Transcript:
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: We all know what it feels like to start a new habit and then quit. It feels terrible, but it's practically the human experience. Here's the good news. It does not take a lot to step out of widespread failure into something that actually helps you successfully change. So today, we're going to give you some very simple mindset flips and strategies that help you stop starting over and over and over again.
Hey, this is Jennifer.
And this is Heather. And in this episode, we're going to help you find the new strategies you need to find success this year. So at the start of the new year, most of us set goals to improve our health. In fact, we set more health goals during New Year's than any other time of the year.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: I guess because we're filled with so much hope and optimism, which I don't say sarcastically. I genuinely mean that. It's true.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: There's a natural energy that comes in New Year's and they know that in order to change something, there's always forces that push you to change and there's forces that push back against change. And during New Year's, I just think there's more forces that can help push you to change.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: But then something called Quitter's Day arrives. It's true. So Heather and I learned about this and we both looked at each other and said, ooh, we need to talk about this.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: Yes, because it's not an official holiday, but what Quitter's Day is, is the average day that a majority of people will give up on their New Year's resolutions. Such a bummer.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: It is. We've all been there, though. We don't say that. We've definitely abandoned some New Year's resolutions.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: We have. And it happens to all of us almost usually on the second Friday in January, which is just about two weeks into the New Year.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Which I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of, uh, That's what's going to happen. Or I knew it. I could feel that one coming. And then we just kind of slink away and pretend that we never made that new goal to begin with.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: It's true. But here's the thing. I think people use that as a reason to not set New Year's goals.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yes, which is a growing trend I feel like we're seeing. Yeah, anti-resolution, anti-change.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: But did you know that New Year's is still the most successful time to try to change?
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yes, it's 10 times more likely to succeed if you do a new change at New Year's.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: And think about that. Change is hard. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do. So why wouldn't you start changing at a time of year where you're 10 times more likely to succeed?
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: which is why today we are proposing a new perspective on this third Friday of the month, which is Fix It Friday.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: Yeah, so you start on the first Friday, you get potentially a little bogged down on that second Friday, and so the third Friday is the perfect time to just stop learn from how it started in the new year, revise your plan, and then keep going.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: So let's get into it. Let's start breaking down the top three reasons we see that makes your starts for your health goals just keep stopping.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: And what I do want to say is, for real, you'll get a lot of complex huge lists of why your goals failed, but we're really going to boil it down to the very top three that statistically affect people the most right here, right now. And the first problem is that hard starts are easy to stop.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yeah, if you are silently celebrating Quitter's Day in your head right now, where you go, ooh, I think I've kind of already slid off on X, Y, Z goal, you most likely picked an out-of-touch version of a goal or a resolution. So simply put, you picked a hard start. On average, most of us pick unrealistic starting points.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: Yes. Now here's the thing. 35% of people who fail to accomplish goals So here's the thing, 35% of people who fail to accomplish goals, they can see set an unrealistic goal or a hard one. And it's human nature to want the best, to get it fixed, to hurry up, to go fast. But unrealistic goals, hard goals, just way too easy to quit.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: So what is the solution to a hard start that was easy to stop? Well, it's an easy start that's hard to stop.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: I love that flip because it's absolutely true. You just need to dial it back, start smaller, and then build confidence in yourself that you can do something so you can keep working up to that hard version you dream of becoming a reality in your life.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yeah, I think what gets confusing with this thinking is that many times we look at it and go, but it seems so simple or too easy, quote unquote, and we don't feel like we're challenging ourselves enough. Right? Whatever that mindset is. But the reframe on it is that consistency is king. And so when you create an easy start, what does that mean? It means that you're more likely to continue to do it over and over again and you start to show yourself that you are capable of this change. And then you can keep making it harder and harder.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: So Jen, what's a way that you would make it easier for someone who has this big new goal in the new year to do something like cooking more meals at home?
