Episode #305: Change Your Habits, Change Your Life

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic Moms Podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority, so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make foods that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly, and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies. Well, in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:
Hey there beautiful ladies, welcome to today’s episode. And thank you so much for being here. I cannot believe we are already mid May over here just rocking and rolling through spring. I hope you’re having a wonderful spring so far and are getting all those beautiful boosts of energy and maybe listen to the last podcast episode two where we talked about how to naturally boost her energy. But seriously, I just definitely feel the difference. The May vibes versus like the February vibes. So I hope there’s lots of sunshine in the forecast for you and that you’re enjoying this time.

Today, we are going to talk about how to change your habits and truly change your life. So we talk a lot on this podcast about goals and setting goals and reaching goals and attaining goals. And pretty much all of it boils down to habits. So whether you’re a goal setter or not. What you do every day is how you are it’s the life that you are making and shaping, we don’t just wake up one day and decide what kind of life we’re going to have or what that’s going to look like or what kind of person even that we’re going to be. We are seriously and truly the accumulation of our habits. Now. I wish I had this study to save for you guys. But I have no idea where it was from I think I heard it on another podcast, where they’re talking about like the astounding percentage of how much of our day is made up of habits, basically how much we are doing on autopilot. And it’s very true. And I feel that in my own life. And this is how I feel about health and fitness that it’s I’m very passionate about trying to help all of you and all of my clients who are working with me and again, all of you who are just here on the podcast taking listen, and we’re kind of working together in that way. You know, I’m very passionate about helping you automate health and fitness so that you can not automate all these other parts of your life. I don’t think that we should be living our entire life. By habit by automation, we can see how that just is joyless and is the opposite of experiencing like truth, beauty and goodness, right? In a in order to be able to pour ourselves into other areas, like our relationships with our spouse, with our kids with you know, creating a beautiful home environment and like being able to be truly present with the person who’s in front of you. Like in order to do all of that, that we are not automating I think it’s very helpful to automate the other stuff. Right? I do not give the same care and attention to what I’m going to do my workout. I’ll explain that as I do in what I’m going to cook my family for dinner even or what I’m going to buy my sister for her birthday or whatever, there is a level of I just know what to do. And I’m just going to do it now that is because of like pre planning and systems and whatnot. And arguably definitely some days that’s how my dinners look to I’m saying like kinda a weekend in or when I’m trying to go kind of the extra mile maybe that takes more thought. But I think it’s great to autopilot these things so that we have room to use our brains and our creativity and our energy in other areas. We only have so much energy to give. And that’s true that’s very scientific that you know we don’t have limitless energy it is gonna run out. And we do need to renew it and we need to conserve it and doing things that is part of why we do so much by habit. It’s our body’s way of conserving energy.

So, if you want your life maybe right now, take a step back, think about how your days look, think about how your life overall looks. But I think it’s easier to look at your actual days because again, our days make up our lives, right? Look at your day, what would you change about it? What is like, what’s the gap? What’s the difference between how it is right now, and how you want it to look what your ideal day would look like?

