In this episode of the Heal Nourish Grow podcast, Cheryl McColgan discusses how to stay on track with your 2025 goals, emphasizing the importance of consistency over motivation. She shares strategies for creating manageable goals, habit stacking, and balancing commitments to ensure success.

Cheryl also highlights the significance of time management, mental tricks for habit formation and the value of rewarding progress. Personal reflections and life updates provide a relatable context for her insights. I

She also shares her experiences and insights from a recent vacation, focusing on travel challenges, dietary choices, and fitness management. She discusses the importance of maintaining an active lifestyle while traveling, the balance between indulgence and health and the significance of consistency in fitness routines.

Takeaways

• Motivation can fluctuate; focus on building habits instead.
• Consistency and commitment are key to achieving goals.
• Start with small, manageable goals to avoid overwhelm.
• Habit stacking can help integrate new habits into your routine.
• Evaluate your goals to ensure they are realistic and achievable.
• Balance your commitments to avoid setting yourself up for failure.
• Investing in time-saving solutions can enhance your wellness journey.
• Sleep is crucial for recovery and overall health.
• Use mental tricks to overcome resistance to starting workouts.
• Reward yourself for progress to maintain motivation. Baggage capacity issues can disrupt travel plans.
• Consistency in diet and exercise is key to health.
• Listening to your body is crucial for injury management.
• Aging affects fitness goals and recovery time.
• Balance indulgence with healthy choices while traveling.

Episode Transcript

Cheryl McColgan (00:01.134)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. And also happy 2025. I don’t think I’ve gotten to officially say that even though there has been an episode out this year. Anyway, today I just wanted to chat with you about how to stay on track with your 2025 goals. A lot of people set New Year’s resolutions or even if you don’t set a strict resolution, there might be some things that you are trying to work on in the new year and

this is one of my favorite topics because I feel like everybody thinks they want to wait until they get motivated to do something. motivation waxes and wanes. And I speak to this 100 % from experience because over the years, my motivation in area of health and wellness has been lacking. But that doesn’t prevent me from doing the things I know I need to do and that I should do.

And that’s because I think motivation is really overrated. It’s more about creating your habits and then having just consistency and commitment over motivation. And that’s really what will help get you to your goals. And one of the things that I find and I haven’t been doing much coaching lately. I’m actually thinking about opening that up again. So if that’s something that you’re interested in, please get in touch and let me know. You can just email me at

info at heelnourishrow.com. But one of the things that I’ve noticed in the past, and I’ve heard many, many other coaches and people in the wellness space say this, that the thing that people kind of get hung up on the most, particularly with New Year’s resolutions, is that they try to bite off way more than they can chew. And so what happens is for maybe the first couple weeks of the year, you stick with whatever your new routine is. I’m going to eat right, I’m going to exercise four times a week, I’m going to

drink more water, all this. And so you might stay with it for a couple of weeks, but it all becomes very overwhelming. And so instead of moving forward, you just feel overwhelmed and you kind of quit altogether and not taking any of those habits where if you do some things like habit stacking, and I’ll talk more about what that is shortly, habit stacking, starting really small, making small manageable goals, taking one goal at a time. instead of

Cheryl McColgan (02:23.318)
exercise, eat different, drink water, maybe it’s just pick one of those to start with, not all at the same time, because time, time goes on. You have weeks, you know, if we’re all lucky, we have weeks and weeks and months and months and years and years of time to create these new habits. And what happens is getting the first one solidified or getting one in your routine where you’re committed and you’re, you know, doing that one again, and it becomes just a routine to you. don’t even think about it like brushing your teeth.

those are the best habits because then that goes on autopilot and then that’s the perfect time to then start another small habit that you can do over time. if your commitment and your goals have already waned, I’d like to invite you right now, know, the New Year’s a great time, of course, because it’s just kind of what’s traditional and what people are used to. But really any day, not a Monday, can be a Tuesday, can be a Wednesday, it can be a Thursday, any day, any week, any month.

is a time to start something new. And so if you’re already starting to wane on some of your New Year’s resolutions and you hadn’t given them this much thought before, maybe evaluate, did you take on too much at once? Maybe that’s really what’s preventing you from being consistent in these new habits. Or did you set a goal that’s just very unrealistic? That’s a thing too. I mean, starting to go from a diet where, say you’re eating the standard American diet, you’re eating out a lot, you’re eating a lot of fast food.

And then your goal for the new year was, well, I’m just gonna eat all whole foods. Well, that’s a very daunting task. They’re very different from one another. So it might be best to just start with, okay, most days I’m going to make better choices. And you do want it to be measurable. So for example, maybe it’s if you’re eating a lot of fast food, you might set your goal to, I’m only gonna eat fast food four days a week, if you’re at five days a week now. So starting small like that. And then do that for a week or two.

and then take it down even more and make this transition more gradual over time. Because especially with food too, if food or a different way of eating is one of your goals, if you’ve eaten a lot of highly palatable processed food, the food scientists are smart. They design the food, they engineer the food to make you want more and crave more of it. And there’s this perfect combination of salt and sugar.

