Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The 5 Habit Myths Around Health - With Dr. Heather McKee

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts, go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep113/   To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership, go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com   This episode is all about kick-starting your habits to make healthy choices.  Dr. Heather McKee is the UK's leading lifestyle behavior change specialist. Having studied health behavior change psychology for ten years, her mission is to offer a sustainable, evidence-based alternative to an industry saturated with quick fixes and health fads.  She supports businesses in designing and evaluating digital and in-person wellness programs for long-term adherence and positive health outcomes. And runs the Bite-Sized Healthy Habits course for individuals looking to create lasting habit change, you can kickstart your own healthy habits by joining her free 5-day Bite Sized Habits challenge here https://www.bitesizedhabits.co/ Dr. McKee's research has been published internationally in leading academic journals, as well as featuring in Time magazine, Vogue, Huffington Post, The Times, and LA Times. Please see our medical disclaimer.

We need to focus on skill power, not willpower. We need to focus on systems for change. We need to, you know, I think it's time for people to stop blaming themselves when they fail at one of their habits. We need to start blaming their systems. Resetters, Dr. Mindy here. And I am on a mission to teach you just how powerful your body was built to be. This podcast is about giving you the power back and helping you believe in yourself again. Let's jump in.

On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Heather McKee. So she is UK's leading behavioral change specialist. And you're going to see that because I brought her on to chat with us all about what are we missing when we go to change a habit? Why is it so difficult to change habits in our life and how do we create a lifestyle that is not only working with our health, working with our happiness, but feels effortless. And sometimes, I don't know about you all, but sometimes when I go to change a habit, it feels like changing that habit is like climbing Mount Everest. So I brought Dr. McKee on because she has over 10 years of studying behavior change.

She's on a mission to help us all, and you'll hear that. and she has these five habit myths around changing habits that blew my mind. Missed like she doesn't feel like it takes willpower to change a habit. She has some great strategies for dealing with the inner critic when the inner critic shows up. She also doesn't necessarily buy into the fact that you have to repeat a habit over and over and over again to make it last in your life. she's not a big fan of goal setting, big goals. She has other strategies that you can apply when it comes to your goals to be able to create a life that you absolutely love living in.

So whether you want to lose weight, whether you're trying to come back from a chronic illness, whether you're just wanting more joy in your life, there are so many nuggets of information in this conversation that I think you will find incredibly helpful. So Dr. Heather McKee, I'm excited to bring this to you. And as always, if you resonate with this information, leave me a review. Let me know that's how we continue to have great conversations on this podcast is when we know what you all are looking for. And if it moves you, please share this podcast out into the world.

The world definitely needs more joy right now. And conversations like this will help you see that joy is a whole lot easier to create in your life. then you may have thought. Dr. Heather McKee, enjoy. Yeah, we have a very exuberant audience. People are wanting to make change. And so I really wanted to bring you on to talk about behavior change and how we can take some of the amazing concepts that people are learning on a free platforms like iTunes and Instagram and YouTube. And how do we take these principles and help people put them into action? because the mind seems to get in the way.

Would you agree? Yeah, no, absolutely, totally. And I think we all have this intention, action, gap, you know, and then that's something that holds a lot of us back is that we have all the will in the world, all the motivation in the world, but we can't manage to make things happen. And I think that's where behavioral science really kind of forms that role.

You know, we can be told that we need to do these things. You understand the ingredients of change. But it's actually taking those ingredients and, you know, understanding the methodology, how do they work in our busy, complex lives and how you apply them to our lives. That is the piece that people are missing. And I feel like that's what behavioral psychology gives people. Yeah, agreed, agreed. I feel like you, all you have to do is go look at, read the comments on my social media,

and you see all different types of, strategies that people will apply to be able to take even a simple concept like intermittent fasting and try to figure out how to integrate that into their life while undoing behavioral habits that may be holding them back. So can you talk a little bit? You had something on your website that really was fascinating to me and actually was new information for me around habits. And it's this five, you have five habit myths. And I want to tell you that I pretty much think I've, I think I've fallen prey to all five. Okay. Tell me one. Do you remember. Okay. So let's start with, I'm going to start with the first one. It's about willpower. Myth number one. It's about willpower.

How come it's not about willpower making a change? Yeah. So interesting, isn't it? We so often we think you need to white knuckle our way to success. And, you know, especially, I suppose, this time of year, you know, January is just past and people are thinking, you know, you know, we think, okay, we're going to give up sugar, we're going to run every day, we're going to be nice to our kids, we're going to do all of the things. And actually, the more that we add in, the more likely we are to take away, and it's the concept in psychology known as gold dilution. And, you know, we dilute our effectiveness.

And that's because Will Pillar is, it's a bit like a muscle. So if I went to the gym for the next week and just train my right bice, at the time I get to the end of the week, I wouldn't be able to pick up a cup of tea. But if I went once a week for seven weeks, you know, slowly giving myself rest and recovery in between, I would get stronger. And the key here is that if we kind of go all in and try and do too much at once, which is what we so often try and do with our habits. You know, we try and pick off far more than we can chew. It just makes us less likely to be successful long term. You know, our willpower does fail.

