.

Well, what have you done to prepare for this? Nothing different. It doesn’t work. I’m gonna tell you right now. Right. So in order to improve something, you have to be able to measure it by tracking your progress. It’s fun, it’s satisfying, it’s motivating. And it’s a very effective way to make healthy habits stick so you can get leaner get stronger, run faster, whatever it is that you want to do. All right.

So here’s a quick recap, if you want to make healthy habits stick to number one, you need to create awareness. So what current habits are you engaging in that are good, bad, neutral, which ones do you want to add to that list?

Number two, make sure you’re planning ahead, make a very clear and very detailed plan of what you’re going to do because you’re much more likely to make that stick if you do that.

Number three, change your environment. Make sure your environment supports your healthy habits and your environment includes the people you hang out with and the media that you consume that kind of stuff.

Number four, practice, practice, practice, you got to get your reps in, especially when you don’t feel like it. And then number five, keep track of your progress. It helps you to stay motivated and definitely will help those healthy habits stick. Alright, that’s all I got for you today. I hope you all have an amazing day.

If you liked this episode, and you got something out of it, it would mean a lot to me if you shared it with somebody. As always, lots of love. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.

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