In this episode of the Heal Nourish Grow podcast, Cheryl McColgan shares her holiday greetings and personal updates, discusses the importance of building habits for the new year, and introduces a 30-day habit challenge designed to help listeners create lasting changes in their lives.

She also highlights resources for a healthier new year, including a Quit Sugar summit and the significance of understanding macros in nutrition. Cheryl emphasizes the importance of small steps and invites listeners to join her on this journey towards better health and wellness.

Five Things You Need to Create Good Habits: https://youtu.be/8OVjrPu9UoM

• The importance of building habits for the new year is discussed.
• A 30-day habit challenge is introduced to help listeners create lasting changes.

• The challenge focuses on small, manageable habits rather than overwhelming resolutions.
• Listeners are encouraged to join the challenge and share it with friends.
• Cheryl highlights the Quit Sugar Summit as a valuable resource for the new year.
• Understanding macros is essential for nutrition and flexibility in diet plans.
• Cheryl is creating a Macros 101 class for listeners.
• The podcast emphasizes the significance of small steps in habit formation.
• Listeners are invited to participate in the challenge and share their experiences.

Disclaimer: Links may contain affiliate links, which means we may get paid a commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase through this page. Read our full disclosure here.

00:00 Holiday Greetings and Personal Updates
01:23 Building Habits for the New Year
04:03 Introducing the 30-Day Habit Challenge
06:58 Resources for the New Year: Quit Sugar Summit
08:36 Exploring Macros and Nutrition
11:42 Upcoming Content and Closing Thoughts

Episode Transcript

Cheryl McColgan (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Heal Nurse Ro podcast. If you can tell a little bit of difference in my voice, I’ve actually had a cold for a bit and I’m just now to the point where my voice is somewhat normal and I’m not sniffling and sneezing and being totally obnoxious. So I really wanted to go ahead and record this episode to share several things with you and to wish you happy holidays. Where I am right now in the US, it is currently Christmas Eve.

So I have actually still got a lot of things to do today. We’re actually having lasagna for dinner. The boys are both home for Christmas. So that is their request. So I’ll be making some homely lasagna tonight. And then tomorrow we will be enjoying a roast beast, which I always kind of laugh when I say that because it’s from the Grinch movie, I believe. I always call it the roast beast. So just a roasted.

Primed Rib Roast and yeah, so looking forward to sharing the holiday with my family and just catching up on some things quite honestly, because the last several weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind and with me not feeling as well, I’m behind on some things that I need to record and share with you. So we’ll just get right into it. The first thing I wanna talk about is building habits in the new year. So.

We’re getting ready to come into that time. And if you followed my content for a while, you’ve heard me talk about it before is whenever we come to this time of year, people make a lot of New Year’s resolutions. And typically what happens is by sometimes even before the end of January, people have already given up on their resolutions or they what usually happens actually is they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. They’ve made these kind of resolutions that are

just too big without taking the steps they need to do first to build up to that. And so I always like to encourage you to take small little steps towards habits. That’s really how you create lasting change. If you go to my YouTube channel, if you’re listening to this on audio, if you’re watching a video, you’re already on YouTube and I will try to link the video here if I can figure out how to do that. But I have a video on five things you need to create better habits. And that was covered by Authority Magazine.

think it’s maybe it was in 2019 or something like that. So this is certainly something that I have been focused on a long time in my content and in my own personal life, trying to create better habits, new habits. As I go through that the year, I really don’t wait until January. I’ll pick something up whenever it occurs to me that I really need it in my life. So right now I’ve got several things that I’m working on. A lot of it related to work.

But the one thing I kept thinking about this and I’ve thought about doing this for years and sharing this with you and it really wasn’t until this year where I was able to conceive of it in a way that I can bring it to fruition and really deliberate in a way that I think will be useful to everyone. It’s 100 % free. So I’m really excited about that because I just want to share information that will help you live a happier, healthier life. know, healers show has been around for I believe it’s going to be.

eight years this coming summer. I’ll have to go back and look when I actually launched it, but my about page that I wrote way back then is I’ve never changed it because it still just holds the same meaning to me what I want to share with people, how I want to help them be healthier, share information that’s based on the latest research. You know, I’ve certainly changed my mind about several things over the years and I think it’s important to be able to do that when presented with new information. So

Anyway, what this is all about, it’s a 30 day challenge, but it’s not the kind of challenge you’re thinking about the kind that you’ve tried before and you weren’t able to get through it was it’s too crazy or 75 hard, which is just an insane amount of things you have to do on a daily basis. And it really just sets people up for failure in my opinion, because in it’s well, I guess it’s named properly, right? 75 hard because it is very challenging. But this challenge is really all about creating better habits.

