There’s a right way—and a wrong way—to set health goals you can achieve.
After spending way too long living a healthy lifestyle but not enjoying my life, I’ve now found a better way. And I’m here to share it with you. You picked up this book because, like me, you want to feel healthy and, like me, you don’t want to have to go on another diet, starvation cleanse, or extreme detox to make it happen.
Most likely you know you could feel better, although you just can’t put your finger on what’s holding you back. Or, you have an inkling of what the problem is, but you don’t know what steps to take first. Don’t worry, dear reader, I’ve got you. I was there not too long ago, and after going through the steps outlined in this book, I feel better than ever. At 36, I can honestly say I feel healthier than I felt at 26. And 46 and beyond definitely doesn’t scare me. Because I know I can keep feeling healthy and my future is something I look forward to. Together, you and I are going to work on taking action to create healthier habits in all parts of your life.
Research shows that when you improve habits in one area of your life, it’s easier to build better habits in other places, too. It all always comes full circle to create your highest (or lowest) level of well-being possible. I’ve made it my life’s mission to share what I’ve learned on my own path to healing, so you can create the life and health you know you deserve.
Dramatic change does not have to be traumatic. Shocking, I know! Quick-fix media headlines and diet dogma have made us believe that in order to become the healthiest versions of ourselves possible, we have to live in flavorless boxes of perfection. As if there’s only one way to be healthy, and it’s called the diet highway where if we slip up even once it was all for naught.
Most, if not all, of those dogmatic ways of thinking are false. They’ve led you astray. While you do have to make the effort—you can’t just make one small change and then quit—transforming yourself into a healthy, feel-good-in-your-own-skin, status-quo can’t-keep-up-with-her kind of woman doesn’t have to mean giving up everything you enjoy and resigning yourself to a life of counting calories or weighing your food.
I love the F-word, but it might not be the one you’re thinking.
In my own personal experience, and from observing the thousands of women who have completed my online programs, I believe that working toward the feeling of freedom—in all areas of life—is what leads to the highest levels of well-being. Freedom from the guilt we feel around food choices, freedom from negative self-talk, and freedom from knowing we can feel better but not understanding how to make it happen.
And I know this for sure: You have to create your own freedom. No one else—not your husband, wife, parents, girlfriend, or doctor—can do it for you. Your freedom is your responsibility, and it’s absolutely attainable. You just need a plan. (Hint: It’s in this book.)
Women are fiercely strong creatures. When we want something, we can commit and become unstoppable. Finish your master’s degree while pregnant and working full-time? Not a problem. Train for a marathon while leading a team of executives through a $500 million project, all while taking care of your mother every night? Yep! Done.
Raise four kids while maintaining a home, leading a church group, and volunteering at your kids’ school every day? Not a problem. We can dig our nails onto the cliff and hold on for dear life, all while frosting the bake sale cookies, delivering the multimedia report of the century, and proving our parents wrong (a traveling food blogger can make a living, after all). So why does something as seemingly simple as making healthy choices feel so hard? I’ve sat on this question for years, until it hit me: Because most healthy choices feel like a loss of freedom. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Any lifestyle habits you cultivate or changes you choose to implement should all work toward helping you feel more free, never restricted. Expansive, not small.
Choosing to be healthy should make you free from the guilt, shame, and negative chatter that usually comes along with going on a diet or “lifestyle” plan. Because negative emotions can be just as bad for you as the crappy food you’re drawn to.
Now, that’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to how you eat. You still have to care, and you still have to eat real food. You still have to actively try to feel good and put in the effort . . . but that effort doesn’t have to feel so damn hard.
As such, this is not a diet book. I’m not going to ask you to eat kale every day for the rest of your life if you’re just not that into it.
But I am going to ask you to put in the feelgood kind of effort it will take to make some positive changes, because these shifts will dramatically improve your well-being. It’s the kind of effort you don’t hesitate to spend researching the best restaurants to visit on your next vacation, caring for your loved ones, or showing your boss what an overachieving woman you are.