And I like to refocus people and say, we need to focus on skill power, not willpower. We need to focus on systems for change. We need to, you know, I think it's time for people to stop blaming themselves when they fail at one of their habits. We need to start blaming our systems instead. And that's certainly something we've seen in our studies that those are long-term successful at maintaining healthy habits for those that kind of relapse into all behaviors. Actually, the people that fail, they ask themselves, well, why did I fail? Where did my system fail? You know, did I not have my things set up in the right way?

did I need myself to go too hungry in this situation? Was I vulnerable? Was I more emotionally vulnerable? What systems can I have in place to help me next time? And those are the people that are most successful. So a way to overcome the kind of willpower myth is to start small instead of big and build for time. Because therefore, you don't use up too much of your precious willpower. And actually, what we want to do is at the start, our motivation is really high, but habits are low.

we want to repeat things often enough that they become habitual and so that we don't need our motivation anymore because habits are non-conscious processes. So just like, you know, Mindy, you probably lay, it didn't lie in bed this morning, you know, weighing up the pros and cons of dental hygiene or deciding if you're in the tooth-prishing kind of zone, you probably just brush your teeth because it's a habit that you had. You probably didn't have to motivate yourself to make your complete this morning or, you know, the various different habits, have a shower or whatever the habits that are in your life. because they're automatic non-conscious prices. And that's where we want to get with our health habits. We want to do them, just like keep brushing. We don't have to willpower our way. It's something that just happens in our life.

So what do we do? You know, I'm the type of person that's like, if a little bit's good, a lot is going to be better. And so one of the ways I've motivated myself is by not appreciating the moment that I'm in. So let's use, you know, 30 years ago, I had chronic fatigue syndrome. And I couldn't get out of bed. So I was crazy motivated to do whatever any doctor told me to do so that I could just get out of bed.

So doing one thing at that moment would have actually been torturous for me. And I don't know if it's just my personality. I needed like 20 things to give me hope to feel like I was actually going to move myself. out of this situation. So one of the challenges I have with doing only a few habit changes when your motivation is high is, is it enough? And for me, I worry I will lose motivation. Yeah.

And the thing is, you will lose motivation. You are human. You know, all humans cannot sustain the same level of motivation. And what I would say in terms of, you know, and especially when you're motivated due to, you know, a chronic illness is something as debilitating as, you know, fatigue. Absolutely, you know, we feel like we want to make all of the changes kind of all at once. And the key here is that, you know, we make changes that are going to support our willpower rather than to plead us.

And what I mean by that is that we're not setting ourselves 20 million different tiny goals to follow all at once. that we're focusing on kind of one key thing. And then the rest of the things that we're looking at are environmental changes, if that makes sense. Okay. So things that, such as, you know, pre-scheduling our workout. So then we know when and where they're happening in advance so we don't have to think about it. Things like double batch cooking our meals in advance so we don't have to think about our meals for the next day.

Things like laying out. your yoga mat last thing at night. So it's the first thing you trip over in the morning. So it's almost, it's a cue that's physically in your environment. Because habits work off this loop, which is a cure or a trigger in response. And then you respond to that with a behavior in response to a reward. So it's a cue, a behavior, and a reward. And the thing is, you want the cue to be so obvious that you don't have to think about it.

You don't have to will your way into it. It's just like, you know, if you have a glass of water sitting in front of you all the time at all times it's much more likely that you're going to engage in that because you've set up an environment that makes it easier to make that choice and so that's something that you can do and then when it comes to the goals here's a way that you can check in to make sure if they are small enough to be successful. Ask yourself on a scale of one to ten over the next week so break them down into just seven day periods. Oh, I wish to achieve how likely is it that I'm going to be engaging in it this time next week? If you're not at least 70% or more likely to be engaging with it then you're

got to make it easier. And even if you are 70% and more likely, you've got to ask yourself, well, what will take you to 100%. I love that because so one of my favorite quotes is do something today that your tomorrow self will thank you for. And so I think a lot when it comes to my health habits, I think, okay, how I live my life today is really a gift to my tomorrow self. And if I can think about always my tomorrow self in the process of my daily habits,

that has propelled me along a lot of different health habits for the longevity, for years being able to do that. So I love what you're saying because you can get really enthusiastic about something new. And if you could project out, if A, that tomorrow self will be grateful that you stuck with it. And B, is the tomorrow's self going to be entertained enough to stick with it? But that's an awesome idea. I really like that.

I love that. I absolutely love what you're saying. Because what I always say in habit change is you want to be your future self's best friend. And one way to really, really check in with this as well. And this is from Dr. Kelly McGonagall. She talks about think about your most exhausted self because that's the thing. We all think about our future selves being perfect, having ironclad willpower, you know, never really giving into temptation, being able to resist everything.

But like we live in the real world. We're going to get in an argument with someone. We're going to be tired at some stage. We're going to be in a bad mood at some stage. You know, we're going to be hungry at some stage. All of these things are going to affect us. And so a way to kind of bring that into what we've just talked about is, well, to say, well, on a scale of one to ten, how much will my most exhaust itself?

