Written By: Coach Mairead
When you decide to make some changes in your health and nutrition, where do you start? Do you Google frantically and get overwhelmed by information? Maybe you ask a friend what they’ve done and try to do the same. Maybe you start focusing on monitoring the outcome you want, whether it’s weight, blood pressure, or lab blood work values. Do you think about your habits?
Your habits drive the outcomes you’re looking for, no matter what you want that outcome to be.
Losing weight or changing your blood work isn’t a habit in itself – it’s an outcome that can be influenced by the habits you do every day, including how you eat and how active you are. Instead of getting so caught up on the outcome we’re looking for, our nutrition clients are more successful when they focus on the habits and behaviours they can control.
We want these habits to be simple and attainable things you can do on a regular basis – if it’s too complicated, you won’t stick with it and then we won’t get the outcomes that we’re looking for.
We also want to be able to measure it, preferably in a yes/no format that we can see easily see. Did I drink at least 8 cups of water? Did I include a half plate of vegetables at dinner? Did I have a balanced snack in the afternoon when I know I need it? Did I do some kind of food prep this weekend to make my life easy?
The yes/no format of these habits let’s us easily see what we did and didn’t do. In On-Going Nutrition Coaching, we use a habit tracker sheet that you can keep on your fridge or wherever you will regularly see it. The tracker helps you see whether you’ve hit all your habits you need for the day and week. It helps you stay accountable to the goals you’ve set, and to share that success and consistency with your Nutrition Coach!
If we’re not seeing the outcomes we want, we can see if we were consistent with the habits, or if there’s further habits we need to include.
The habits we do day-in and day-out are what lead to the health outcomes we want. We can’t directly control our health markers, whether that’s weight, body fat, or blood work. We CAN control the HABITS that influence those markers.
If you’re ready to take a deep dive into the nutrition habits that can change your life, let’s chat. Email
[email protected] for more info on our Nutrition Programs (currently all virtual!) and to book your FREE Bite-Sized Nutrition Chat to find the best fit for you.
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