Now it’s time to concentrate on feeling better. It’s time to prioritize you.
Your Health Habit is unique to you. Not a diet, your Health Habit is a skill, or a set of skills, that allows you to make the best choices that serve you most.
There isn’t one magic health bullet that works for everyone. Your Health Habit comprises the daily actions that allow you to be the best version of yourself, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Instead of prescribing a list of exactly what to do each day, I’m going to teach you the skill of making the best choices that benefit your overall health. In order to make better choices throughout the day, you have to enjoy your habits. Where you’re from and where you currently live, your cultural background, current life conditions, and all of your life experience up until now affects that state of your habits. Not only that, your values and beliefs influence what you enjoy.
To make positive shifts in your habits, first you need to understand that there are three parts to all habits:
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have identified the cycle of those three parts as the habit loop. What you think of as the habit is generally the middle part—the action or routine—like putting sugar in your coffee or eating ice cream after dinner every night.
The cue or trigger can be physical (low blood sugar or feeling hungry) or emotional (frustration, boredom, or simply seeking pleasure). The reward generally alleviates the problem that cued it in the first place. If hunger (the cue) causes you to eat ice cream at 8 each night (the action) and that leads to feeling full for a while (the reward), it’s possible to just change the action (choose something healthier to satisfy your hunger).
Hunger is a cue that can pretty easily be alleviated by a healthier action. Emotional cues or triggers like frustration at work, boredom in your relationship, or feeling blue from a health condition can take more work to identify, but they can absolutely be shifted as well.
Only you can identify the habit loops you’ve created. That’s why we’ll talk about self-awareness often as you build your new Health Habit. The more aware you are of your cues and triggers, and what you’re seeking in the reward, the easier it will be to shift your habits.
It’s not just about replacing the ice cream with a bag of carrots—you can do that for a week, but it usually won’t last because the perceived reward isn’t the same. It’s about having the self-awareness to understand what’s driving your habits in order to shift them.
Sometimes it’s as simple as changing the cue, which is why we talk about keeping home-cooked food around and detoxing your home environment. Sometimes it’s about finding an enjoyable replacement for the routine/action part of the habit, and sometimes it’s about identifying the emotional or physical reward you are after, which can take a little bit of work but is a skill that will serve you for life.
As I mentioned before, this book is action-oriented and aims to help you enjoy your life more, not less. Pretty soon, your Health Habit will be on autopilot and you’ll have the skills you need to make positive changes as needed.
The first step in creating healthy habits that last for life is to rethink how you set your health goals. I can’t think of a single instance in which a client who was having a hard time meeting a goal had set her goal correctly in the first place. This is the reason most people don’t hit their goals, and it is simple to fix. There are three progressive parts to setting a goal:
These are taught in the context of good business principles but often aren't translated to health or habits at home—until now! Most people miss thinking through parts one and two, and incorrectly identify number three as the goal—then they fail miserably at trying to achieve it. Even worse, the stress and negative self-talk contribute to the downward spiral of self-sabotage and resistance.
Identifying step one, what you truly desire, is the foundation of any action you take in life. Ultimately, even self-sabotage is a form of taking action on what we desire, as our negative self-talk can lead to the subconscious desire to fail.
To set a foundation and learn how to meet your goals, the very first step is determining what you desire. The how-tos of any process aren’t going to do you any good if you don’t get this down first. (Hint: Losing 10 pounds is not a desire or a goal. It’s an outcome.)
You probably have an outcome in mind, but an outcome isn’t a goal. Everyone does this.