This is a very helpful tool for me, I do it all the time. I just this morning when I was doing morning prayer, I flipped back to a couple months ago where I wrote out what my ideal day would look like, but the boys, I have three boys, we homeschool. And I wrote out what I would like it to look like, which I’ll share examples. But it’s irrelevant, because you know, your day could look totally different that I personally would love to get outside every day. It’s a nice season right now. So but I actually wrote this when it was still winter. But get outside every day. There’ll be music infused in our day, we will do have a calm start to homeschool with morning time. We will do scripture memorizing like those kinds of things, okay, movement in every part of the day, not every part of the day, but in every day. And then I was trying to think about meditate on what is getting in the way of that, like, why am I not doing that everyday? What’s the problem? Why do seven days feel frenzied? And you know, go from there, because then we need to look at implementing the habits and systems to get us to that. So if you want to feel really energetic, you want to feel light, and lean, and athletic. And all these things like maybe you were an athlete, I hear this a lot from clients who are like I used to work out, I used to be an athlete, I felt really good. Like I was an active person. And now I’m just so far from that, right? If you want to either get back to that, or maybe you’ve never been that you want to get to that. But right now what you’re doing is crashing on the couch at night turning on Netflix, because you want that decompression time, maybe grabbing some highly processed food, you know as a snack, because you feel like you earned it after a long day and you want that reward when your kid free time. You’re not going to magically wake up the next morning and all of a sudden be the person who like craves an omelet and wants to go for a brisk walk like it’s not it’s not going to happen. If you’re like I want to be that person, like there’s always and this is for all of us, I’m not making light of this, there’s often a gap between our ideal what we really would like, and then what we’re actually doing, right, the only the only way to cross that gap, the only way to get to the other side is to change what we’re doing. Because what you’re doing right now got you the results you’re getting right now, that’s just a fact. Anyway, you spend that if you look at that with finances, with your spiritual life, with your relationships with your physicality, what you’re doing right now got you and is getting you the results you currently have, if you’re great with them, great, maybe that’s an area of your life that’s going really well you don’t need to change anything. If you’re not so happy with that or wanting to change things, it has to start with our habits, you have to change something to literally change something like something’s got to change or nothing changes, right. But it’s not just going to happen, especially this fallacy of like, you’ll be motivated enough, or you’ll feel like it, you know, plenty of times, I feel like sleeping in eating a stack of pancakes. And starting my day like that. Now I know that that’s not in line with the kind of person that I want to be because I want to be energetic, that’s gonna make me fall asleep in an hour, I want to get my energy going. So I probably should wake up a little bit before the kids have that quiet time, get my body moving, expose myself to sunlight, all that stuff. And it’s just not gonna it’s not in line with the kind of person that I want to be. So that you know is going to help me make that decision, not the fact that I want to do that or don’t want to do that. So emotions are not a part of this conversation. Emotions are great. They’re a part of life, they do protect us, sometimes they guide us, they help us guide you to that, like gave them to us for a reason. But they’re not the end all be all and they should not be driving our health and fitness decisions. Because if we ask our emotions, if we feel like working out or feel like eating healthfully, a lot of times they are gonna tell us no, they want to eat ice cream or they want to whatever. So if you want to be a certain way, or be a certain kind of person, or accomplish a certain kind of thing, you’ve got to change your habits. You have to change your habits before you can kind of become that person. It’s not going to be the other way around. I think we think it’s going to magically happen the other way around. Like we’re just going to decide we want to be the person that say you have never I don’t do that much cardio so you guys know if you’ve been around the podcast while I’m always talking about the benefits of strength training, and cardio absolutely can be great and is a great Part of an exercise program and a lot of people enjoy it. It’s great for endorphins, all that, I’m just gonna use this as an example, because I think a lot of people are familiar with running five K’s or the couch to 5k program and that kind of thing. If you are a person who is currently sedentary, and you all of a sudden want to be a person that runs a 5k, what are you going to do? Are you just going to get up one day, brush the crumbs off from like the night before, where you’re eating a bag of chips and just go run a 5k? Probably not. Now, you’re not going to just wake up and be the person that runs five K’s maybe maybe you could pull it off because it is a shorter distance. But say you want to be a person, it’s a marathon runner, I don’t think you’re just waking up throwing on a pair of sweats and running 26.2 miles? Doesn’t sound like you’re gonna have great recovery if that is you. Okay, so seriously, truly, what do you do? You start implementing one habit at a time or you start incrementally. Okay, so there’s a gap, there’s something you want to do. And like, make sure I talked about this a lot with setting goals.