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: You want to use more pre-made foods that are already prepped or frozen foods, because it's already a change where you're spending more time in the kitchen. And so if you start with, you go from, oh, wow, I was always just picking up food and bringing it in the house and eating it. And you suddenly go to, wow, I spent an hour making this dinner. You haven't built up the resiliency or the mental reframe around that to see that as time well spent, nor does cooking at home have to look like an hour in the kitchen. That's a big deal. But what happens is when you're not used to cooking, things take longer. They do. So inevitably, at the beginning, things will not be 20 minutes. They will be a little bit longer than you want them to be. So using shortcut foods, like premade foods or frozen foods, helps to cut down on the time naturally. so that way you don't feel like suddenly your life is now being lived in the kitchen. And so this is an example of setting a realistic goal that builds consistency. So if you never eat at home and you want to be cooking more at home, we're just going to keep going with that example, then you want to only start trying to make a meal at home once a week. because that's building your consistency up. And then if you legitimately make a meal at home, you know, two weeks in a row, and you're feeling really confident, you can then add on another day that you're cooking something at home. But it's allowing you to go at a pace that you can maintain instead of feeling like, oh, I already failed at it. I already messed it up. By skipping the next week, because you were so overwhelmed with how long it took you the first time to make a meal,
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: It's a really important shift because when you can find those ways to make things easy and you build the consistency you get the change you're looking for.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: The second way that you set yourself up to create a realistic goal is to think through your barriers.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: This is a big one because a lot of people will do a pretty good job with the goal Yeah, more often more often than not but what they won't add on to it is what would stop me from achieving this goal or what are the barriers and Really thinking through what does my day look like now?
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: When do I feel the most stress when do I feel like I got the most behind and those are the type of barriers you want to plan for so late nights or unexpected phone calls or it's raining, the things that you weren't planning on but are bound to happen, you want to have taken the time to think through those so that way you've offered yourself a solution to still keep working towards your goal that overcomes that barrier as well.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: This one is so important that even if you haven't fallen victim to Quitter's Day and you're still doing decent, if you haven't taken the time to look at your new goal for the new year, and plan for the barriers, that wiggle of interruption or the ditch that trips you up is still waiting for you. So pause any goal that you have right now, look at it, and ask yourself if you've planned for barriers. It will make a world of difference for keeping you on track. I will also say if this is not your natural strength and it's hard for you to plan a good goal and even think through barriers, definitely consider working with someone because we all have different things we're good at. There are people in the world who are so great at being able to anticipate barriers and being able to
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Well, to walk you through being able to create a goal that is doable at first, that is accounting for barriers, so that way you're building confidence in your, and your belief that you can accomplish this goal. Because that is the number one way you're going to continue to be successful, is if your own belief starts to elevate of like, you know what? I am becoming someone who cooks at home. I've kept this up. I've been doing it once a week. This is so exciting. I actually think I might be liking it. Now I can go to twice a week because I'm getting a rhythm. I'm understanding how to do this. And there's nothing more powerful than giving yourself the time to build that. Because I would say the greatest barrier to allowing yourself to create a goal like this is the patience to just let it slowly plot along. Yeah, you're not gonna be cooking 100% of your meals within three weeks. But if you allow yourself to do this, you will be cooking a lot of your meals, potentially even 85% by the end of the year. And then for a lifetime, because you allowed yourself to cultivate and build that habit slowly over time in a way that you could sustain.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: And when you look at one year versus a lifetime, it really pays to have the patience to get you to that lifetime habit.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: I would say this is one of the biggest things that can be really eye-opening and just be really impactful for creating long-term change is understanding that the people you see doing behaviors or habits on social media, and you're going, oh, I just wish I could do that, or, oh, I think my life would be completely different if I learned how to do that, is you are seeing them at their success point. that you're not seeing them at their failures. Anyone who succeeds at establishing and building in a habit has allowed themselves to fall flat on their face. Yes. But also allowed themselves to do it slowly. In most cases. Yeah, there's the rare person that just does and goes and woo, and they're inspiring, don't get me wrong. But Heather and I did not change meaningful health habits overnight.