Stack your Habits

Stack your habits-Blog post
One of the biggest barrier when it comes to health and wellness is that there isn't enough time to exercise and make healthy meals.  It's to difficult to make healthy breakfast and dinners with all the running around.

Habit Stacking from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear is about using a habit that you already do every day and anchor a new habit with it. 

Try some of the ideas rather than trying to do all of them. 
-Calf stretch while brushing teeth
-Abs in the kitchen
-Squats while brewing coffee
-Dance in the kitchen

Working moms can practice the Pomodoro Technique and work for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break to walk around and do some exercises and stretches at your desk. 

For your actionable step: practice doing the calf stretch in the morning and evening while brushing your teeth.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

Hi, I'd like to welcome you to raising healthy humans. I am your host Courtney, a personal trainer and health coach, and the founder of formfit. a community where I help busy moms move more. As a busy and sometimes overwhelmed mom of three myself, I understand that it can be difficult to find ways to live and raise Healthy Families. It is my goal to help provide you with the information and tactics you need to help raise healthy humans episode to stack your habits. So I'd like to welcome you all. And I hope that you had a wonderful, wonderful Mother's Day, hopefully you were able to take some time for yourself, enjoy the family and just relax. So again, I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day, I wanted to talk to you about what I mentioned last week of how it begins with you. And one of the things I mentioned was habit stacking in regards to time, one of the biggest barriers that comes into health and wellness is people don't have enough enough time or they believe that they don't have enough time. So I will hear you know, working in the industry I'm in, a lot of people will say like, I don't have time to exercise, I don't know, when you find time to exercise, I don't have time to exercise, or I don't have time to make healthy meals I'm running my children are around all day long. So we have to eat dinner on the go. Or you know, same thing with getting out for breakfast. I you know, I have to rush out the door in the morning. So I don't have time to make a healthy breakfast. I'm rushing around. And I get it. I noticed the older my children get the busier life is getting. And it can be really difficult to find time for yourself and find time to exercise. And so I'm not here to judge anyone in regards to that I just I want to help provide you with actionable steps that you can take, even if it's just one thing, that you can start looking at things differently. And hopefully that will help you. And that's why I wanted to talk about habit stacking. So habit stacking was actually in a book by James clear, and it was called atomic habits. And he spoke about habit stacking there. And it's basically adding a new habit to a habit you already have. So you have an anchor habit, something that you do every single day, it has become a habit, and you're going to do something else with that habit. So think about things that you do throughout the day, brushing your teeth, for me making coffee, I'm doing the dishes every day, I'm doing the laundry every day, you know, I'm driving my kids back and forth from school, and I've got about five to 10 minutes in between picking one of them up from school before I have to go pick up the next child. You know, there are things that I do every single day. And I'm sure you could sit down and you could figure out plenty of things, plenty of things that you're doing every single day. So what we want to work on doing is finding something else that we can do with that habit to kind of propel you into a healthier way of life, and doesn't always have to be in regards to fitness. I'll actually give you a couple of ideas on ways to kind of keep your house clean that you can work on as well. So while your coffee is brewing in the morning, that liquid gold that we all love so much. You know, that could be a time where you empty the dishwasher, or run to the laundry room and start the laundry. So every time because how many times you're like me, you're like, darn it. I keep forgetting to start that dryer up again. I've got to run it through another dry cycle, so that I can pull them out and I don't need to iron my clothes, right. So that's one thing that you could do is every time you push the start on the coffee, you go to the laundry room and you start the dryer, or you know Same thing with I'm already in the kitchen. I'm hitting the coffee to brew and I'm going to then take the dishes out of the dishwasher and reload. Those are very simple things that you can do. Another thing that I have always practiced with my children in regards to cleaning, is, when I in especially when they were in diapers, they're obviously no longer in diapers. But if I had to, I don't know why I always thought about the diapers. But you know, there was a lot of times where we were changing diapers. So every time I had to go change their diaper, I would be like, okay, meet me in your bedroom. And we would pick up like two items, I'd say, grab two items that belong in your room. And then I would do the same thing, I'd grab two or three items that belong in their room, and I'd take it back to their room. And that would be a way that we could work on cleaning up as we went, rather than setting aside time to clean. So that was one thing that we did in regards to habit stacking, in the way of you and your own health. I want to provide you with some tips, some ideas, let's call them ideas, okay? Does not mean you have to take all of them and do them. It might mean you start with one and just see Is it something that works for you. And if it does, then awesome, keep it and if it doesn't, oh, well get rid of it and move on and try a different one. And you may come up with your own that work better for you. When I want you to think about habit stacking. The first thing is in regards to exercise, because I want to make sure you all understand this because I may be slightly different than some other people in regards to exercise. As much as I love taking 45 minutes for a workout, which I do. And I offer fitness classes where I do that. I also understand there is a time and a place where that might not work for you. And that doesn't mean that you get really down on yourself and think oh, I just I don't I never have time to work out, find ways to move more in your everyday life. And that can be just as good