How likely are they to be able to be still tired of a week from now? Or my most depleted self, or my most fatigued self, or my most stressed out felt. Interesting. You know, because if you know you've got a week coming up, there is absolutely no point in setting up your habit in a way that you can only do it if circumstances are perfect because welcome to life, that's never going to happen. And so you need to set up your habits in a way that they can weather the storm because habits

are formed through repetition. And so the thing is, if you do the same thing in the same circumstance, enough times, it becomes a habit. And that's what we want. We want this repetition. but if you can only repeat your habit when the circumstances are perfect, then you're not going to allow it to become a habit. And that's where habit takes over from motivation,

when you can repeat it in all circumstances. Then you don't have to be motivated anymore. Wow. Okay. So if I go to, that's that I love it. And my brain goes to if my exhausted self can't even get off the couch, she's not going to want to go for a walk. She's not going to really, she's going to want to eat something that is going to give me a dopamine rush as opposed to something that is just going to be good for my, by body.

So I might not want to eat healthy. Like what if the exhausted self is depressed and like how do I, how do I create a positive habit for her if that depleted state feels so low? like how do you change any habit in that moment? Wonderful question because that is life. Right. And that is something that we say. How do you come back from that? There's two things here.

One is we need to look at the habits that we wish to create on a scale. So say you want to eat healthier or you want to exercise more. What is a 10 on that scale? So for example, exercising more or the perfect exercise routine for you might be two hit training three times a week. So that's your 10. So what's your 8? What's your 7? What's your 6? What's your 3? You know, is that a 20-minute walk? Is that a 15-minute walk? Is that just doing some squats while the kettle boils? Like, we need to look at our habits on a scale of 1 to 10 because our life is not always accommodating of the 10. And most of the time, our life is much more in the 6s or the 5s or the 4th or the 3s.

And so we have to get away from this all or nothing mindset, where it has to be, you know, hit training or nothing. It has to be the most perfect dietary day or nothing. It has to be, or if I only do 20 minutes of meditation, otherwise I fail. You know, it cannot, we have to get rid of this all or nothing. And the beautiful thing about actually having the scale, having a scale of 1 to 10 for any habit that you're wishing to create, is that it teaches the brain that it's not all or nothing. It actually opens up new mural pathways and says it's not run or rain. If you go outside and it's raining, it's like, okay, I put on my jacket and I go out with a killer playlist and I feel like Rocky.

Or I've got this online for runners alternative workout that I can do in this time. I've got nine other options here right now that are available to me if this happens. And this is a concept in psychology note as implementation. intention. So if you know that a certain thing get in your way time and time again, and we do tend to know, it tends to be those same sticky things that get in our way. So if that barrier comes up, you need to start thinking about, well, what are my alternative? One way is to have that scale because it can really help you see, well, you know, I don't have to exercise 10 out of 10 every day, but there are nine other options available to me.

And so people need to start brainstorming because we will have those barriers. Those barriers, will certainly, and I always say this to anyone on my habits program, I say, there's one thing I want for you and I want you to fail because failure is success if you want for men. And it's all about understanding where that fits in the context of your busy life. And we need to stop putting ourselves under pressure to make perfect habits and to never fail because that's not going to teach us anything. And habits are for life, not just for January. So we want to be able to create these habits that we can keep going years and years and years

from there. So a great way to approach that is to scale back your habits to have a look at, well, what's a 10 out of 10, what's a 9, what's a 8, what's the 7th, all the way to have, and experiment with that. I love that and it actually ties really well into the second myth that you have, which is ignore your inner critic because my inner critic in that, again, I'm working at, you know, 52 years old to just live a more balanced life and not be that go-go kind of push, push person that I've been most my life. But my inner critic would say to that comment, you're being lazy. You're not doing enough. So I think when we look at chunking this down and making the goal very attainable, giving it the scale like you talked about, how do you handle the

inner critic? Because some inner critics will say, I'm not doing enough. And other inner critics will say, I can't do enough. So how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we handle that inner critic? Yeah. And that, that is tough. It is hard because, you know, we've been taught our habits too. And the more we think it a certain way, the more, the stronger that muscle is in our, in our brain. Yeah.

The more likely it is to be a default. And so one way to do that is to first be noticed when that critic comes up. And critics have a way of coming up around certain situations. situations. You might notice that they come up at certain times a day or in response to after a conversation with a certain person or after you've been on social media or you've been triggered by something else. And I say, thought their habits too. So look at what's the cue there? What's the key or the trigger? First of all, that actually brings out that behavior of being an inner critic. Because that can be something to examine. And I would say to people they want to do that,

track that over the next week. Have a look at when does your inner critic start to shout a little bit louder because that's going to tell you a lot about how to unlock that habit and actually, you know, you can really, really learn a lot from that. And once you understand those situations that your inner critic comes about, that's when you can start to take actions then. That's when you can start to investigate, okay, what is this rhetoric? What are they saying to me time and time again? And one thing to do is you can look at catching that language, first of all, because awareness is the first step. The second piece is about reframing that. How does your inner critic turn into an inner coach?

