If you are doing a change in lifestyle, if you are eating differently, or if you're incorporating intermittent fasting, and you don't have it connected to something that's valuable enough to you, your slippery-slope part of your brain will talk you into not doing it.

"Oh, it's okay to eat these foods, it's the weekend." "Oh, it's okay, you didn't eat yesterday.

Go ahead and eat it." "Well, you did fast last week.

You don't have to really do them this week." There will always be a barrier, some reason why you don't follow through with the plan because those barriers in that moment are ranking more highly than your WHY.

[music] Hi everyone, it's Terri.

As we round out the year and get ready to make some exciting changes to the podcast, I thought this would be a perfect time to revisit a few of my earlier Bitesize episodes.

These short sessions cover topics that feel especially relevant this time of year, when many of us are reflecting, resetting, and thinking about the habits we want to carry into the new season.

Today, I've pulled together three episodes that focus on something I talk about a lot within our community; how to build sustainable habits, how to understand our identity as a healthier person, and how we stay connected to the reasons (or our WHYs) that keep us going when things get challenging.

We'll start with a conversation about identity and habit building, then move into the two episodes where I explored how to find your WHY, and how to strengthen it so that it truly supports your goals.

I hope revisiting these helps you feel grounded, motivated, and ready for whatever changes you're making in your health journey.

Let's jump in.

[music] Today, what I wanted to talk to you about is the idea of thinking about the new habits that you're working on building in your life, relating to either your health goals, or your weight, or both.

So what I encourage you to do is think about who you see yourself becoming, envisioning your habits, your approach to things, how you appear in your body, how you feel in your body, and really start to create that as your identity.

And then I encourage you to think about what are the habits that someone who fits that identity, what do they do?

So if I'm healthier in my body, what does a healthy person do?

If I'm eating as a healthy person, what do I eat?

If I'm fasting as a healthy person, how do I fast?

And really start to use that as your frame for deciding what your behaviors will be moving forward, rather than reverting back to all of your old behaviors.

That's your past identity, as far as your health and your weight, but you're creating a new identity, as far as your health and your weight.

Many of you know from listening to other episodes, I love a lot of books that are about changing our habits and building new habits.

And James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, it's one of my favorite authors for this topic, and this is one of my favorite books.

If you haven't read it, I highly encourage it.

But one of the things I heard him talk about in an interview is the idea that creating habits that are congruent with your identity makes them so much easier to create.

It's easier to build habits that fit how you see yourself, how you think of yourself.

So let's use, for example, if your current identity or current way of thinking about yourself is, "I'm overweight.

I've never succeeded for long on a weight-loss plan.

I'm not healthy." You might think of yourself as having a particular health condition, or just think of yourself as an emotional eater, or think of yourself as a late-night eater, or any of these ways of seeing yourself.

And then you decide you're going to work on this, and you want to create a habit where you don't eat at night, or you want to create a habit where you only eat the foods that work best for your body.

Some of you might be wanting to create a habit of a particular style of eating.

You might be vegan, or you might want to do low carb, or something else, but you can see already where I'm going with this, probably, in that that new behavior is incongruent with how you are currently identifying yourself.

So we have to work on that self-identity and then build the habits that support that identity.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about my example of this that I share often with my clients and in our community.

Many years ago, I changed how I was eating.

I was very unhealthy and I was struggling with my weight, was on a lot of medications, and I realized I have to make a change, I have to change my relationship with food.

And I went through-- I did the Whole30.

I actually did the Whole30 for 100 days.

And then I started doing Paleo, Primal, you know, eating whole foods, not eating processed foods, not snacking.

And then I got to the place where I started to learn about doing some fasting.

I realized, for me, I had to go even lower carb because of my insulin resistance.

So I started to identify more as someone who ate ketogenically and still as someone who was doing TRE and doing fasting.

Fast forward a little bit.

Once these pieces of my identity became really clear, other behaviors and habits started to gel, and make more sense, and become easier to continue or further develop.

So, because I identified as someone who eats very low carb or ketogenically, if my friends asked if I wanted to go to a restaurant, I said, "Sure," and I didn't have to ask myself, "Will I stay on plan today?

Will I eat low carb or ketogenically today?" I knew the answer was yes because that was my identity.

I am someone who eats this way.

So whether I go to this restaurant or this restaurant or eat at home, these are the foods that fit my approach.