Cheryl McColgan (04:42.624)
and fat and things that make it just so stimulating to your brain. It’s a big dopamine hit. And so if you go from having that every single day of the week, going to what’s going to seem in your mind, maybe bland food if you’re eating whole foods and you maybe you’re not the best or maybe you’re not used to making things at home. And so the taste difference is going to be so significantly different that not only are you going to, you’re going to lose out on some of those hits. So that’s going to make you feel not as good in making these good choices.

And it’s also just going to be such difference in taste that initially that it might be just a challenge. If you slowly over time, you’ll have a lot more success hitting that goal. And then also keep in mind kind of the 80-20 rule. So in many things, maybe it’s your diet, maybe 80 % of the time as whole foods, maybe 20%, you get some treats or have some things that are more processed 80-20 in that way. Also 80-20 in your consistency. None of this can be perfect.

100 % of the time every day of the week. And so give yourself some grace. If you make a little mistake or something didn’t go as you planned on one day, or even in one hour, the next hour, the next day, the next week is a chance to do it. The only thing I would say about that is don’t wait. Just recognize that, okay, that wasn’t the best choice I made for lunch there. I had fast food. I said I wasn’t going to do that. But now for dinner, I’m going to make a better choice. I’m going to eat more healthy food for tonight.

And then tomorrow I’ll honor my commitment to whatever that goal was for that day. So don’t let it get away from you just because one meal, one time, one week, one day, one hour you messed up, that doesn’t give you license to just ditch it all, right? So it’s okay. Just give yourself grace and then reset your intention to make it better in the next choice, in the next choice. And so in that way, if you can make those good choices about 80 % of the time,

or better, you’re going to be so much better off than where you are now. So let go of perfection, let good enough be good enough, and just move forward with your goals that way. So think that’s one way to really start thinking that will allow you some breathing room so that you can create one new habit at a time. You you can work on more than one thing at once. You’ve just, you’ve got to know yourself and you’ve got to know your level of overwhelm.

Cheryl McColgan (07:03.822)
And you’ve got to know how difficult the thing is that you are changing. So for example, if you’re rehauling your diet overall, that’s a pretty big goal that might take a lot of your decision making capacity and willpower and things like that. So that might mean that other goals need to be put on hold. As an alternative, if one of your main goals is you’re already working out three days a week and you’ve committed to do four days a week now, that’s not as big of a jump.

that’s probably going to be a relatively easy goal in terms of, you know, keeping your commitment and actually being successful with that. So taking on another goal on top of that one might not be as taxing. So not only do you want to create balance within each individual goal, you want to try to create balance within your overall goals and your life goals and also matching it to, you know, what’s realistic in your life. Maybe the reason you’ve been successful and consistent.

with working out three days a week is because that’s really what your schedule allows and what your time allows based on your other commitments. Going to that fourth day a week, it could be a case where your lifestyle or your time commitments just literally don’t allow for that. So in that case, you might be setting yourself up for failure. So it’s also interesting to note those things too. Like, yes, maybe we’d all like to work out four or five days a week in a perfect world where we have…

help with the kids and our house is clean and we don’t have to cook and our job is not stressful and we don’t have to be there very much. So that would be the perfect scenario where yes, you probably could take on that goal to exercise more days a week. But if you are like most people and you have a full-time job and you have kids at home and you manage your own house and you have to clean your house and cook and shovel the driveway, like if you can see the…

Reason the lighting in here is kind of funny today if you are watching this on video is I’m in the Midwest in Ohio, if you don’t know that already. And we had a huge amount of snow. It’s been about a week and a half ago now. And it’s been the most snow that we’ve had like since the 70s. It was kind of crazy. there’s still and it’s been so cold. So there’s still tons of snow outside. So while it is very dreary today and cloudy, whatever light there is out there is kind of bouncing around and it’s making.

Cheryl McColgan (09:19.662)
the contrast here in the recording area not look like it normally does. So anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, but to get back to the goal setting and the things that you’re doing with your diet and with your exercise, if your life is already full of a lot of commitments and a lot of time commitments, then adding more time commitment on top of that is probably not gonna be as successful.

So maybe in that sense, you look at that goal and maybe you turn it into being more effective with the time that you do have to work out. So maybe you plan better so that you can take less time in between tasks in the gym, or you can do what I recently did and we invested in a home gym in part because I was going to the gym consistently and I didn’t mind that much, but the commute is no joke. It definitely takes more time.

So it was taking me probably a total of, and I did up my days to four days a week. So every time I would go to the gym, it was taking me 20 to 25 minutes to drive there in each direction. And then just time getting over, you’re probably talking an hour out of your day that’s just wasted. Now, I tend not to waste my time in the car, I always listen to podcasts. So that’s another good tip is to kind of.

You know, there’s certain things you can multitask and that is my time whenever I am in the car to keep up to speed with the thought leaders in the health and wellness space and to listen to podcasts. And then, you know, my time when I’m working on my recovery and I’m in the sauna, I have the model. And if you haven’t checked this out before, if that’s something you’ve ever thought of doing, I mean, it is literally one of the best in the world we’ve made in our health and

I you know, one of the reasons that we wanted to do that was if you are a regular listener of the podcast, you might remember an update from December of what is this? So this is twenty five. Let me think about this December twenty three. Yeah. December twenty three where my husband had open heart surgery and three blockages replaced. And so part of the thing with sauna is it is very good for

Cheryl McColgan (11:34.954)
Heart conditions heart patients it kind of mimics exercise a