Hi, I'm Cyndi Lynne, and welcome
to The Own Your Health Podcast.
I can't wait to help you step into your health power.
So happy New Year.
If you're listening to this, when it airs, it will
be January 3rd, and you may already be frustrated with
the idea of New New Year's resolutions. But love them
or hate them, and there's people in both camps, New
Year's resolutions are something that tend to come to mind,
something we feel like we should do or we felt
like we should do in the past, and now we
just rebel and don't want anything to do with them.
And I hear people in both camps, and I hear people
say, well, I don't make resolutions, I just set intentions.
So whatever words you use around them, I invite
you to just step into them for a little
while, for a few hours or a few days.
Now, what usually goes wrong with New Year's resolutions
is that people set huge goals and are all
in, but they don't necessarily figure out how they're
going to accomplish them, or they don't figure out
how they're going to fit them into their lives.
Because if I look, for example, at the list of
things that I'd like to do, it would be great.
And I could work on those if I didn't have to
sleep or shower or cook or eat or have other obligations.
Right?
We can let something become all encompassing.
And I think in the spirit of really trying,
in the spirit of confidence, we set our goals
high, and then sometimes we set ourselves up for
failure and then frustration and then forget it.
I just don't do New Year's resolutions.
But love 'em or hate 'em,
they're here this time of year.
So if you have a system that
you love, great, go with it,
I would love to hear about it.
If you're looking for a little bit of help
to set those correct for you, intentions or resolutions
or plans for the new year, then stick around
because I have some tips for you.
And this is really, I'll give some very specific
examples, but the process or the way that I
think about this really applies to most anything.
So setting New Year's resolutions, setting any resolutions or
setting any goals is a relatively straightforward process if
you consider that there's really only two kind of
goals that you have, and that is an outcome
goal or a process goal.
And the process goal can sometimes be
thought of as a habit goal.
So an outcome goal, for example, would be,
I will lose 15 pounds by June 1st.
Okay, so that is an outcome that you want to
have happen at the end of a period of time.
These kind of New Year's resolutions tend to
get a little frustrating because we don't have
a real direct handle on our weight.
Many times we have to figure out what's going
to work best, what kind of meal plans, what
kind of food, what kind of eating patterns, what
kind of sleep, what kind of stress management
we need to have to lose weight.
And when they're put together, these two types,
these process types of goals or resolutions, and
the outcome goals resolutions, they're very powerful.
And it's this two pronged approach that
I use for setting just about any
kind of goal or New Year's resolutions.
So to go back to our example of weight loss, which
is an outcome goal, again, some good process goals might be
I will be in bed each night by 10:00 p.m.. Okay.
And notice I didn't say I will sleep 8
hours a night because that, again, is not something
that we always have direct control over.
Sometimes there's storms, sometimes we can't sleep.
Sometimes we have to get up very early.
The thing that I always laugh at is that you can't possibly
get 8 hours of sleep or 7 hours of sleep per night
if you aren't even in the bed for 7 hours.
What we do have control over is when
we get ourselves in the bed, okay?
And in order to do that, we might have
some other processes that have to happen before that.
When we shut off the tv, when we finish
cleaning up and turning the kitchen and turning on
the dishwasher, all of those kind of things have
to happen for a lot of us in the
household before we can actually get in the bed.
But a very concrete marker, a concrete process
that we can actually measure, is that I
will be in the bed by 10:00.
Now, we know that good
sleep contributes to weight management.
The studies usually show how lack of sleep
or poor quality sleep lead to weight gain.
But the inverse is also true.
And there are studies about that for some reason,
that's a little harder to convince people of, you
need to lose weight, go to bed, sleep, right?
8 hours, start with that.
Some people truly need less.
Nobody actually just needs 5 hours a night, right.
It's going to take its toll.
Some people are seven and a half, some
people need eight and a half or nine.
And if this is the start of your owning your
health and the start of your journey, if you're using
2024 to jump in and say, okay, I am going
to work on owning my health this year.
I've been listening to this podcast.
And there's a lot of good ideas.
And I have some questions, which, by
the way, you can send to [email protected].
But I think this is the year that I really
want to start taking some ownership over my health.
Then you know what the number
one recommendation I would make? Sleep.
Start getting high quality sleep.
So anyways, back to our very, very common the resolution that
I hear the most is I want to lose weight.
I'm going to lose weight. Then set a
progress goal or a habit goal regarding sleep.
So bedtime is a very strong
one, very easy one to measure.
Another one in that camp is turning off
electronics at such and such a time.
One of the practices that I do that I've talked about before
is I make it a habit to look around the house and
do all those last minute things that you have to do.
Oh, I got to put this by my purse for the morning.
I've got to load the dishwasher, finish
loading the dishwasher and run it.
Or if the dishwasher has been running, unload it.
Whatever the case may be. All those tasks that come up
when you say, oh, I'm going to start heading to bed.
If I know that I have to be in bed by
10:00, I start earlier checking all of those things out.
And then once I go upstairs, our bedroom is upstairs.
Once I go upstairs, then I don't come back down.
And that means taking my glass of water with me
that I need, if I feel dry in the middle
of the night, any of those kinds of things.
That's my commitment.
It's like, okay, I'm going up now.
So another process or habit goal that you may want to
implement regarding this ultimate input or output, outcome goal that you
want, that's the word I'm looking for, is that you may
want to plan when you're going to eat.
So eating windows are a huge
topic of discussion right now.