So I don't even have to look at certain parts of the menu because they don't fit my identity of who I am as an eater.

Now, yours may not be low carb, or ketogenic, or vegan, or carnivore.

It may not be any of those labels, and that is fine.

Actually, I love it when people have a way of identifying it without one of those labels.

But let's say, for example, you just see yourself as someone who is a healthy eater or a whole-food eater, and you know what that means for you.

That's going to make your decisions a lot easier.

But where I see people struggle is if they say, "I want to be healthier, I want to lose weight, but I really like to eat this food," or, "I really want to still be able to do this." You have to create the identity that you're building and then create those habits that support that identity.

As James Clear talked about it, as I mentioned earlier, this is how you're going to make those new habits become solid for you.

If they're incongruent, your brain is not going to latch on to them.

They're too foreign.

They don't make sense.

They don't fit, like they're puzzle pieces to the wrong puzzle.

And so your brain can't really make them happen.

Similarly, if you want to change your habits around physical activity, you can't describe yourself as, "I'm a lazy person.

I really don't like to exercise," while you're trying to build an exercise or movement habit.

You're going to have to start seeing yourself differently, talking about yourself differently.

Create that identity.

"I'm someone who moves well in my body.

Oh well, then I can go for a walk today.

Now, this walking habit fits my identity," rather than, "I'm not really someone who likes very much exercise.

Oh, I probably should go to the gym." It's going to be really hard to create that new habit of going to the gym or going on a walk when your identity says that those behaviors don't fit.

So the big kind of takeaway from this, again, just to simplify it, is think about the identity that you want to embody.

It can be broad or it can be really specific, but let's say I want to even just say, "I am a healthy person.

I make decisions based on what creates a healthy body and a healthy lifestyle." Then I can focus on the habits that create that, the habits that help me to achieve that goal.

"Does a healthy person do this?

Not so much.

Okay, then I don't do that very much or at all." "Does a healthy person do this?

Yeah, that's a healthy behavior that healthy people do.

Well, great.

I'm going to start doing that.

I'm going to make that habit." So work on the identity of who you want to be, how you would describe yourself, how you want to see yourself, and then start to build the habits that support that, rather than trying to do a mismatch of seeing yourself one way and then trying these goals.

This is also true to think about yourself as a faster.

If I'm someone who doesn't really like to fast, it's going to be really hard to create good fasting habits.

But if instead, if I see myself as someone who's capable of learning how to fast and develop my fasting muscle, I can start to build those habits.

So really simple here, folks.

I know doing all of it is not simple, but the concept is really simple.

So keep working on what is the identity that I want to carry and embody, and then what are the habits that I want to put in place.

Those habits will happen much more easily when they're congruent with that identity.

[music] One of the things I wanted to talk about is the idea of having a strong WHY.

Why are you doing this journey?

Why is changing your health important to you?

Why is losing weight, losing body fat, why is that important to you?

And it's going to vary person to person.

What may sound like a really strong WHY to one person would not motivate another person.

And that's okay.

The goal here is to find the WHY that works for you.

Now, just there, I made it sound as if there is only one right answer for each person, that there is one WHY.

That's not always the case.

You may have many reasons why you are working on this transformation healthwise, and physically, and mentally.

Or there may be one or two really large WHYs that are important to you.

It's okay either way.

But what I want to encourage you to do is to really spend some time reflecting, because you are asking your brain and your body to defy habits that they've created over the past 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years.

And you're also asking your brain to defy some kind of instinctive reactions like, "Oh, I haven't had food in a certain time, must tell this person to go get food or we will die." So you are fighting some of those biological predispositioned ways of responding.

However, you need to remember those responses no longer really fit our food availability today.

Now that we have a refrigerator, some of us have two freezers in our home.

We have a grocery store within a couple of miles.

We have delivery services that will drop off food within 45 minutes or so.

This is not the same food environment where our body first developed these instincts or used these instincts.

So we are having to go against them a little bit.

So it's important to remind yourself what you are doing, you may find in some ways is quite easy, but there are aspects of this journey that are complicated and that, as I said, go against what your brain and body naturally want to do.

Also, many of us are doing something in this process that causes us to defy what other people in our life are doing, or want us to do, or expect us to do.

So we are challenged as we are doing some of these really important health-improvement strategies.

So what I want to encourage you to really reflect on is why?

Why do I value this journey?

Why do I listen to this podcast?

Why do I shop in a certain way at the grocery store?

