#95, Set Yourself Up for Long Term Success with Cornerstone Habits

It is normal, especially in the beginning of your weight loss journey, to feel like you are on shaky foundations. You have all these things you want to change and do. You want to drink more water, move more, eat more veggies, stop eating ice cream every night, order a small instead of a large and the list goes on and on and on. 

Well, my love, take a deep breath. Today we are going to talk about cornerstone habits and  how they can be the key to making this process a whole lot easier.

If you are like me, you are starting to stare the school year in the face. When this podcast releases I’ll be one week away from doing my teacher in-service and only a couple weeks away from welcoming students back into the school. This is the perfect time of the year to re-examine my routines and habits and make some thoughtful choices about what is important to me in the upcoming months of the school year. 

If you talk to any fit and healthy person about their habits, they have dozens of things they do to protect good choices and cultivate a healthy body. Some of those habits they still have to put effort into and others they can do without thinking. It is first of all super normal for you to feel the pressure to do all those things that they do right away, but it is also a fast-track to burn out. We can’t completely change our lives, taste buds, and brains overnight. However, I want to offer to you that you can begin a solid and permanent lifestyle change by working on cornerstone habits. 

I like to call cornerstone habits the things we do every day that set us up for success. It also becomes the bare minimum we can still do even when life gets crazy or feels chaotic. These are important investments of time and energy into your life as you establish these habits. Later they become things that you can build onto. For example, if you set the cornerstone habit of beginning your day reciting a verse, then when you finish reciting your verse that can become the cue for doing your next healthy habits such as weighing yourself or filling up your water bottle.  

To give you an idea of what a cornerstone habit is, how it affects your life and weight loss journey, and offer some ideas of where you might want to get started, I’m going to give you my five favorite cornerstone habits that myself and many women I work with have adopted. I’ll go over each one and why it can provide the foundation you need for continued healthy choices over long periods of time. 

1. Water--Doing something everyday that helps you get in the amount of water your body needs becomes a cornerstone habit. I like to pound two cups of water before I pour my first mug of coffee and fill up my 64 oz water bottle while I get breakfast ready. This sets me up for water-drinking success. I found through trial and error that using a smaller water bottle that I would have to refill multiple times just didn’t work for me. I would forget how much I drank or find myself in a situation where I couldn’t refill it. I have got this current habit of dreaming water down so well now that there was literally only two school days last year that I left the house without it. 

The reason this is important for ongoing health is that every cell in your body needs water. Not having water will seriously stress your body out and make you have epic cravings as your body cries out for some help. So, setting yourself up for water success by some sort of cornerstone habit will help you if you're losing weight or maintaining. 

2. Sleep--I go to sleep in time to get 8 hours almost every night. My exceptions are special family gatherings and date nights. I don’t compromise on this one. I’ve learned from experience that not getting enough sleep affects everything for me. When I’m sleep-deprived I am moody, have low energy, crave sweets, and am less likely to want to exercise. I love it that in the Jewish calendar the day begins and sunset, making the night the beginning of the 24 hour period. This makes complete sense because what you do in the evening will totally affect how your daylight hours go. 

There are many tips and hacks to making sure you get enough sleep. Turning this into a cornerstone habit might mean you set alarms on your phone and start your going-to-bed process early enough to be turning off all lights and screens in time to get 8 hours of sleep. For me, I get into PJs right after I put the girls to bed and then read for about thirty minutes. By then my body and brain have begun shutting down so I head to the bathroom, brush my teeth, wash my face and crawl into bed. Weirdly enough, I like to do my habit tracker right before falling asleep. It feels like closing down the day for me and settles my brain. Consider what you could start doing today to protect your sleep. 

3. Bible Study--Spending time in God’s word and with God in prayer has been a game changer for how I approach life. I do it first thing in the morning, having gotten up early enough to have my coffee alone. Depending on how much time I have, I might spend 15 to 30 minutes doing this. I also feel refreshed and ready having put on the armor of God before facing the day. Bible study is also my cue for setting my big three for the day, recording my weight, and making a food plan. 

I can’t encourage the women I work with enough to start spending regular time with God. The world is set up to make us lose. We come up against so many trials and temptations and should never expect our own self-control and will-power to sufficiently safe-guard us into good choices. The power of God not only helps us on this journey but builds our faith as we turn to Him. 

4. Movement--Now, I firmly believe that exercise is not necessary to weight loss. In fact, if exercise makes you eat more either due to excessive hunger or mind drama, then you will need to do some work on what your body needs as you add movement into your routine. That being said, movement gives us energy, mental clarity, and a healthier body. Being in the routine of moving your body everyday, come rain or shine, even if it is a dance party or a 15 minute walk helps you have more emotional stability and endurance. 

I have built the habit of doing some sort of movement everyday in the early evening or late afternoon. Sometimes it is walking up and down my house or some strength training on my yoga mat, but that is all. It is super simple and because of that, I feel I’m able to keep it going no matter where I am or what we are doing.

5. Food Log/Plan--Lastly, writing down a plan for what you are going to eat and logging what you put in your mouth is awesome. This takes me about two minutes in the morning and two minutes or less in the afternoon. It helps me make choices when I’m not stressed or hungry. Then, by having a log of what I do eat, I can monitor eating patterns that don’t serve me or food choices that might be affecting my body negatively. 

Also, this last cornerstone habit helps many women with self-accountability. They begin to see that you can follow through with daily promises and show up for themselves. This is a confidence game-changer. 

Alright, there you have it, a low-down of what cornerstone habits might look like and how to put them in place. Before we sign off today, I just want to encourage you not to feel like you need to have all your cornerstone habits in place right away, or that they have to be the habits I listed today. Instead, pick one habit at a time to establish, one that gives you that firm foundation you are looking for that will set you up for success throughout your day. 

And, wherever you are in your journey, I want to encourage  you to take that quiz and get some direction on what healthy changes you can make in your Christ-centered weight loss journey today. If you’re not sure where to get started, I’ve got you covered. With your quiz results you’ll receive a detailed action plan and a list of podcast episodes that I created specifically on the area you are needing to concentrate on. We’re quickly coming up on episode number 100 which blows my mind, so this is my way of helping you find what you need without having to sift through all my episodes from before. 

You’ve got this, my love! Talk to you next week! Goodbye for now. 

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