How to Create and Keep Healthy Habits in 2024
The Lemons team recently sat down with Liz Moody, author and host of the Liz Moody Podcast, to discuss easy, science-backed ways to change your life. We talked all about creating and keeping healthy habits in 2024 and we can’t wait to share her wealth of knowledge with you!
In the new year, lots of people feel motivated to start new healthy habits. How can we make sure that we continue with our habits and don’t fall off the path a few weeks in?
“The best way to continue with your habits is to make sure that you have a solid why for your habits. If you don’t know why you’re doing something, you are never going to have the motivation to actually stick to that thing, so your why has to be something that really resonates with you. For me, I tried to work out for years thinking about how all I want is my body to look a certain way because society told me that I’d be happier, that I’d be more loved, and that I’d be more successful. When I realized that my workouts had an incredible impact on my mental health, daily stress levels, and energy levels that I felt all day long, I was able to suddenly stick to those workouts. So the why has to be a very real why that resonates with you and matches with what your goals are for your life.”
What are some ways someone can combine their goals and habits to better themselves?
“I like to think starting ahead, so I’ll think forward to a year from now and say “Where do I want to be in a year?”. I’ll set a goal for that year, then think backwards and build bite-size goals that will get me to that place in one year. For example, if you just say “In a year I want to write a book”, you could wake up every single day and not actually start writing the book. We can procrastinate when we don’t have specificity about what we should actually be doing on any given day. This is where bite-sized goals come in - they significantly increase our chance of achieving our larger goals.”
What are some little habits that we could incorporate into our daily lives to better our self-care and mental health?
“A few things that come up over and over when I interview world-class experts and doctors on my podcast is spending time building your community and relationships. Every single day is incredibly important. There’s a study based out of the Harvard School of Adult Development with Dr. Robert Waldinger, and it showed that community and relationships were the number one predictor of longevity and happiness throughout our lives.
So number one is building your community is nearly as important as healthy eating is for our health. Experts get very specific about this too - they schedule in time to call people they love, they habit stack by calling a friend on a walk, and they have recurring plans with friends such as Sunday night game night so they don’t need to take the cognitive effort of saying “I need to find time to see the people that I love this week”.
Number two is walking. Walking comes up over and over again. I recently did a podcast episode with a Doctor who specializes in optimism, and she said that walking is one of her top recommendations. It helps balance our blood sugar level for more energy, our metabolic health, our microbiome health, our creativity, and our stress levels. You don’t need to go on long, lengthy walks, you can experience incredible benefits with micro walks. With just a quick circle around the block, you’re going to experience so many benefits and it’s one of the habits that I encourage every single person to have.”
What is habit stacking?
“Habit stacking is just taking a habit that you already have and tying it to a habit that you want to have. This works because the habit that you already have is going to provide the queue or signal for the new habit that you’re striving for.
A very common example of habit stacking that I’ve seen in experts is they take the time they have to make their coffee every morning to do a micro workout. So while they’re making their coffee, they reach for kettlebells and do a few swings, do a pull-up in their kitchen, or drop and do some push-ups and squats. They’re taking time that they already have built-in to their day, and using the habit that they never skip of making their coffee and adding a habit they want to have. I would encourage people to look for those opportunities throughout their day.”
In your podcast, you’ve talked about the 5 habits that have changed your life. Could you go over what they are?
“Focus on the base of the pyramid - good nutrition, sleep, social connection, routine, and movement. Those are the five things that make up the base of our health. So I like to put a sticky note on my computer with those five things on them, and throughout the day I try to see what I am missing and focus on those items.
Number two is to prioritize relationships. We’ve already talked about this a little bit, but the research is just so compelling around the importance of relationships for our physical health and our mental health. I think a lot of us made the connection with mental health, but we haven’t realized how much it is impacting our hormone levels and inflammation levels, the real physical things that are happening in our bodies. So I take a lot of care to prioritize my relationships and make decisions in my life based on how I can optimize and give my relationships significance in my life.