Why am I willing to skip some meals?

My hope is that you come up with some reasons, some health benefits, and some improvements in your life that are valuable enough to you that it is worth doing something that's challenging.

Recently, in the TFM Community, someone came into one of my large Community meetings to share something, and I thought this was just brilliant, so I wanted to share it with you.

She identified the fact that, oftentimes in our community, she hears people talk about finding their WHY.

And oftentimes she hears people talking about one WHY, like, there is one overarching reason that really motivates people.

And she identified that she struggles with this.

There was not one strong enough WHY that would motivate her to do these things that she was asking herself to do in this transformational journey.

So what she decided to do was she started creating a list of 100 WHYs, 100 reasons that doing all of this was worthwhile to her, why she valued it.

And so some of these might be giant WHYs, and some of them might be smaller WHYs.

But what I loved about her strategy is that it gave her 100 ways to refute that lower brain, that animal brain, that immediate gratification that we are often seeking.

She has 100 reasons to not give in to those impulses or those desires, rather than only having one.

So for her, this was a great way to highlight so many reasons, so many things that are important to her.

And like I said, some of them might be really big, like you might say, "Well, both my parents and many of my aunts and uncles have had type two diabetes.

I've watched members of my family really struggle with their health.

So one of my big WHYs is that I don't want to become diabetic.

I don't want to have neuropathy pain.

I don't want to risk losing a toe or a limb." So that may be a large WHY for you.

And then a smaller WHY on that same continuum may be, "I want to feel energized after a meal.

I don't want to feel like I need to stop and take a nap because I've eaten." Great.

Then doing the things that you're learning to do - eating in a way that's appropriate for your body, that works for your body, and taking pauses from eating by using intermittent fasting - those become super relevant when you think about those WHYs, those reasons that this is important to you.

So if you're struggling with coming up with just one giant WHY that drives everything for you, please don't feel pressured.

Go ahead and break it down.

Come up with 10 WHYs, 20 WHYs, 50 WHYs, 100 WHYs.

You will have so much more kind of teeth in the game, so to speak, that you'll have reasons that push you to make the choices that are in your best interest.

Because the other things that influence our choices aren't always in our best interests, but they might feel good in the moment.

But by focusing on these reasons, these WHYs, we can make more consistent choices that really serve our body and serve our goals.

Many of us have accomplishments we want to do.

We want to get into a certain outfit or a certain size, or we want to have a certain amount of stamina or physical ability to do something, or we want a certain lab marker when we go to our doctor next time, we want that to be improved.

These are really, really important goals.

So translating them into your motivation.

Next time when I come back to you, I'm going to use another example of some motivation that I hope may help some of you.

I think this motivation idea, finding your WHY, finding relevant WHYs, and also accepting that your WHY is going to change.

As you move through this journey, it's going to continue to evolve.

As you accomplish certain goals, they're not going to motivate you anymore.

You're going to have to choose new ones.

So I hope that this conversation, and the one that I come to you next time, as far as motivation go, help you.

So I hope everyone finds their way in these next few weeks to do the things that they want to do for their body, make clear goals, and then set up your behaviors to help you achieve those goals.

[music] Today, I wanted to go into detail about an example.

And this example is really to help us latch on to the reason why finding important WHYs (and that is W H Y s not w i s e), why we want to find these reasons, these WHYs is so important, because, otherwise, it is hard to do things in today's busy life that require doing something that's difficult, doing something that takes extra time, doing something that doesn't taste quite as good as what you're used to, any of those things.

So the example is, many years ago, I was listening to a motivational speaker, and he talked about the fact that we have reasons why we want to do something.

So we have the motivation, we have these WHYs, so to speak, but we also have (and he referred to them, I think, as) barriers.

He used the word 'excuses' when he talked about barriers.

So we have these things that get in the way, that seem more important to us than the goal itself.

One of the concepts that he focused on is this idea that we do have reasons for doing something, but we also often have barriers.

We have reasons why we don't do those things.

And oftentimes when we're really struggling, those are winning.

They are preventing us from doing the thing that we know we want the outcome from, but we let these barriers or these excuses get in the way.

So he went through an example, and, based on how long ago I heard this speaker talk, I may need to change this story a little bit as I go.

But what he talked about is that if someone came to him as a coach and said, "I want to start working out more regularly.

There are health goals that I'm working on and I want to work out regularly." And so he would help them and try to figure out how they could work out more regularly.