Because what we know from the research is that those that are most self-compassionate, those that give them themselves the most encouragement, they're actually the people that stick to their goals best. You know, we all think that if we're going to be kind to ourselves and we're going to be compassionate, that we're just going to sit in our PJs all day and order pizza. that. But actually, the most compassionate people do what they know is going to make them feel best at that time. And so one way to train yourself in compassion, because compassion is a skill like anything else. It's not a switch you can turn off. I'm not going to promise you that you're going to be

able to turn off that inner critic. It's like any other habit. It's a skill that we need to work on. We need to have awareness first. We need to recognize the situations that comes up in. We need to look at reframing it as often as we can. But we also then, how do we do? that. Well, one beautiful way to do that is there's an amazing researcher called Dr. Kristen Ness, and she has a thing called a self-care check-in,

which is several times throughout the day when you feel yourself triggered, when you hear that critic rather than that coat shouting at you, ask yourself, what in this moment do I need to nourish myself? What do I mean in this moment to nourish myself?

Now, that could be physical. Maybe you haven't had a glass of water, or maybe you need to eat. Maybe it's emotional. Maybe it's that you're feeling lonely or tired or vulnerable or disconnected. Can you reach out to someone? Can you have a phone call? Can you go out and actually chat to someone?

You might be physical in terms of you're holding too much tension in your body. Maybe you need to release. Maybe you need some breathing exercises. It's about actually going through the spectrum of what wellness is, is a physical, emotional, social and asking yourself, where in that am I needing nourishment right now? And I think that's an important thing to train people in because it's not always physical. It can often be emotional. It can be psychological.

Maybe you're feeling stress. Maybe you're feeling wound up. Maybe you just need to your breath. Maybe you've been at the computer all day and you need to take a break. But what that does is it trains ourselves to actually look at, well, what are the physical, social, emotional, psychological needs right now rather than just listening to the inner critic. And that's how we can train ourselves in compassion and move away from this critic. Would it be helpful to have like a toolbox of go-toes when that depleted moment hits and the inner critic shows up?

Again, I just can only speak for myself that I know when the inner critic shows up. Sometimes it takes me a while to unravel it. Like I can be aware of it, but then I'm an action-oriented person. So I need to put another, I love this. this idea of like, what can I do to fill myself up because I need to put myself in some action place for me to turn that inner critic off. So would it be helpful if you, like let's say, I'm just going to use fasting as an example. You're starting to learn how to fast a little longer. And then all of a sudden you get hungry, you get dizzy, you're, and the inner critic says,

see, you can't do this. And maybe that inner critic is even you. Maybe that inner critic is, is a parent that told you you weren't enough and all these things come bubbling up to the surface. In that moment, I have found that sometimes it's hard to unravel myself. So if I had a toolbox that I could go to and say, oh, remember when you get like this, you should breathe, or you should go outside and get in the sun. Like, is that helpful for quieting the inner critic? Absolutely. I love that.

Now, brilliant, yeah. And actually there is a specific exercise we can do with that because it's the same thing is coming up time and time again. So if you're trying to fat, and the key thing that's coming up is, look, you're going to fail at this because you failed and everything else before. Say that's the thought that comes up.

So what I would say, and this is what I was encouraging around tracking, write that down. And then once you have that written down, we can capture those same ones that come up because it tends to be same four or five, you know, retarics that we have. our head from our childhood or from more recent times that keep coming up again again. Capturing those is brilliant.

And then, you know, the Dalai Lama has a lovely quote, which is one of the most positive, powerful ways to create positivity in your life is to reframe those negative thoughts. And how we reframe those is we look for the truth. Because the thing is, we have this negativity bias. We have five times as many negative thoughts as we have positive thoughts. And what we need to do is we need to train that coach. We need to train the brain to be on the lookout for that positivity. And I don't mean this in terms of a just-sing positive point of view.

If that keeps coming up for you time and time again, you'll fail at this. You failed many times before. What's a positive truth that could count to that? Where is the truth? If that's the negativity, where is the truth as well? Because we need to balance them out. So maybe it's tried a lot of things before, that you keep picking. yourself up time and time again and trying because you care about what the outcomes are.

And so for each of those negative kind of critics that you have, I want you to really examine those and actually pull the positive from that. Paul, what's the truth in this situation? Well, here I am, trying again. Here I am. Fight what's happened in the past showing up time and time and time again because I'm dedicated to my help because I care about where this gets me. I care about what is giving back in my life. Yeah, I love that. And you just gave me a thought about the fact that the brain is negative biased. And I will tell you, you know, in working with hundreds of thousands of people on our social media,

you see that languaging show up over and over and again, that the brain wants to tilt towards negativity. Why is that? Why can it, you know, why is it because if our, like, this is my thought, is if our brain is programmed for negativity, can there be good in that? Like I've used negative thoughts to motivate me before. So is there a way to use that negative bias instead of trying to just find the truth? Is there a way to use it to propel you forward? What great question. So where it comes from is from evolution and those that were most anxious of threat were those ones that survived. And so you can see how that

can help you. Yeah. When you're running from a diet, The dinosaur is an email from your boss or something else. You can see where it can get quite fraught and not helpful. But basically those that were most anxious and those that were best able to perceive threats were those that survived. And of course then, you know, it was a survival instinct. So naturally as humans, you know, we're going to default into negativity. In fact, it's really interesting.