Important practical life skills—such as the right way to set goals, negotiating a raise at work, and budgeting for rent, utilities, and groceries—are not usually taught in school or at home. Some of us have some catching up to do and that’s okay. Let’s start with goals. Losing 10 pounds, fitting into your skinny jeans, or feeling confident in your clothes are not goals. The first two are outcomes and the third is a desire. Goals are the daily actionable habits in between that get you there. Hitting 10,000 steps per day, sticking to a reasonable intermittent fasting window without starving yourself (don’t fret, I’ll cover this later), eating salmon on Sunday nights, and consuming only low-glycemic foods at breakfast are all daily actionable goals.
Desire is the unseen fire that fuels your daily habits. If you lack motivation to stick to your goals, there’s a disconnect between what you desire and the actions that you set for yourself. If your desired outcome is to lose 20 pounds but you’re not even the least bit interested in putting better food in your mouth, it’s because you know deep down that losing 20 pounds isn’t going to change you as a person (and, you’re right, it won’t). It might be that you don’t really desire to be thin, but you desire to have the feelings that you associate with being thinner. What goes along with being at the weight you want to achieve? Could it be feeling more confident in your clothes? Perhaps to feel more energetic and thus able to spend more time with the people you love?
Your desire can’t be just, “I want to be thinner.” There’s not enough fuel in that statement to motivate you to make it happen. Author Danielle LaPorte literally put desires on the map in her book The Desire Map, in which she lists dozens of potential core desired feelings you may wish to achieve. Some of my favorites are:
| abundant | accomplished |
| adventurous | alive |
| authentic | balanced |
| brave | brilliant |
| celebratory | centered |
| cherished | confident |
| delighted | desired |
| divine | elegant |
| energized | fabulous |
| feminine | generous |
| healed | healthy (obvi!) |
| holy | joyous |
| natural | open-hearted |
| passionate | powerful |
| prosperous | purposeful |
| regal | romantic |
| seen | sensual |
| sexy | sincere |
| spirited | supported |
| thankful | vibrant |
| warm | wholesome |
None of these are better or worse than the other, nor is this a comprehensive list. Choose two, three, or four of these—or countless other words that describe how you desire to feel—and let them fuel your movement forward. Just make sure they’re your own. Which leads me to . . .
This mistake is more common than it ought to be. Chasing a goal based on someone else’s desires means it never fully feels ours, and resentment builds quickly without our even being aware of it.
I was once in a relationship with a guy who loved body building. At the time, I would kill myself in the gym and restrict my food so much that nothing felt enjoyable. My adrenals were burned-out, and I didn’t personally find any joy in my new muscles. But we talked about it so much I actually convinced myself that I would be crazy if I wasn’t into it, too.
Even though I was “meeting my goals in the gym,” life just kind of felt gray. What I didn’t realize at the time (oh 20/20 hindsight!) is that the goal of looking like a lean fitness competitor wasn’t genuinely my own.
When I stopped doing all of that—and again embraced things I love like Pilates, yoga, hikes, some weights, and an occasional slice of delightfully wholesome pizza—the world felt colorful again. I didn’t stop being healthy, I just chose to do it in a different way. I decided that I’d take a rainbow world and slightly fuller thighs over maxing out my barbell squat any day of the week.
It wasn’t the guy’s fault—I had mistaken his goal as my own. And hey, I still love squats in my workouts, I just learned how to not badger myself over it. And to keep it real, I never have one slice of pizza. It’s always two.
Whoopsies. This gets us every time. Even if you avoid the three mistakes above, not painting your actionable goal into your everyday life can derail your results.
You may have heard of SMART goals in your work life, but just in case you need a recap: SMART stands for
Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-bound
Setting SMART goals is a great start, but I hold that you also have to visualize how your daily actions reasonably fit into your current life situation. For instance, if you’re a nurse who works 12-hour shifts, then “making a kale and fresh blueberry smoothie for breakfast every morning” might not be viable. If you don’t have time to go to the store, or can’t get up early enough, it’s not going to happen.
In this case, a goal of “premake four days’ worth of overnight oats to put in the work fridge for my 3 P.M. snack” would be more reasonable. We’re going to get into this more in Parts II and III of this book, so stick with me.