Make sure it’s in line with your season of life, what God is calling you to what’s best for your family. Because if you’re sitting there like, yeah, I am that person who watches Netflix and He’s highly processed food most nights, but I’m gonna be suddenly a person that does a marathon a week in a different state, because that’s what I’m going to do. And like you have five little kids and your husband also wants to work out or your husband wants to do other stuff with you and the family and whatever and like, then you just lay this on everybody, and then you start bulldozing it like that, it’s not going to be great, okay, or if all of a sudden you’re like, I want to be the person who paints for three hours a day. So now I’m going to just implement that one thing at a time I am talking about like, good for us things that are also in our season of life that are doable, I hope that you all are with me on the I can follow the bouncing ball, okay, there’s plenty of things that I would maybe like to do, for it’s just not the season, it’s not, personally for me the season to do a marathon in every state or something like that. So just hear that out. Okay. But then once you have thought about that decided, decided it’s important enough to you to change what you are currently doing. Or maybe here’s where emotions play in a little bit, maybe you realize you really are unhappy with how things are currently going. That what you’re doing is actually not making you feel better. There’s a lot of times those, you know, really low level comforts and pleasures, like watching mindless TV, reality shows, eating highly processed food, it gives us a quick hit of dopamine. And it does, it gives us a good boost of feel good chemicals, I think it even releases oxytocin, like we get that good feeling. For a fleeting moment, these things do not have lasting, it’s not giving us joy, it’s bringing us a little spark a happiness, and then it’s gonna go away. And often if it was habits and things that are not great for us, we’re going to be left feeling worse off than when we started. So if you want to make these changes, you want to kind of become a different kind of person or improve your current quality of life start with just one habit at a time. A lot of times, this is like movie style, we see the person decide to overhaul their life, and they throw out everything they have, and they buy new this and they like just go on this whole new thing that again, is probably not gonna be best for your family. Maybe if you just you know, all of a sudden they get a new version of you, mate, maybe that’s how it goes. And if it’s all for the positive, awesome, maybe you wake up and start going out or Asian daily and going outside every morning and like doing all this great stuff, great. But for most of us, it is going to go one habit at a time. Now. I already mentioned you do have to change your habits before you can become that person like that’s going to be first your habits are what is going to help you cross that chasm into the person that you want to become something I’ve said a lot on here. So I’m so sorry if this is redundant for you. But some of you this might be the first time you’re hearing it. What I think is helpful is to ask yourself, what would a fit person do? What would a healthy person do in this scenario, because truly, if nothing changes, nothing changes, you will still be the same person six months from now, two years from now, five years from now 10 years from now, if you don’t start changing something so think about actual people you know, who do live healthy lifestyles like what would they do in this scenario, okay, you have a couple of hours free to yourself on a Friday night. Maybe you do get some bands and weights and you look up a YouTube video and I have a bunch of free ones little plug and you get a quick workout in before you get on to the rest of your night. Maybe instead of plunking it down in front of the TV you like again I guess this is another YouTube video I am just Plugging you into screens. I was gonna say watch YouTube video on the skill or something you’ve been wanting to learn but maybe it’s you pick up a book and read some CS Lewis or some like great authors instead of like the run of the mill Colleen who version, things like that, that’s also really not enhancing much. I’m sorry, I know, I just offended some people. And that’s alright, we’ll move on. I think there’s, I think like there’s an 8020 rule here with things that we take in, just like there is with nutrition where 80% should be high quality and 20% can be like the cheap, easy reads, or the cheap, easy music and like that, there’s that 80%, where we can really leave into high quality things so that we crave a little more of that. Anyways, I digress. But think about what a healthy or fit person does, and then emulate that. Because again, what you’re maybe doing, and a lot of you who are listening to this are already very healthy people, and fit people and you’re like Brittany, I already workout, I already am pretty, you know, comfortable with where I am in many areas. So that’s great. If that’s you keep rocking it, and you’re probably being a great example to others. And don’t forget that because to other people, you might be that Oh, like, So and so always gets her workout and she is dedicated, doing five days a week, and she just makes it work whenever or, you know, she’s always prepping healthy meals for her family, whatever. And then those people who want to be where you are, will ask you questions and come to you for guidance, so you can be a source of help and information for them. But a lot of us still I just mentioned how the other day I wrote out that list was a couple months ago, but I referred back to it today about you know how I want my days to look versus what they’re looking like. So that’s where I can look at people who I value and who I think are doing a great job and having peaceful, well ordered homeschool days and ask their advice, ask what their schedules are looking like ask what kind of habits they’re implementing to make their days runs smoothly like that. So and then again, I mentioned already, but start with one habit at a time. So I would start with like your biggest pain point, if there’s something that maybe you’re always we did just talk about sleep recently. If you’re always waking up tired, you don’t know why, you know, maybe you delve into that a little bit like, Okay, I’m just going to backup my going to