We spend, I think, five more time, five times more brain attention on negative emojis than we do on positive emojis. For every one negative piece of news, we have to read six times as much positive to kind of counterbalance that. And so what we know is that, you know, chronic negativity and chronic negative exposure has lasting negative outcomes on our health, makes us more stress, it causes a lot of information in the body, it can cause all sorts of difficulties long term. And that's why we try and encourage, you.

you know, people to balance the negativity. It's not about not acknowledging it. Because like you say, you know, it can be a powerful skill in some way. It's just about using it in a way, using it for good rather than using it for harm. And that's the difference. And I think the way to really understand that is to go back to the very, very start, which is something I always encourage anyone to do when they're starting out on a habit change. It's to ask themselves why.

Because the thing is, so often we start out and have a change thinking about just the numbers alone. So we think about the number on the scales or the number we can lift at the gym or the number of miles we can get in our fitness tracker. And we let that be the sole indicator of success. We let that kind of be where our motivation hangs literally in the balance of what those numbers are. And it doesn't matter how much effort we put in that week. If that number doesn't reflect the effort, we get disheartened and we can, discontinue the goal. And that's called extrinsic motivation. So any goal that's followed for performance or appearance reasons for numbers alone, that's extrinsic. And it can last for a couple of

weeks. It can motivate us for a couple of weeks, but long term, that's not going to work. What we want to do is you want to focus on intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic is the most beautiful word because it translates into Latin as inward or goods for the soul. And we want to follow our goals because their goods for our soul because they're personally meaningful for us because they give us something back in our lives. We want to be healthy because it allows us to make a better contribution at work, allows us to be a better parent, a better role model in our community, whatever it happens to be. And so I always say to people, and I've stolen this from Simon Sinek, but we want to start with why. Yeah. When it comes to any goal, and that can help us tune into, are we positively,

are we doing this for a positive reason? Or are we doing it for a negative, extrinsic reason? And so are we doing this in a way that's going to be most supportive and helpful for us, or actually are we undermining our own success by actually doing it in a non-positive way? And the thing is what we know from the research is that those that do things for intrinsic reasons, because they can see the contribution it makes them know. So they can see that fasting gives them more energy long-term, makes them feel more empowered around their health. So we can see that it gives us all of these amazing long-term benefits,

and they connect with that. We're not looking at what's missing out. on. We're not looking at what we lose by that, looking at what we gain. We're looking at what it gives us back in our life. And if we can connect with what something gives us back, the contribution it makes. Then it's much more easy to use that. And that is the type of motivation that's sticky in a good way. Yeah. You know, well said, because I always have said that if you are trying to lose weight

for a number on the scale, or to fit into your skinny jeans, it will be a, you'll, you can accomplish that. you can use that as motivation, but you won't find it a lasting, sustainable, motivating factor. Because what happens once you hit that goal? You know, then what do you do? And if or like we see people who try to lose weight to, you know, win back relationships or, you know, all those extrinsic reasons really, you can use them to get to the goal, but you can't, you, I find you can't use them to stay at the goal. You will constantly fall backwards. And this is why we've

got this dieting culture, because it's like you have an extrinsic goal. You go for it. You achieve it. Now what do you do? So I love what you are saying. Like if it's intrinsic, then it really has the power to help you create lasting change, not just a momentary high. Would you agree on that? I'm like, There's like, a lot of this research comes from a theory called self-determination theory. And it's over 40 years of research, you know, that they've shown that this is what makes habit stick. Because it's what makes changes in our life stick. But also, as you were talking there, and it was really profound what you said, but it made me think of something else, which was that this can also help us decide if this is the right type of goal for us. because if we're following it for our to impress our X or to do whatever else,

you know, maybe that's not the thing that we need to be following right now. And this is where discernment comes in. And a lot of people don't do this when they think that because everyone else is following a certain goal, I have to do it and I have to do it this way. But the thing about behaviour changes, we have to find what works for us in the kind of beautiful tapestry of the complexity of our lives. And so we need a certain level of discern. discernment to be able to ask ourselves, is this the right goal for me right now? Because often

people set themselves goals out of places, like you say, of hurt, of, you know, relationship sales, okay, I'm going to transform my life, I'm going to make all of these changes. And then when we can't make them, because we're obviously quite emotionally stressed at the time, then we get even harder on ourselves, and that's where the critic gets stronger than everything else. But if we can discern that this is truly for us, that this is something because it's going to me feel healthier, contribute more to my life, do more, go further. It's giving me back something. Then we know that that's a goal for us. It's making a contribution to our lives. We're not doing to impress someone. We're not doing it for the social media likes. We're not doing it for some

external reason. We're doing it for us. I love that. I love that. A good habit. So repetition is one of the most beneficial things, but it's got to be in the right way. So what I mean by that is you've got to think about when and where and it's best for me to perform my change this week. So when we talk about, you know, we choose one small change. We want to make it so small so there are at least 70% or more constant that we'll be able to carry it out over the next week and even think about our most exhausted self or our most depleted self. How do we make it easier on that? And then you want to ask yourselves, well, when and where are we going to perform it? Because instead of exercising more or eating healthier, it's