Your goals are your own, so I don’t want to place my own onto you. However, there is one goal that NO ONE should ever have, and that’s the goal of perfection.
Perfection simply doesn’t exist in the long-term, so including it in your goal plan is a surefire way to set yourself up for failure. As I mentioned before, consistency beats perfection every time. The dictionary definition of consistent is “acting or done in the same way over time, especially so as to be fair or accurate.”
The definition of perfection—and I’m paraphrasing here—is a god-awful practice that women partake in, in which they meticulously torture, berate, and demean themselves and other people for the sake of an illusion that not only does not exist, but viciously teases your common sense and is at the epicenter of the worthiness crisis you experience every 15 seconds while maintaining a gleeful outer appearance. Or, more simply put: It’s the opposite of nature’s intention for you.
So, now that you know what not to do, let’s talk about what to do. This is where it gets fun! I mean, not fun like those two slices of pizza I mentioned a few minutes ago, but I want you to keep reading so I’ll make it as fun as humanly possible.
And by the way, if you’re curious whether the information in this book applies to men, too, the answer is absolutely yes. Ninety-five percent of my blog traffic is female, so I generally speak to women when I teach. However, the glorious creatures known as men are always welcome here, too.
1. List in your journal, whiteboard, phone, or anyplace that you wish the top three or more reasons you want to be healthy. The first things you write are generally high level and too abstract to turn into a goal, but they’ll be a great starting place.
2. Why do you want this? Think about a time in your life when you felt great. What words describe that feeling? Use the examples of desired feelings mentioned earlier to get your juices flowing. Your why for wanting what you list in number 1 is your own. It can be something tangible, such as having enough energy to make it to 9 P.M., or intangible, such as feeling accomplished.
3. How would achieving this desire or outcome make you feel? Keep going a few layers to find out that feeling you desire deep down. Take inventory of your desires and make sure they are your own. Don’t rely on other people to define or achieve them.
4. What outcome would support that feeling?
5. What are the daily actionable steps that will support you in achieving that outcome? List as many as you can think of, and don’t worry if you don’t know these off the top of your head. This book will teach you what you need to do.
Daily Step 1
Daily Step 2
Daily Step 3 (and so on)
First comes desire, then the actionable daily goals. The outcome will be a natural by-product of the desire and daily actions.
It’s okay to start with the outcome in mind if you’re not sure what the desired feeling is, but work backward until you identify the desire. Remember, the desire is the fuel that will keep you engaged and committed to your daily actionable steps. Here are a few examples per the five questions above:
OLD GOAL: Have more energy.
OLD GOAL: Lose 10 pounds.
OLD GOAL: Have better skin.
Notice the differences in the desired feelings, outcomes, and daily actionable goals in the three examples above. It’s also important to note here that you’re free to reevaluate often. By nature, women are cyclical creatures.
We talked about the “F-word” (freedom) in the previous section, and it applies here, too. Just because you set a goal once doesn’t mean that you’re not free to reevaluate. Every now and again, reevaluate and reconnect with the purpose of your goals. Are they still yours? Are they still valid? Are they still helping you move toward your desired outcomes?
Now that you know how to set goals, there’s one more simple, yet powerful, thing that you need to do, and that’s to believe that it’s possible.
Your beliefs shape your thinking, and your daily thoughts influence your daily actions. Your beliefs, or lack thereof, are the biggest barrier to achieving what you want. If you don’t believe it’s possible, it will never happen.
So take a moment to sit up, take a deep breath, and believe that you can create the habit of health. As Einstein said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Having the belief that you can change your life for the better, even if other things have failed before, is the most critical first step to creating the desired outcomes you just identified. I believe in you. I know you have it in you to create positive change. Now I’m asking for you to believe in you.
This book will be your guide, and together with your belief that you can do it, you will change your life for good.