And I find it very funny
that intermittent fasting gets this,
it's this huge controversial subject when in fact
you have intermittently fasted for your entire life.
Think about that.
So unless you're hooked up to tube feeding continuously,
when you go to bed at night, you're fasting.
So for that five, six, seven,
8 hours, you're not eating.
And then the other times during the day you do eat.
That's what intermittent fasting is.
Now you can play with those amounts of time
when you eat and when you don't eat.
And there's all kinds of research on that,
advocating a whole bunch of different things.
People have to figure out what works best for them.
But what I can tell you for sure is that
if you eat right before going to bed, your blood
sugar will rise, your insulin will respond, and you won't
get high quality sleep that produces human growth hormone.
And that's ultimately, that's one of the big
things that we want out of our sleep.
You won't get the sleep that's healing in
fashion because our body can't move to cleaning
and healing if it's digesting and processing.
And I could do a whole podcast on
that if that's something that's interesting to people.
But I just want to say for this episode and
for this topic that one of your process or habit
goals may be to finish eating by 08:00 p.m.
at night, or to finish eating by 07:00 p.m.
And that's a very good thing to be able
to measure, to be able to have control over,
because again, when we look at weight loss, we
don't always have direct control over that.
In fact, there's so many levers that actually contribute to
what you weigh that it's very difficult to say, okay,
I'm going to lose 15 pounds by this day and
to not just lose muscle and water.
Because I'm guessing if weight loss is on
your list for New Year's resolutions, it's that
you want to lose excess body fat.
And in order to do that, you need to be healthy.
You need to take ownership of your health or
you end up doing more damage to your health.
So process goals, which are
habit goals and outcome goals.
Now let's look at this for exercise.
And I'm taking exercise separate from weight loss.
Yes, it has a part to play, but although
there's a million good reasons to exercise, and I've
said this before, weight loss isn't one of them.
Okay, weight loss contributes, just exercise
contributes just a tiny percentage.
10, 15
I don't think I've seen any research that
says more than 20% of the factors that
impact your weight loss are related to exercise.
The vast majority is food.
A huge part of it is sleep.
Hydration is a big part of it.
Exercise is not.
Now, exercise is really valuable, but I separate
that out in terms of a New Year's
resolution or a health related goal, because exercise
in and of itself isn't really helpful.
Setting a goal to just, I'm going to exercise.
Now, it's not helpful for a number of reasons.
Some people are used to smart goals.
It's not that it's not a particular outcome goal.
And even saying I'm going to exercise more
in the new year isn't a habit goal.
So what is your reason for wanting to exercise?
Okay, and I ask this because in order for us
to stay motivated, in order for us to continue to
make decisions that support our resolutions or our goals, we
need to have a reason, and it has to be
a pretty selfish reason that we want to exercise.
So if I ask my clients, and I always
do, when they come for pilates, when they come
for yoga, whatever they come for, what's the reason?
Why do you want to exercise?
Why do you want to do yoga?
Why do you want to do pilates?
Why do you want to run?
And that takes some time to sort out.
Are you exercising because you're training
for a particular sporting event?
That's one way of approaching
exercise with a specific outcome.
So in that case, the outcome would be, I
want to run a 5k by June 1st.
So your exercise will be
training for that particular event.
Many of the clients I get
are exercising for their health.
I just want to be healthy.
Okay, so how do you go about that?
How do you choose the habits, the processes that
you're going to do on a regular basis in
order to have that outcome of health?
And what does health mean for you?
Now this again is potentially a topic for many
more podcasts, because health means something different to all
of my clients, to all of the women who
are in The Heal Your Life Community.
Many of them came because of illness,
and they've stayed and they've invited their
friends because of health and the Community -
it's a year long program.
It's at your own pace, but it gives you an
opportunity month to month to look at one particular aspect
of your mental and physical health and work on that
and decide what you want that to look like.
So I welcome you to check that out.
I'll put a link in the
comments below in the show notes.
If you want some more information on that, by
all means, email me or give me a call.
I'll be happy to talk with you about that.
But that's one of the examples where getting healthy or
getting fit is an outcome goal, and then our process
or our habit goals will feed into that.
But again, before we know what kind of habits we
want to build, whether it's for weight loss, whether it's
for exercise, whether it's for work habits, I have women
who have come to me and set New Year's resolutions
to find more work life balance. Okay?
That's an outcome goal.
We can't necessarily plug in a scale
and say, all right, starting this week,
we're going to have work life balance.
First you have to figure out what that looks like
to you, what that means to you, and then the
process goals, the habit goals, come into play.
What habits?
What time are we going to leave the office every day?
If that's not an option, what time are
we going to start work every day?
Are we going to stop taking
calls on Sundays or Saturdays?
Any one of those kinds of things are concrete
process or habit goals that you can implement to
help reach your bigger goal or your resolution.
So I hope this gives you some food for thought.
I hope it encourages you to relook at the process.
Maybe give this two pronged approach a try.
So processor habit goals to feed your outcome goals, and
maybe you'll learn to love or at least like New
Year's resolutions and goal setting a little bit more.
Now, if you have any questions
at all, you can email me.
[email protected] I'll put the link in the show notes.
And absolutely check out The Heal Your Life Community.
Because if the one reason you're not setting
New Year's resolutions is because it all just
seems so overwhelming, you're in the right place.
Check out The Heal Your Life Community.
And until next week, have a happy New Year.