becomes if it's, you know, Tuesday and Thursday, I do my online cycling class at 7am. So we need to take our habits kind of out of the esoteric, out of the clouds and put them into the context of our lives. So it's not just repetition. It's actually about understanding, well, where do they work in our lives? Where do they show up? What's most beneficial for us? And again, you know, like we all think that, you know, just because, you know, ex-goureru gets up at 5 a.m. and has to perfect morning route that I must do all of these things in the morning. If you're trying to get the kids out at the Georgia school, that is not the time for you. You know, maybe lunchtime is a quieter time for you. Maybe it's more of a time for that. And that's why I always say to people, try and use

the first few months of the year by that is look at different times where your habits can happen and have flexibility. Because what we've seen in studies are, is that, you know, once you kind of find that time of day that works for you in the context of your life, then it makes it easier to repeat your habits. But if you're trying to set things up in a way that's unsupportive of how your lifestyle revolves and how you, you know, operate, then it just makes it really, really difficult for yourself. Yeah. And there's also another piece that's really interesting and that can fast track our habit success, but I'll stop there. Oh no, come on. You got to tell us how to fast track our habits. Can't leave me hanging on that one. Yeah, so this is about, you know, we think that, again,

think we can critique our way into habit change. But, you know, telling ourselves not doing something. So saying, well, I'm going to give up sugar, I'm not going to drink alcohol, but not doing something doesn't give us a positive boost. Basically, you know, habits are created can be fast-tracked to our emotional responses. So you change best when you feel good. So feeling bad about the changes you make, feeling like you haven't done enough, Like say you only do 10 minutes meditation when you said you do 15.

And this is the reason why small goals are so powerful. Because if you say you're only going to do 5 and you do 10, it feels like a positive bonus. But the reason behind it is you're a chemical. It's about the dopamine boost you get. You change best when you feel good because when you feel good, you release dopamine in your brain. So when you do something positive immediately, you know, after you feel positive after you perform your habit, it makes it much more likely to tell your, it tells your brain, basically,

don't mean the learning hormone. It's like a pat on the back. So each time you engage in a positive behavior, it says, yes, it's something good, let's do it again. And, you know, if we think about a child, like learning, you know, to fit shapes into a certain toy, and when they get it, they do it, ride the parent class, and then they're just like, yay.

And then they celebrate and they learn, okay, there's something good to do. I want to do it again and again and again. And therefore, if we want to fast track or have it success, we want to feel, that's why. it's really important to have this gain focus about what do I gain. But also there's a beautiful, it's a wonderful research called BJ Foggini's from Sanford University. And he talks about we want to create this feeling of shine.

So shine is a feeling that you get, you know, when your team scores in the final minute of the league to win the whole thing. Or, you know, when you roll up that piece of paper and you get it into the trash can first time, you think you should have been drafted for the NBA. Or, you know, when your child holds your hand. and you get that really kind of positive lump in your throat. It's that beautiful, warm feeling. And if we can create that after the habits that we're wishing to create. So, you know, every time that we finish our fast and, you know, we have our first bit of food afterwards,

if we can kind of stop and take a moment and say, you know, I've done this. You know, I've gotten this far. Look how good this feels and tune our brain into how great we feel for doing it. If we can create that feeling of shine, then it's much more likely that we're basically telling our brain, this is something good. Let's do it again and again and again and again. I love that. You know, if we're teaching ourselves to drink more water and we just take another sip of water, if we take a second and say, and there's loads of ways you can celebrate this. You can celebrate like sports stars celebrate, you know, with a big gesture afterwards, or you can

just smile and nod. I like to draw a smile to my t-do list or do a drum roll on my table. But whatever way you want to celebrate, it's whatever is true to you. But if you can do that when you're starting and you have it, it makes it much more likely that you're going to be able to repeat it and they'll make it. I love that. And dopamine is a fascinating neurotransmitter. I've spent a lot of time studying dopamine because I definitely want to go for the dopamine. And one of the things that I have been wrestling with in my own mind is if we are constantly chasing dopamine, since dopamine is the molecule of more, there's never, there's never enough. So I'm just thinking, let's say, let's use fasting again. Somebody wants to fast 13 hours. What I hear from your strategy

is saying, if you've only fasted eight hours, go eight hours and 15 minutes so that now you've at least gone a little bit longer than you normally fast and you're going to have a win, which is going to give you dopamine. Now, what I I understand about dopamine is whenever you get a dopamine hit, the ante goes up and you have to get a little, have the win has to be a little bigger for you to get the next level of dopamine. So is there a point where now those, the little wins that you're getting from the small repetition of this new habit isn't as dopamine satisfying? Does there hit a point where the dopamine win has to be a number on the scale, has to be something bigger than just I pushed my fast back another 15 minutes?

