My Non-Negotiable Weekly Health Habits

As a Registered Dietitian & Sports Nutritionist, I help coach people to take positive action to eat healthier, exercise more, and break self-sabotaging bad habits. A lot of people come to see me hoping that I’ll prescribe them the magic bullet of weight loss… some new diet and exercise program they haven’t tried yet that offers just the right combination of healthy foods, gym exercises, and list of bad foods to avoid that will make the weight come off easily (and stay off) this time around.

Some clients are positively surprised, and some are less than thrilled, when I approach weight loss counselling with an open-ended client-centred discussion around building positive daily and weekly health habits, as well as re-patterning the neural pathways to unlearn bad ones.

I don’t have a bright and shiny melt-the-pounds-away-one-month-to-fabulous rapid weight loss plan. I also don’t give out prescriptive meal plans that clients have to suffer through for 4-8 weeks, which often gets met with the exasperated phrase, “just tell me what to eat!”.

In fact, what I do in my nutrition coaching sessions is the very un-sexy, the let’s work on one key behaviour at a time until you can master the habit and do it consistently well plan. It lacks the raw-raw enthusiasm of a detox diet, rapid weight loss plan, get abs in 8 weeks kind of mentality that has people so screwed up with their eating, exercise, and self-esteem in the first place, but it does have A LOT of scientific backing behind it to help people re-establish the key positive habits that result in lasting fat loss (notice how I said fat loss, which is different than weight loss), with fewer relapses, less yo-yo dieting, less self-criticism, increased happiness and feelings of accomplishment, and more health benefits in the long run.

Although there are hundreds of small key health habits I work on with my clients, since each person is so individual and faces their own unique challenges as to why consistent execution of good behaviours is difficult for them, I thought I would share some of my personal non-negotiable weekly healthy habits that I’ve worked to develop over the years, since I get asked this question a lot.

A Week in the Life of Jennifer Broxterman (My Non-Negotiable Weekly Health Habits)
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After doing the math, my time spent exercising, preparing healthy food, meditating, and organizing myself for the next day is around 11.5 hours/week (half a day total), or 6.9% of all of the minutes we get each week (695 minutes of 10,080 minutes per week). That leaves me with a wide open 93% of my time to work, sleep, pursue hobbies, relax, and spend time with my loved ones!

The mental image I always try to keep in my mind is the Big Rocks of Life Story. I actually keep a mason jar in my office as a visual reminder to take care of the Big Rocks first (the things I really care about and what matter most in my week). For me, my important Big Rocks are:

• My relationships (marriage, family, and close friends)
• My health (nutrition, exercise, mental health, spiritual health)
• My career (Registered Dietitian, entrepreneur, and university nutrition prof)

Overtime, my Big Rocks might change, and thus, my priorities and where I spend my time and energy may shift, but for right now, you can see where I make the time each day to nurture my Health Big Rock.

Instead of looking at these healthy habits as a chore, I’ve trained my mindset to view these healthy behaviours as investments that pay dividends week-by-week, month-by-month, year-by-year, and now they’ve gotten to a point where they’re so automatic and easy, that staying “on-track” isn’t even a conscious choice, but a fairly autopilot thing I do. I am most definitely not a perfect person (nor do I strive to be), and if I get off track, the habits tend to be so strong that they pull me back into making the right choices fairly quickly, without the need to beat myself up for a minor slip-up.

I must add that getting to this point took years of conscientious thought, effort, and lots of trial and error until I found something that worked for me that didn’t feel too burdensome and time-consuming, and I encourage you to map out a weekly plan to carve out some time to take care of your Big Rocks, whatever your priorities may be. You’ll be amazed that when your Big Rocks and non-negotiable health habits are taken care of first, you’ll feel less stressed, more accomplished, have more time, and be in greater control of your life than when you try to find the time to squeeze these things in as your week unfolds.

And if you need a little help:

a) determining your Big Rocks
b) mapping them out into manageable, step-by-step actions that can turn into life-long positive habits
c) creating a realistic plan where they can successfully get done each week

…well, that’s where we come in as nutrition, exercise, and health coaches at NutritionRx! Send us a message at info@nutritionrx.ca and we can book a private 1-on-1 appointment to help get you started in the right direction.

We know that YOU KNOW the right things that you need to be doing to improve your health, however, our job is to help you clarify your goals into actionable steps, and help keep you motivated and accountable as you work towards changing ingrained bad patterns into life-long positive habits that you can maintain for the long-run.