Number three is alcohol. Reevaluating my relationship with alcohol has been huge for me. I call myself an intentional drinker, which means that I’m not completely sober, but I am not having a drink simply because work has ended or because I’m out with my friends. I’m having a drink because I very specifically would like to have a drink at that moment. It has cut my alcohol consumption down massively, which has had a huge impact on my life. The motivation for this came when I did a podcast series about the health impacts of alcohol and I found that alcohol is the 2nd leading cause of cancer. It is right after smoking and we do not talk about this enough. When you realize the impact alcohol is having on your body, it’s really hard to drink it casually without a high level of awareness. On top of that, I have realized over my two years of not drinking that I can go out and have fun with my friends, I can dance at parties, and I can be really fun, silly, and play games. It’s given me this incredible sense of confidence that I am the sparkly person that I used to give alcohol the credit for making me. It’s really wonderful because alcohol doesn’t deserve that credit, I do. I feel very strongly that every single person is giving alcohol credit for qualities that they naturally have and I want us to all stop doing that.
Number four is keeping promises to myself. Self-love is something that we all want to have, but it feels uncomfortable and we don’t believe it because we don’t have self-trust. Self-trust is the missing piece of the equation to self-love. I hate the “You can do it girly!”. I want to know the solid concrete science and action tips. And the really solid concrete way to build your self-love is by building self-trust, and the way that you build self-trust is by keeping promises to yourself. So when you’re laying in bed in the morning and you say “I’m not going to scroll on my phone first thing while I’m in bed” and then you reach over and grab your phone to scroll on your phone first thing while you’re in bed, that is a broken promise to yourself. So later when you’re looking in the mirror and you say “You can do it, I love you, I believe in you!”, why would you believe yourself? Why would you trust yourself? You just proved to yourself that you’re not trustworthy. We do this time and time again throughout our day. When we break a promise, we are proving to ourselves that we are not trustworthy. It is important to build that relationship with yourself.
Number five sounds a little morbid but I love it. It’s one of my favorite tips in the book and it is to think about your death. The reason that I asked people to think about their death is because it gives us an incredible sense of perspective. If you picture yourself when you are 90 years old and you’re reflecting back on your life, you are going to gain such a sense of clarity of both the things that you wish you had prioritized more and the things that did not matter at all but you convinced yourself did. When you are 90 years old, are you going to care about how your cellulite looked in a bikini on the beach? Or are you going to wish that you spent every moment enjoying the sun with your friends splashing in the waves? I like to zoom out, think about my old self, and think about what’s going to make her really happy and what’s going to make her really frustrated. It gives me an incredible sense of perspective.”
What does your morning and evening routine look like since you’ve mastered your habits?
“In the morning, I start with a huge glass of water with electrolytes and colostrum for a little morning mocktail. It makes the day feel fancy and fun to start! Then I immediately get outside and take a 10-minute walk outside. After, I do a meditation with my husband; having that buddy makes it so much easier to stick to. Next, I’ll take a shower and I’ll end it with two minutes of cold water. Finally, I make a high-protein breakfast, which is usually some type of green smoothie and a pesto scramble.
In the evening, my biggest thing is that I read myself to sleep. I don’t have my phone in the bedroom. This is another habit that almost every single expert that I’ve interviewed has in common. I have a recent podcast with neuroscientist Dr. Judd Brewer who studies willpower. From a neuroscience perspective, willpower does not exist, so instead of relying on willpower, we need to put ourselves in situations where we don’t need to exercise it. This means not having your phone in the bedroom if you don’t want to start your day with your phone. So I plug my phone in the kitchen and read a book to fall asleep. I sleep better and I wake up in a good mood!”
Tell us about your new book!
“My book is called 100 Ways to Change Your Life. It has 18 different categories, ranging from gut health, longevity, building great habits, ways to better your relationships, and more. I tried to cover every single part of a person's life. You’re not intended to go through, read the whole thing, and overhaul your whole life. It’s a very low-stress situation! Each tip can be read in 5 to 10 minutes, and you can dive in and out of them as needed to make the changes you want. Each tip has science and an action tip based on that science, so you can begin to use them to change your life today!”
We want to thank Liz Moody for sharing her wisdom and insight on these topics! Be sure to check out Liz on Instagram, as well as her book 100 Ways to Change Your Life and her podcast Liz Moody Podcast.