Yeah, good question. I think that it depends on the individual because we all kind of have a different dopamine tolerance. But also, I think the key here is that we can vary our rewards. So we can vary how we kind of congratulate ourselves. We can vary it in terms of we can celebrate, like, physically to release that dopamine response. Another thing that we can do is we can actually create a craving for that particular habit. So what I mean is by this is, you know, when I said when we pause and we take a moment when we finish our fast, let's just say. And we think about, you know, because when we get to the end of the fast, it's an elation.

isn't it? It's like, I could choose this. It's an incredible feat. And so if we can pause in that moment, we're training our brain to attend to those feelings. And then next time when we're finding a difficult in our fast, if we can bring to mind that feeling, that feeling of that elation, because what we found in the studies is if you can prime people to that end state for how they feel when they finish that workout or when they finish the fast or how they feel after they've eaten a healthy meal. If we can prime that end state, it makes it much more likely the people are going to be able to to stay on track. So there's a couple of different things that you can do to get your dopamine boost in a different way. You can physically celebrate, you can emotionally celebrate, or you can train your

brain to actually look for that positive feeling because we can crave good habits as much as we can have bad habits. And so if we try to crave and sit and savour that feeling, then that can really help boost it too. I love that. The subtleties. I think that's like, That's like the message I keep hearing in life in general lately is the magic is in the subtleties and all those little small things that show up that we tend to not look at because we're always looking for the big high. We're looking for the big win. And it's in the small little nuances of each moment of our day that like a healthy mind

and a healthy body is really built. And I feel like every person I brought on this podcast keeps saying the same thing just with different language. Yeah. And you're so right. And I think the key here is as well that with the dopamine thing, it doesn't have to be forever because actually it's just often enough to get you to repeat the habit until it becomes a habit. And then once it's automatic, you don't need to congratulate yourself anymore because your brain just looks for that feeling on demand. So you don't have to think

about it. It's a non-conscious process. So that's the thing about it. Like, you know, you can only you need to step it up to a point because once you get to that crossover where the habit starts to get stronger than the motivation, then you don't even have to work on it anymore. I love that. I love that. Okay. So the fourth myth you had was, and you've kind of touched on this, was that big goals lead to big changes.

So what I'm hearing you say throughout everything here is actually don't chase the big goal, chase the small goal. Absolutely. Yeah. It's small changes that bring. big results because small changes make it easy enough to repeat them often enough. They feel rewarding enough. They're positively framed.

So we feel like we're achieving each time. And they don't negatively affect our self-esteem. And therefore, they're the ones that help boost our motivation, help us gain momentum. And the interesting thing about small changes is, and this kind of goes back to something that you said at the start, maybe, which was like, we can, when what we found in our studies, and I've certainly seen it with people in the course as well, that is that when people focus on that making that one small change and they start to feel successful,

they actually non-consciously start making other changes. Focus on one. It's like, you know, if you think about keystone or linchpin habits, like exercise or sleep, you know, if you've got a good night's sleep, or things seem to fall into place more naturally. This is the exact same. When you start creating good in your life, When you start creating things that give you back what you want in your life, that give you back energy, that give you back vitality, it starts to trigger.

It has a trickle effect. And actually, you'll start to change things non-consciously. I just had this thought. If you're trying to go from a body that you don't love living in and you're trying to build a body that you do love living in through good habits, instead of looking at I need to exercise, I need to eat differently, I need to go to sleep, I need to fast, I need to take supplements, like all the I, I need. needs. Does it work to just in the morning go, I have, I know what I, the system's already there, like to your point, I've already set up the system. So now my job is every time I follow through with any little habit, one glass of water, one positive vegetable I put in my mouth, that I stop and honor that and look for a way to applaud myself in those little moments. And if you do that,

at the end of the day, maybe there were 20 moments like that. Is that literally how you start to build yourself a brain that just wants more and more of that good because you're stopping in the small moments to create a bigger picture? Wonderful. I've never actually broken it down in that way before, but I think that would be a wonderful place to start. And again, it depends on how you're driven as an individual. But I think that a lot of people would get a lot of benefit from that.

And that's kind of in line with the evidence base. The other thing I would say is the healthy habits that you enjoy are the ones that you stink to. So if you're starting to create all of these changes, like often what I say to people is, you know, the first step is that we want to find joy. And there's cities where they've shown, you know, where people, you know, people go to the gym and they seek out the most punishing stairmaster because they're like, well, that's the hardest thing. Therefore, that's the thing I need to do. Or, you know, when they're starting a healthy diet, they're like, well, I need to just eat kale.

every day because that's the thing that everybody does, even though they can't stand the taste of it. And ultimately, you know, what they've shown in studies is that people that stick with things aren't the people that seek out the ones that they think they're going to, you know, it's going to be the hardest. They're the people that seek out the one that's going to be the most fun. And if you can find a joy in your healthy habits, then you're going to stick with them. And then a way to do this is to look at, you know, all of the changes that you wish you create in your life and ask yourself, well, what are the healthy habits that I enjoy? You know, You know, is it going for a hike at my dog because it makes me feel revitalized and

refreshed? Is it having, you know, a lemon water in the morning because that makes me feel energetic? You know, if, you know, that, you know, getting into bed a half an hour earlier in the evening just feels like the ultimate luxury for me, you know, if you can start to look at, well, what are those that habits I actually enjoy? Because those are much more likely going to be the ones that you stick to. And maybe the ones that you are a little bit harder work. How can you layer joy onto them? So is it that, you know, you only listen to your favorite podcast when you're meal prepping or watch your favorite, you know, stream your favorite TV show when you're meal prepping? Is it, you know, that you're like favorite person, you know,

and like your existing habits because you speak or like you to stick with it. And in the fasting world, there are six different fasts that I teach my community how to follow and they go from anywhere from 13 hours of fasting all the way up to 72. And one of the things that I've noticed is that food is a state changer. So what do you do when you're in these moments where you're like, okay, I have this goal to go 48 hours of fasting. Food was my go-to for making me feel better. I don't feel very good right now.