bed time to try to be in bed for seven to nine hours, maybe I’m going to look into maybe taking some magnesium before bed, I’m not a doctor. So I’m not prescribing that by any means just sharing some things, maybe I’m going to look at going, you know, screen free a couple hours before bedtime. So I can start winding down. Like all these little things, maybe I’ll take an Epsom salt bath like to be a person who is energetic in the morning and who feels really good. In their days, maybe it’s something like that. Or maybe it’s something like you do feel like you’re always kind of playing it by ear on what you’re going to make for your family or what you’re going to eat or serve. And you’re kind of winging it a lot. And you want to be a person who has a good meal plan going on a good meal system, listen to a podcast about it, listen to what other people do, and then try to implement something, it’s not going to work for everybody. I’ve shared a bunch of that on my own podcast and shared ways. I think that hopefully you could take something from it and personalize it. But this is what other people are around his resources for not to like, compare and despair, but truly to be an inspiration for us of Oh great. Like, I’m such a believer of that of sharing what’s working. And I appreciate when other people share what works so that we can emulate that and imitate that and tweak it for our own lifestyles. Okay, the biggest thing here, and you will read this in a million books. So I do think if you’re looking for some inspiration here, atomic habits is excellent, by James clear, The Power of Habit. I think it’s by Charles Duhigg. I read a million years ago, but it goes a little more into the science of why we do what we do and how habits work. What’s the Gretchen Rubin one, she has a habit book too. I know she has the four tendencies, but there’s, I swear something about habits by her as well. And
I don’t know the names that just popped into my head. But whatever help and assistance you need in this area to grow, you will look back that’s the thing, we really are the sum of our days, and of the choices we’re making each day. And since we know that we’re not making that many active choices, we’re making actually a lot of just passive ones just based on our habits because we are working on autopilot our habits are essential to who we become okay. So you will look back and be so surprised at how like maybe your cravings aren’t really you anymore, or like we talked about sleep, you’re actually getting quality sleep most of the time. Or if you started incorporating strain training three to four to five times a week how you’re actually getting stronger. You have been injured in a while. That back problem used to have is kind of not even been a thing and you’re like, wow, I actually have been feeling really good. You can look back and see how much your life has changed. We never see that going forward. And it’s hard to when we’re in it. It is so hard to think I could never go a day without blink. Or I could never do this every day. That’s why we really need to look at things scripture says this. Experts say this. We need to take things a day at a time right? The Bible First I’m going to spot a leak quote about sufficient for today are today’s problems tomorrow will take care of itself. It’s true, God told us that we are not supposed to be looking down the road, panicking about how we’re going to do this for the next, you know, I feel like pregnancies like that you’re in your first trimester, second trimester, third trimester, you’re like how, dear Lord am I going to do this for another however many days, and then all of a sudden you’re there. And it’s done. And it was a blip on the radar of, you know, the span of your life, hopefully. And it’s like that with a lot of times I’ve been in seasons where I’ve been doing something every day, try to think of an example now, like when I used to have really heavily processed protein bars, this might be a silly example to some of you, but it’s true. I was like, I could never stop eating these. I love these. I look forward to it. It’s almost like my treat every day, I have one every day. And then you start skimming back, you start supplementing other things in there, you scoot things around, you try out other things, all of a sudden, you look back, and I’m like, Man, I haven’t had those protein bars and six months, I don’t even miss I’m like, that’s crazy how much I had to have one every day, or whatever that was like that was me back when I guess I’m like picking a bunch of sports nutrition things. But pre workout, I used to always rely on pre workout before my workouts. And then I stopped when I was pregnant. And when I was nursing, and then I went back a little bit after my first kid. And then I just kind of never went back after I got pregnant with my second and I’ve just been doing coffee or nothing or an apple before I work out. And currently it’s just not a part of my life. But I look back and think Man, if you would have told me that I was never going to have are not going to have pre workout again for a long time. I wouldn’t have believed you because it was everyday it was such a habit. So you can change your habits if you want to you can enhance your life. Seriously a habit at a time in a day at a time. Just take it a habit at a time. Focus on one thing for several weeks. Once that sticks, then you can go on to something else. But go back to again the person you kind of want to be make sure it’s something that you is actually worth it to to prioritize, but it’s not worth it to you. It’s not going to stick. So don’t just pick something arbitrary because you think you should or because it’s trendy. Like if you have zero desire to do cold plunges in the morning. Don’t make that like your new thing or your habit. Not everybody is called to do the trendy thing either. Alright, okay. I hope that this helped you in some way. As always, that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m doing this. And next episode, we’re going to talk about five steps to your healthiest Ooh, throwing my phone which has my outline on it. We’re going to talk about five steps to your healthiest summer. I’m also going to share with you our next upcoming eight week challenge and how you can sign up for it and have all of that open for you. So be sure to tune in and I hope you have a great rest of your day. I will talk to you next time.

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