At very beginning of the challenge, you’ll set some intentions around things you might want to change. But really, every day is going to be a short podcast, a video, and an email that you get in your inbox. And it just gives you a small habit that you’re going to try that day. And it only takes about five to 15 minutes each day. One of the things is daily movement. you get to choose whatever it is that speaks to you.

what you know if it’s joyful movement you get bonus points for that maybe some kitchen dancing something but if you’re already on an exercise program it’s just going to have you you know you can make it into something that’s a little longer for you or maybe try a different thing for that 30 days but that’s one of the main components because i do believe that moving your body every day if you’re not in the habit of it brings more awareness around that and just committing to doing that you will feel so much better by the end of 30 days and if you’re already moving

you are going to get to try all these little habits that I have planned out for the 30 days. And if it’s something that speaks to you, once you try the habit, hopefully I’m thinking that you’ll try to implement it every day of the challenge. But if it didn’t speak to you, if it didn’t resonate or it’s something that you already do, you’re kind of just gonna leave that behind. You’re gonna take from this what you need from it.

And it’ll be, know, all of it has research links every day. So if you’re interested in spending more time on this particular habit, you can read about why it’s good for you or how long it might take to implement it, that sort of thing. So it’s really been a lot of work. And I actually, because of being a little bit sick, I haven’t recorded the rest of it at this point, but I got a little bit more to do. I’ve got the emails set up for the daily emails. And now it’s just a matter of recording the rest of the content.

so that when you are on that day with the habit, I’ll be right there with you. I’ll be talking about it. I’ll be sharing about how I use it in my daily life and maybe some more of the research. So it’ll be in an audio format where if you’re in the car going to work or something, like I said, the habit itself, whatever you’re gonna try is only gonna take five to 15 minutes for that day. But if it’s one of the habits that you’re more interested in, you’ll get to hear more about it and learn more about it. And hopefully it’s, you know, learn that it’s something that you could really use in your life and that might really help you. So.

That is a challenge. I would love for you to join me. Like I said, it’s a hundred percent free and you can just go sign up right now It’s a heal nourish grow comm slash habits So please please do this share it with your friends because you always are more successful creating new habits when you have friends involved You can talk about the different ones together. What’s what’s working for you? What’s not? It’s just it’s just more fun when you have more people involved. So

And you know, I always greatly appreciate it if you share the podcast or share my content with others, because that’s the easiest way that people find me. It is getting so much more challenging on the internet these days with AI to find people that resonate with you to find real people that are doing work in the space and in any space, really. It’ll be interesting to see really how that evolves over the next several years for sure. But

If you would share it, I’d be very grateful. HealNursePro.com slash habits. That’s how you sign up. The second thing I want to share with you, that’s another resource for the new year. It is a summit that I’ve been involved with in the past and they reached out to me and asked if I could share about it again. And I said, of course, because it’s something I really believe in. They always have great speakers. It’s another thing that’s 100 percent free. And that is the Quit Sugar Summit. And it’s not it’s interesting because even if you don’t want to totally remove sugar from your life or

If you already have a healthy relationship with sugar, doesn’t bother you. You don’t have diabetes, those sorts of things. The speakers are all just really excellent speakers in this health space. And I think whether you really want to quit sugar or not, you will still get some great knowledge from that and maybe get some tips and tricks and different things that you can, like I said, implement into the new year and just learn about. And so that is heelnourishgrow.com slash quit sugar summit. So super easy to sign up for that free as well. It starts, I believe, January 12th. So you’ve got a little bit of time, but

you go ahead and sign up for it now they’ll send you some reminders about when it’s going to start because you do need to watch it on the days that they send it out because that’s how they make the summit for free basically. So that content will be available on the day that it is registered to run and then after that unfortunately you won’t have access unless you choose to pay for it but it’s a really great way to get some free content watch the ones you can

or watch just the ones that you’re interested in, you’ll get the names of them beforehand. So that’s another great resource for the new year. And then the last thing that I’ll talk about today, I’m going to keep this relatively short because I’m sure that my voice is a little bit annoying with the hoarseness that I still have left from my little cold or whatever it was.

is that this is another resource that I’ve been wanting to create for a long time. And it really came to me when I was doing my contest prep for the bodybuilding shows and doing some serious dieting, which I still need to share all of that with you, kind of some lessons learned and some thoughts around that, because doing this at 52 and still being able to lose weight aggressively was really interesting. And I think it just goes to show you.

that it’s definitely possible. There just might be some things in your head that you have to get past a little bit or habits that you might need to change slightly to make that still available to you and your body. So if that happens to be a goal for you in the new year to lose weight or work on your relationship with food, have some content coming around that, but.