So I love this idea of stacking it with a habit, like calling a friend, watching a, Netflix series, listening to music, dancing in your kitchen. Like, that's what I heard there is like stack it with something that is enjoying to get you through the unenjoyable task. That's brilliant. So do we even need, this brings me the last one you had, which was, you know, is having a goal important? Like, and I've actually been thinking about this in my own life lately.

Do we need goals? Like, should, if we don't have a life that's driven by. goals, you know, is that a bad thing? I think that's a big question. I know it's a big question. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. Yeah, no. And I would say, well, like, arguably I'm going to be on one side of the argument, which

I say that we need to, any goals that we have, we need to break them down into habits. Because it's easy to set a goal. You know, I could say, oh, I want to make a million dollars in the next week. You know, that's so easy. but if I have to break it down into the habits that I need to do to create that, is that actually realistic? And so that's what I say to people. I say make habits, not goals,

because goals can be so flippant, and they don't require the same level of commitment. We need to look at what our days look like. We need to be realistic. Where does this fit in my day? What are the actions? So at any time that you are thinking about sending goal, what are the actions that you need to perform day in, day out,

in order to achieve this? Is this realistic? is this going to fit within the context of your life? You know, and from there, then it's about asking yourself, you know, the key questions, well, what's my why behind it? Is it going to be small enough? You know, how do I scale it back if I need to? How do I find more joy in this?

And all of the things that we've been talking about. I love that. I love that. Well, this was fascinating. I really appreciate you letting me pick your brain. And I want so badly for my community to not just take the information that I give and go, oh, well, that was entertaining. I want them to actually put it into action and really move their health forward.

I think one of the really cool moments about this life word, this world we're living in, whatever we call it, the metaverse or whatever we're name we're giving it, is that there's so much free information and like conversations like this. So a couple, two last questions I have for you. One is where do people find you? Because it sounds like you have a free challenge that will get people. helping with their habits. I'd love for you to share that with my audience. And then I have one more ending question for you. So let's start with that. How do people find it? So they can go to bidesideshybats.com.

So that's biteside habits. And there's a free five-day video challenge there, which is the kind of five key, basically foundational habit changes that will kickstart any habit that you wish to create. So it's twice-wisehavit.com. Great. And we'll put the link. Thank you so much. And we'll put a link to it in the show notes. My last question for you is my, this is our third season of my podcast.

And this year, yeah, thank you. Oh, my gosh, I love it. I love having conversations like with brilliant minds like yours. I learned so much from it. And it's just been really enjoyable. But the theme of this year is gratitude. I really overlooking over the last two years at the world feel like we've lost. sight of the importance of gratitude. So the questions I have for you is, do you have a daily

gratitude practice? And what is one thing that in 2022 you are immensely grateful for? Amazing. I love this. And all of your questions, so you've really got me thinking. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So do I have a gratitude practice? Yes. And actually for this year I've changed it a little bit. So I used to have a gratitude practice, which was three things I'm grateful for in my day. And I would stop and do that twice in the day. Now I'm cultivating it long for of self-compassion and experimenting with it for this month about what I'm grateful to myself for.

Because I found that it was quite easy to be grateful for what others do or other people in other situations. and now, and kind of like back to what you said at Mindy to start about, being grateful for your past self in a way. I'm grateful for my past self for doing this, you know, preparing my lunch. So then I, you know, when I'm busy with work, I don't have to actually get up and do this thing. Oh, I'm grateful that I didn't, you know, stay up that extra hour

and watch that TV program and actually I got more seat last night. And that makes me feel a lot better today. So that's how I've kind of fit my gratitude practice for this. Love it. Love it. And the second question was about if there's something that I'm grateful for at the moment. Yes. Yeah. I'm grateful for conversations like this because it gets my mind ticking.

I want to write down all your questions now. So I can remember some for future and stuff. But I think I'm grateful that I have had this opportunity to spend so long researching this topic. And now, you know, the reason that. I've kind of moved out of academia because I really wanted to be able to share the message of people that don't read the journal articles. But, you know, I feel like a lot of it, you know, in academia

is really like the academics get to benefit from it, but the rest of the world doesn't always. And I think it's such a privilege. And I don't mean to be an advantageous about it, but I do feel like a drive to be able to, that I know things that maybe not everybody does because I spent so long-footing it and I feel so grateful to be able to share that with other people.

And like you say, you know, in an action-orientated way as well, so that we're giving people the tools, not just the knowledge, but giving them the tools so they can build skills to create those lasting habits. And that means to grow to me. I love that. I love that. I feel the same way, you know, when you get excited about a topic, you want the whole world to understand, you know, you want them to see it through the lens in which you're seeing it.

So I love that. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.