as that 45 minute workout. Okay, so stop beating yourself up, if you cannot take that time to get a good workout in. And realize that five minutes throughout the day, or even these little mini mini two minutes can make a difference if you're doing enough things throughout the day. So again, don't feel like you have to start with more than one. I think one problem that we have, as a society is we go all in. And when we go all in on something, it makes it very difficult to keep going with it. Because there's so many things that you've had to change that it's hard to keep up. So don't go all in with this. That's why I wanted to provide you one actionable step each week and you try it and you see if it works. And if it works, like I said, Great. And if it doesn't then move on and do something else. So for habit stacking, we all brush our teeth in the morning. One exercise, it's not an exercise, it's a stretch, one stretch that I cannot say enough about if you have knee issues, hip issues, feet issues, pelvic floor issues, there are so many issues that arise from this, that it is imperative that you are doing it every day. And I would bet most of you aren't because I know what I'm supposed to be doing every day and I don't do it every day. So that is the calf stretch. So if you could, when you're brushing your teeth, if you're doing the recommended what, two minutes a day, not too much, not two minutes a day, two minutes in the morning, and then two minutes in the evening, you've got four minutes where you could be doing calf stretches. And that would be just putting the toes up on your cabinet door and the heel is on the floor and you're just getting that nice stretch up through the calf. And if you're not familiar with a calf stretch, I will have a video on my Instagram so you can check that out. But that is an easy exercise that you can practice. And it's a stretch that is a stretch. Another thing that you can do one of my trainers, she talks about doing squats while her coffee is brewing so instead of cleaning, she's doing squats, which is awesome, but that's another idea. Have fun with it. Another one that I love to do. And it's I don't know why I love to do it. I just do is in the evenings when I'm making dinner. I'll get down on the floor and I'll start doing Playing workouts, some of them have been from like reels like the workout video from reels, I'll do some of those. But then I'll also just get down there in, I don't know, I have my socks on, my feet are slippery on the tile, and I'm able to just kind of move around in that plank position, and I get a bad workout in there. You can also do dancing, you can dance while you are making dinner, take five minutes with your kids. And while you're cleaning the house, you can dance. These are little things that you can do throughout the day that help provide movement. And that is so much more important than just exercising, if you can move all day throughout the day, you may not need that 45 minutes of exercise. Now, I do think that you need to make sure that you are finding ways to do strengthening movements. But it does not need to be exercise in the sense that you may be thinking, Okay, now what if you are a working mom, and you're not at home to be able to do some of these things that I'm mentioning or recommending I do think obviously, that you can do some of the early morning things and the evening things. But when you are at work all day, especially for those of you who sit at a computer a lot, you might want to start trying to figure out how you can create some time within your work day for little snippets of breaks. And if you've heard of the Pomodoro Technique, that is one that I think is such a game changer for those of you who are working moms. So that is where you work in 25 minute increments. And the theory is basically that you only can really concentrate on something for about 20 to 25 minutes, and then you end up doing you know, you need to take a break from it based on that you could set an alarm or something to go off every 25 minutes once you start working again and get up because your your mind is going to wander at that point anyway. So why not use that time effectively get up and move around. If you work from home, you could get up and go run, you know the dryer or go clean for five minutes or something like that, or I have a rebounder that I'll bring out. And I don't do this every day, I'll be honest with you, I don't do it every day. But when I remember to put my rebounder out, I will set my timer and maybe 30 minutes, whatever when I get up to move around, and I'll jump on the rebounder for just two minutes, maybe not very long. And then I can go about doing whatever it is I'm doing. But for those of you who maybe work in an office, you could do something similar where you get up, you walk around for a bit before you sit back down, maybe you do a few little exercises or stretches at your desk, you know, that is something you can do as well. That is basically what habit stacking is is trying to take whatever habit you have that you're naturally doing day in and day out and try to add a new habit to it. And when you do that, you're more apt to stay consistent with it because you're anchoring it with another habit. So that is your actionable step this week is I want you to take one of your habits. And I'm going to give you a specific one because I think this is one of the easiest ones that we can practice and if you practice it for a few days, see how your body feels later in the week if you are dealing with a lot of us deal with aches and pains that our hips and knees like I had mentioned before, if you practice stretching out your calf while brushing your teeth in the morning, and in the evening, see how those knees and hips feel a few days down the road. So that is your actionable step today. I hope you all have enjoyed it. And I'm looking forward to talking to you all again. Make sure to join us in our form fit mom community where we share tips we find inspiration from one another recipes and exercises that you can do along with five minute workouts for you as a busy mom, not being able to get a lot of extra time to work out. Don't forget I'm also going to have on my Instagram page raising underscore healthy humans. A video clip For you to see of the cast stretch so you know exactly what to do in the morning and evening If you are unfamiliar, and definitely feel free to reach out to me I would love to hear from you what you are loving about our episode, any tips or ideas, things that you'd like to hear more about in the future. Do know that we have some exciting interviews coming up for you to help you to work with raising your children to be happy and healthy.