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: Yes, you can't set yourself up to need to be the exception to the rule. Yes. There are exceptions to every rule. We are not the exceptions. No, and most people aren't. If you can sit with that, then you can create plans that actually get you to success. So the next thing that we see universally gets a lot of people and trips them up on their new health goals. Ourselves included. Yes. We have fallen victim to this is a mindset that you failed when in fact you didn't fail. You relapsed. There's a difference.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Catastrophizing is what's telling you you failed.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: Yes. It's just taking one event or situation and just blowing it up to where you're a failure.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: I always call that voice in your head Miss Negative Nancy. She's mean. She loves to get very loud and tell you that you are a failure. You messed it up. Look at that. It's amazing how when you get into this line of thinking, how you no longer see what you have accomplished so far. So like, for example, you were rolling, you're eight weeks into cooking at home once a week, and then something that was completely outside of your control, like your oven breaks, or your boss asks you to stay late, or you get a flat tire, like so many different reasons for why potentially, oh, you couldn't do that meal at home. This way of thinking will then have you saying to yourself, oh, I guess I'm just not someone who cooks at home. Oh, I messed it up. I might as well just quit. And the reframe on it is that you just relapsed. Or it's also called a lapse. So there's a little bit of a difference. A lapse is a temporary slip. So where if you manage the next week to start making that meal in your kitchen again, you got through this moment of catastrophizing and you got right back into it, that would be just called a lapse where you missed a week, but you kept moving forward. A relapse is actually a continuation of your old behavior.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: You just start going and pulling and trying to bring it home.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yeah, you're now a month out because, you know, it wasn't worth continuing to try because you wrecked it. I blew it. And we don't have to keep thinking this way. When you know that relapses are actually normal, And in fact, 80% of people who create new goals or changes are going to relapse at least once. It's inevitable. 80% of us are going to relapse at least once. Then you can start digging yourself out of that catastrophizing hole and remind yourself, wait a minute. Wait, wait, let me think. I heard something. This isn't a failure. This is a relapse, and I can change it.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: I think once you know that it's inbound, 80% is an almost guaranteed to happen kind of a number. That gives you freedom to just reframe it into a learning opportunity. And that's the solution to this problem. as you go through any health change no matter what time of year it is when you relapse or when you have that lapse it's so important to just say wait what can be learned from this opportunity and then change your approach for success because then the next time you'll go even longer before you lapse or relapse again because you have new tools in your toolbox that are going to help you.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yes you are the solution to the problem you are not the problem. Yeah, it's a huge reframe. When you start to see yourself as the person who gets to figure out and show up and find solutions to why something wasn't working, or maybe you hit a little hiccup, it really does change how easily catastrophizing can slow you down. This is something that I tell my clients all the time is, OK, this situation happened. It was unexpected. It's a complete bummer. You feel like it completely derailed you. But the reframe on it is, OK, what did we learn from this? What are the solutions? So let's go back to, right, you were rolling in your kitchen. You were cooking that home-cooked meal once a week. and you had this hiccup that your boss asked you to stay late and you weren't expecting it, now you know that's a scenario that could happen, at least occasionally. What is your backup plan for when that moment happens? Do you just have a backup freezer meal that you can pull out of the freezer and heat up so that you still know it's something that you cooked? Or do you just push your cooking to the next day where you are just ready to roll with it and say, okay, everything will still last in the fridge. It's allowing yourself to problem solve that, that barrier that popped up so that it doesn't derail you in the future.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: And that changes everything when you can just see it as a learning opportunity. Now, third big way that people will fail is that they didn't set up a way to track their progress. Now, I did not know this early on.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Oh, no, I was a tracker resistor. Yes, I had no idea. If I'm being really honest, I'm still working on getting better at tracking.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: But the numbers don't lie. You have to start tracking. And the main reason I really think this makes a difference is like, take hydration. You're getting better at drinking, but then you have a really bad day at work, it's stressful, you don't drink enough water. If you're not tracking the next day, you don't really remember it.