The one that I really want to create and I think is useful for anybody, no matter what your goal is, because it’s also useful if your goal is to build muscle or to gain weight, and that is macros. The power of macros. I have been tracking macros way back since when Spark people was still around. It has gone out of business a long time ago, but that was one of the first trackers before my fitness pal, before any of that. When I was back when I was a runner, I would often track my macros or any time that I needed to lose a couple pounds. That’s what I rely on.

And macros gives you so much more flexibility than a diet plan than a strict, you know, whether it’s a vegetarian diet or keto diet or Whole30 diet, it gives you so much more flexibility than any of those options, because you simply learn how to track your food and what it’s about. so that plan for that one is to kind of do a macros 101 class for you and just share

know, first of all, what are if you’re, I mean, at this point, I feel like everybody has heard this term, but I quite often realize that I’m a very, I’m in a very specific space where I read, listen to, consume this kind of content all the time. And it’s basically my work life, right? So it’s something that I’m very educated on. And so I kind of forget sometimes that there are people that don’t know some of these terms. And I’d be curious, comment below. If when I said macros, you knew immediately.

what it was and if you’re like, what the heck is this? Because I just be curious. I think most people do know at this point. But anyway, macros are fat, carbohydrates and protein. Alcohol is kind of considered a fourth macro in a way, and I will definitely talk about that in the macros 101 class. But I wanted to save that for when my voice is actually fully back and I’m not still stuffy so that it’s because it’s to be a long term, I think great piece of evergreen content and I want it to sound.

little bit better than I’m sounding right now if that’s possible. So that’s coming as well. So that’s kind of what’s been going on over here and the reason that I have been a little delayed. I do have an interview with a guest that is already prepped that will be coming up and it’s a really interesting guest that went through a lot of personal challenges and just kind of sharing some of her insights and ways that she was able to overcome those things and

some projects that she is personally working on to create some experiences for people that I think could be really interesting to a lot of my audience. And that is, you know, groups of women, and they kind of go out into nature into the wild and just learn skills around being outside and reconnecting with the outdoors. And so I’m really excited to share about that coming up too. But anyway, that is all I wanted to say for today. So again, if you could go

over and sign up for the challenge. It’s heelnourishgrow.com slash habits. And I hesitated to even call it a challenge because yeah, don’t I don’t honestly don’t think it will be too challenging. And that is the beauty of approaching habits in this way. And when you go, if you go listen to the thing, the five things you need to create healthy habits, it’s really about starting small and building on that. And you know,

doing things like habit stacking, you everybody, you brush your teeth every morning and every night, right? You always do that. So if you need to do anything, like take a new supplement or something, you know, putting it right next to your toothpaste, that’s a great way to do that. So habit stacking is also something that we’ll chat about in the challenge, but I really think it’s like a reset and it’s a way to try new things. So that’s how I’m looking at it. That’s how it’ll be approaching it with you. And again, I

you will sign up for that and join me share it with your friends and family so they can join you too and we’ll all get healthier in 2026. Like I said, I’ve definitely got some new goals and I’m working on some things for myself and I’m going to be doing each of these habits each of the days that they go out as well because I want to learn from it and I want to see you know which ones resonated with me or is there anything that I’m doing in my daily life that I should have shared that could have been a better habit to share with you to try.

So yeah, so we’ll all be doing it together and I’m really excited about like I said I thought about doing this a whole bunch in the past and I just haven’t found a way to deliver it and really Map it out the way that I have this time So I would love to have you along for the ride But anyway until next time which will hopefully be much sooner here now that I am well and back to recording and the other I think I mentioned with the challenge is there will be The audio

component, it’ll be like a special podcast episodes for a series for a while. And so if you’re catching this later, and you missed signing up for the challenge, once it’s out January 1, you can actually start it at any time. And the beauty is, I think you should be able to start it over as well. So if you really enjoyed it, you get off track for a little while you want to come back to it.

can always just start over the 30 days kind of like an evergreen thing so no matter when you hear this in the future this will be available to you. So that’s all for now and I hope you have happy happy holidays however you’re celebrating enjoy your time with friends and family and then let’s all get ready for 2026 and creating some new awesome habits so see you next