INTEGRATED HEALTH COACHING

fayetteville, arkansas health coaching NUTRITION CONSULTING and HEALTH COACHING

Journey wellness by establishing Habits of Health.

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Once we make the fundamental choice that we want to change our lives for the better, all

other choices flow logically from that new foundation. We can teach you how to make those

choices easier by making them subconscious – by making them habits.

 

The first step in the journey to wellness is to establish Structural Tension.

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This step serves two functions: One function is to provide motivation (i.e., tension) for our

journey. The other function is to provide a framework (i.e., a structure) for the choices we

will make to progress along our journey.

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The tension emerges when we establish a wellness goal (Point B), are honest with

ourselves about where we are currently (Point A), and acknowledge that there is a

difference between the two. The structure emerges when we make a plan for how we intend

to get from Point A to Point B. The plan consists of a set of secondary choices we make that

will move us closer to our goal. Take, for instance, the example below:

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Point A – Adult woman who is 5’6” and weighs 190 pounds has a BMI of 31 and is

considered obese.

Point B – Lose 40 pounds to reach a healthy BMI.

Secondary Choice - Eat smaller portions of nutrient dense foods throughout the day over

the course of 6 meals instead of 3 large meals.

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The second step in the journey to wellness is to establish purposeful Habit Loops.

Habits are routine behaviors that are triggered by cues in the environment and are completed without consciously thinking about them to achieve a reward.

 

For example, an alert on your phone triggers you to pull out your phone and look at the

notification and before you know it you’ve been scrolling through social media for some undetermined amount of time. For some people, this habit is so engrained that they even

do it while they drive despite how dangerous it is for themselves and others on the road.

Nevertheless, the habit endures because of the reward our brains perceive. For checking our phones, the reward is appeasing our curiosity and being “in the know” of what is going on.

While the above example is a habit of disease, we can harness the cue -> routine -> reward

cycle to create habits of health that facilitate our journey to wellness by intentionally

establishing habits that serve our goals. Take, for example, establishing the habit

encouraged by our nutrition program of eating small, portion controlled “fuelings” every 2 –

3 hours. To encourage this behavior, you create a cue by setting a reminder on your phone.

The routine to establish would be eating slowly by taking smaller bites and chewing each

bite longer than you typically do. The reward is that, by doing so, you give your brain more

time to register whether it is satiated. As such, you are able to eat less because you feel full.

This leads to another step in the journey to wellness – Connecting your present self with your

future self.

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This step is about tying immediate feedback to delayed gratification. For example, if we

establish the above habit of eating smaller bites and chewing them longer, we get the

immediate feedback of feeling full after having eaten fewer calories than we are used to

ingesting. As a result, we are better able to stick to our goal of eating smaller portions,

which will eventually help us lose weight and reach a healthy BMI. This was the long-term

goal we identified when we discussed the first step in our journey – establishing structural

tension.

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A fourth step in our journey to well ness is to establish micro-habits.

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Micro-habits are small things you can do easily and are well within your ability to do

everyday regardless of how your motivation level or environment changes. For example,

you can establish the micro-habit of standing up every time you take a phone call. This is a

small thing you can do even when your motivation is low. But you can also give your micro-

habits a boost for when you are feeling extra motivated. For example, since you are already

standing for the call, might as well do a squat or two.

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Health coach in Fayetteville, Arkansas