In the final episode of the 30‑Day Healthy Habit Challenge, Cheryl McColgan, founder of Feel, Nourish, Grow, guides participants to select three concrete habits to continue for the next 90 days. She emphasizes setting "tiny minimums"—specific, small daily targets that can be incrementally increased (e.g., 10 min of movement, then 15 min, then 20 min). Cheryl outlines a cue‑based framework: decide when, where, and how each habit will occur, and consider stacking habits together. She recommends balancing habit categories—one movement habit, one mindset habit, and one food or sleep habit—to align with long‑term goals. Cheryl shares personal stories of how she built lasting exercise and nutrition habits (running, strength training, gradual keto adoption) to illustrate the power of gradual consistency over big, unsustainable starts. Listeners are directed to the "Ultimate Wellness" core‑values worksheet (available via healnourishgrow.com/habits) to connect habits to 5‑ and 10‑year visions. Flexibility is encouraged; cues can shift when life demands, but the structure remains. Cheryl closes by inviting feedback via email, reminding participants the challenge can be restarted anytime, and teasing upcoming weekly podcasts featuring health‑and‑wellness interviews and research‑driven topics.
Chapters
Hey everyone, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Feel, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to day 30 of the 30-day Healthy Habit Challenge. You made it to the end and I'm so excited to be here with you for this last day and to hopefully hear all about some of your challenges, some of your wins. I would love it if you would respond to the email after the challenge is finished and just let me know how it went for you. I am always rooting for you, but anyway, for the final day, it's another kind of reflection thing. But it's more future-focused. I want you to choose 3 habits to continue for the next 90 days. So if you discovered there was a particular habit during this challenge, you did a lot of the reflection and reset throughout the challenge, and there were probably ones that you noticed that worked really well for you, or that you thought, okay, this is a good habit. I can see this really helping me in my everyday life. Go back to those and commit to doing it every day for the next 90 days. So ideally, I'd love for you to keep moving for 10 minutes every single day. Maybe it turns into 15, maybe it turns into 20, maybe it turns into going to the gym. These are the way that habits build. We keep doing these small little wins over time, and that's how you create really big change. So choose those 3 habits for the next 90 days and set tiny minimums for each one. So you want it to be really specific with yourself what it is that you're intending to do for those 3 habits. So again, if I, if I mentioned movement is the one that you wanna continue, you could keep it at 10 minutes. Or you could say, for the next 90 days, I'm going to do— for the first 30 days, I'm going to do 10 minutes a day. For the second 30 days, I'm going to do 15 minutes a day. And for the third 30 days, I'm going to do 20 minutes a day. Whatever it is for you, but making it specific, making it something that you commit to, and making it something that's still relatively small so that you're going to maintain it. Because at the end of this next 90 days, we want you to set you up for another really big win where you prove to yourself that you can trust yourself and that you can make changes and you can create new habits that actually stick. So again, create the minimum, but let's do 3 over the next 30 days. Hopefully some of these habits have turned into a lifestyle. The focus involved with doing little challenges like this just builds like confidence in yourself, and it beats perfection. We're not looking— we can't all be perfect all the time. We've got to just go for sustainability. And that is really how I've been able to like create these habits for myself that people always talk about me being so disciplined, that kind of thing. It really all started like this, just small little things. Whenever I get onto a new thing that I wanna try, I've taught myself that if I go big at the beginning, I might be able to stick with it for a little while, but quite often I crash and burn or I just get burned out on whatever it is. But if I start adding it in a little bit of a time, that really creates more of a habit. A great example of this for me, I've had many of exercise things over the years. I think I mentioned. Previously in this challenge, I was a runner for 17 years. Obviously I just didn't go out the door one day and run a marathon. It took small changes over time and building consistency. The same thing now where I've really been on my streak with strength training is that when I initially started, I told myself, okay, I'm only gonna go 3 days a week, half an hour max. I'm just gonna get in the gym, mess around with the machines. That's gonna be a good enough start. Created that consistency mark for myself, and that kept building and building over time. To where now it's almost like I can't, I can't, in a way, I don't, I mean, I know it's not that I don't want to, sometimes your body needs a break and I, I build in rest days and all that, but I actually feel guilty now if I think about one day where I'm not feeling like going to the gym, it's like, it's a habit now. I have to do it. That's basically how it's turned out. So these consistency things over time is really where you create this thing where you almost feel like it's just automatic and it doesn't feel like you need to back out of or should back out of it. It just becomes purely a habit. So that's just one example, but it could also be food or sleep. You know, the same thing when I started keto, I didn't just one day decide to start eating no carbs. I cut it back over time. I didn't necessarily go cold turkey. That's all, all to say that it all starts with these little things. So pick 3 things that you feel are really going to feed into your long-term goals. And if you haven't done it yet, this might be a really good time to do that core values and goals worksheet. If this speaks to you, it's— if you go to the website and search Ultimate Wellness, what is Ultimate Wellness, the sheet, the link for the sheet is in there. And I'll just walk you through some cues and some questions to learn more about what is it they're all about, what are your core values. And that's how you create these longer-term goals, and then you set these little habits in line to eventually reach those. So if you're going to do something anyway for the next 90 days, that's also a great time to do that. Exercise so that you can start to create these habits that are going to get you to your 5-year goal, your 10-year goal, stuff like that. Um, so if you're wondering too, like, where to start with picking 3, how do you narrow it down, consider this. This is one option for you. Pick one that's a movement habit, pick one that's a mindset habit, and pick one that's a food or sleep habit, and start with that. Write down the minimum for each of those, and then that's your for the 90 days. Develop some cues around this. So when and where each habit is going to happen. And of course you can be flexible. There might be days where if you say, okay, I like working out in the morning, I'm gonna work out in the, I'm gonna do my 10 minutes of movement first thing when I wake up. Well, maybe one day for whatever reason that can't happen. We can be flexible, of course, but mapping it out, putting it in your calendar or having the intention to do it at a specific time every day or stacked with another, another habit that makes sense. That'll just set you up for even more success. So again, it's not that we're not being flexible, but really giving yourself those cues about when and where this is supposed to happen. That way, when you see the cue or go to the spot where it's supposed to happen, it'll remind you that strengthen that habit over time, that that's where it's supposed to be. I think that is finally about it for us for this habits challenge. I hope that you got something out of it. I'd love to hear what you learned. I'd love to hear what worked for you, what didn't work for you, what were your challenges, what were your big wins. As always, if you're finding this later and you're like, oh my God, the challenge is over. It's not. You can start it at any time. I've designed this so that you sign up for the, the, uh, email and it'll send you the series day by day whenever you get started. So whenever you find this, it's available to you. It's healnourishgrow.com/habits. So I've said every day, I'll see you tomorrow, but this time I won't. I'm still be around on all my channels, all my socials on YouTube, but I'm not gonna have an everyday message to you for a little bit, hoping to get the podcast back on regular schedule, once a week releases, interviews with interesting people in the health and wellness space, and me talking about what whatever random topic of the day that I've turned into a research project for myself, basically. But yeah, that's about it. So I will see you somewhere down the road, and I hope to hear from you. Take care. Bye-bye.