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: It didn't really happen. But you have a raging headache and you don't know why.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: You don't feel good, you're tired, and you're not going to increase your water intake or do anything to improve your hydration. Whereas if you're tracking and you look back in the morning to record your first, you know, glass of water and you're like, oh my gosh, yesterday is empty. Then you're like, wait a second, how I feel makes sense. What derailed me yesterday? Why didn't I drink the water? You think through how to do better in the day that you're in. And you can also kind of, again. Identify patterns. Identify patterns. Because you're tracking. It would be invisible to you if you weren't tracking.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yeah, tracking can be really life-changing. It truly can, especially if you have food triggers, triggering migraines. I think in general, when we're in the conversation of health, there's many different ways of tracking. I think most people think tracking food when they hear the word tracking, but in general, we are talking about if you are trying to establish a new habit, you should be at least checking a box that lets you know if you followed through on that habit or that goal. on the day that you were supposed to, or if you did not, and that starts to let you know, how's my consistency doing? Because when they look at research, if you know that you haven't been doing something for X amount of time, or oops, I skipped it, you are more likely to right the ship. and get back on track quicker if you have that accountability partner with writing things down and tracking it.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: It's true and I want to make one note there are a million ways to track especially now there's actually a lot of great health tracking apps We use an app, Healthy, for helping people track goals and habits. But sometimes it's too complex to learn, and it's another barrier of something your brain has to account for in habit changes. And then you're just going to want to print a piece of paper and have the ability to track a habit old-school style, pen and paper. Or even if printing is a barrier, then you're going to want an index card. I don't even care if you use the back of an envelope. You can just use a notebook. You have to have a way where you have the line item of the habit and if you're able to track that you're doing it.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: However, if you don't have a habit tracker or you're thinking right now, it would be kind of fun to just try tracking for a little bit to get my water intake up or just start cooking more in the kitchen. Whatever it may be that you're currently working on, we do have a habit tracker collection. It's a collection. It's a collection. There's different ways that you can track your habits. We have three different options in this pdf that you can download and so we're just trying to help eliminate some barriers if you're thinking, I don't, I couldn't just show up and do it in a notebook. I don't know how to do it. We have some examples that you can go look at on our website.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: Yep, you're just going to go to the podcast page, look for this episode and there you'll be able to get the download. So habit tracking is this first statistically relevant way they know if you're a possibly going to achieve the hard and possible task of behavior change. The second statistically relevant way is another form of accountability. It's telling someone, did you have a group, friends or family, or just even like a health group that you could tell about your goal?
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yeah, in fact, they know that people who tell someone else about the change that they're doing are 40% more likely to be successful at achieving it than someone who does not.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: And since we know change is hard, again, layer on the thing that's going to make it 40% more likely to succeed.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: If there's a goal that you have been working very hard to achieve and you feel like you're someone who takes one step forward and then three steps back, starting to use these new mindsets and these reframes can make all the difference for starting to feel like you start making two steps forward. But truly, you have the power to change it. It's all about the problem solving and seeing the challenges that are before you in new ways and having the belief that you are capable of doing it differently. Remember, Quitter's Day is just a concept, right? Quitting, it's so easy to do. It's so final. But you have the power to overcome it and to start believing that you can make positive health changes in your life. We promise if you start working on catching yourself when you start catastrophizing, or if you're not having success with a goal, if you apply these tools, if you put these tools in your toolbox, you are going to start to see meaningful change. The one thing that we are going to leave you with is you're worth the time, effort, and energy it takes to check in on your current goals and why maybe you're not making the forward progress on them that you would like.
Heather Young, C-IAYT, CPT, E-RYT 500, CES: Because this is the best time of year to make those changes. And usually with just some simple adjustments, you can keep going. and find success.
Jennifer Klotz, MS, RDN, LDN: Yes, it is not all lost. In fact, you have 11 months before you. So do not quit. Don't stop. Taking the effort to make sure that your starts do not keep stopping will absolutely pay off in the long run.