But what he found is that they always had a reason they couldn't.

So he would say, "Well, you know what if you did your workout during lunch?" And they would say, "Oh no, I can't do that.

Where I work, everyone eats together, and so I really can't go work out during lunch." He said, "Okay.

How about if you work out when you get home from work?" "Oh no, I really can't do that because I get home close to dinnertime and I need to make dinner for my family, so, no, that won't work." He said, "Okay, well, what if you did your workout first thing in the morning?" And very quickly they would come back with, "Oh no, I can't do that." And their reply would be, "No, I can't do first thing in the morning.

I really need my sleep.

Every ten minutes is of so much value to me.

I can't possibly get up earlier and do it.".

So they were creating a scenario where they were saying, this thing is so important to me, but I'm not going to do it because all of these other barriers, these interferences, come up and they're valuable to me too.

So he said, "Listen.

What if I could tell you that I'm going to give you $1 million if you walk for 30 minutes every single day for 30 days?" Instantly, these people said, "Yes, I can do that." And he would say, "Well, when are you going to exercise?

When are you going to do your workout?" And they said, "Oh, I can do it after dinner." And, you know, he was a little confused because before they said they couldn't do it after dinner.

So he would ask, and they said, "Well, I can record the shows that I want to watch after dinner and go do my exercise." So they came up with a solution, they removed the barrier.

They didn't devalue the barrier (they still want to watch their shows), but what they valued more was that $1 million pay off that they were going to get.

And so, if you are doing a change in lifestyle, if you are eating differently, or if you're incorporating intermittent fasting and you don't have it connected to something that's valuable enough to you, your slippery-slope part of your brain will talk you into not doing it.

"Oh, it's okay to eat these foods.

It's the weekend." "Oh, it's okay, you didn't eat yesterday.

Go ahead and eat it." "Well, you did fast last week.

You don't have to really do them this week." There will always be a barrier, some reason why you don't follow through with the plan because those barriers, in that moment, are ranking more highly than your WHY.

So go back to this analogy.

If he said to someone, "You're going to be in better shape and you're going to feel better if you exercise every day for 30 days," the barriers come up.

All of the reasons why they can't do that come up.

But if he said, "I'm going to give you $1 million if you do this," all of the barriers disappeared.

They figured out ways to work around those barriers.

Someone else could pick up their kid from soccer practice.

Someone else could help take care of the kids and get them somewhere.

They would go to bed a half hour earlier so that they could get up earlier to exercise in the morning.

They removed the barriers because the perceived outcome, the reward, was so powerful.

This is why I talk about finding significant enough WHYs for you that you will be willing to do difficult things.

You will be willing to make some sacrifices.

You will take the extra step.

You will maybe do something that's a little less convenient because the result is so valuable to you.

So finding your WHY, and it might not be just one, it might be several, or, if you listened to the most recent Bitesize episode I did, it might be 100 reasons, but I really encourage you to work on developing your list of WHYs.

And, as I mentioned before, it may change.

Let's say my goal is to lose 25 pounds before my class reunion, and I go to my class reunion and I feel pretty good.

Why would I continue to do the right thing for my body once I've reached that goal?

So I may need to change my WHY.

Some WHYs that people use are very time-limited.

"I'm going on a cruise in September.

I'm going to do this until then." They're going to need to develop a new WHY.

They're going to need to develop other reasons beyond that.

Some of your choices of why you want to do this are long-term WHYs.

"I want to be mobile into old age," "I want to be a grandparent who can pick up my grandkids or run with them, or take them on a hike." So keep working on developing the WHYs that are significant to you, whether they are WHYs that have a specific time frame, or whether they're long term.

Keep working on that list.

Keep that list active because your brain is not going to want to do challenging things if the payoff doesn't seem worth it.

And we need to be able to remind ourselves why we are doing these things.

So I hope that these two Bitesize episodes have helped kind of solidify for you the idea of finding your WHY, or WHY's, and making them significant.

Keep updating them as you go.

[music] Thanks so much for listening.

I hope these Bitesize episodes gave you a little clarity and inspiration as you head into the weeks ahead.

If you found them helpful, please share this episode with a friend or someone in your life who might benefit from a little encouragement on their health journey.

And as always, we appreciate your support, your reviews, and your presence in the The Fasting Method Community.

Take good care, and we'll talk to you soon.

[music]