In this Day 6 episode of the 30‑Day Healthy Habits Challenge, Cheryl McColgan explains that lasting change comes from swapping unwanted habits with healthier alternatives rather than outright restriction. She illustrates the concept with concrete swaps—water or diet soda for sugary drinks, cauliflower for potatoes, decaf or half‑caff for regular coffee—and discusses why substitution is easier to sustain. Cheryl shares her own nutrition evolution, noting a shift from strict keto to a more flexible low‑carb, strength‑training‑focused diet after a bodybuilding competition, highlighting how personal experience informs the swap approach. She also recommends the Sunnyside app for mindful alcohol tracking, emphasizing tracking and awareness as a pathway to gradual reduction or replacement. Throughout, she encourages listeners to start small, replace one behavior at a time, and iterate, stressing that the challenge can be begun any time and that mindful, incremental swaps build lasting habits.
Chapters
Hey everyone, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to day 6 of your 30-day Healthy Habits Challenge. So today we're going to work on doing something that is not restrictive, but yet just replacing. So for example, this is just again all about practicing discipline. And so instead of cutting something out completely, we're just going to do a swap. So one of the easier examples I can think of for this is Maybe you drink a sugary drink or soda every day. Instead, consider drinking a glass of water in place of that, or replace it with something closer to a soda, which would be maybe a diet soda, sugar-free soda, something like that. So rather than just trying to ditch the habit completely, we're gonna do a replacement behavior. And the reason this works is that substitution is just a lot easier than restriction, right? So small swaps can really improve your diet quality without having to do any crazy, really restrictive things things like, for example, keto. As you know, that, that's what I've done very strictly in the past. Right now, just so you know, I would still say I'm low carb, but I have kind of changed the way that I have been eating over the last year because I've started strength training a lot more, and I did a bodybuilding competition. And so my diet looked a little bit different than it has for the past 7 years, but I'm definitely still low carb and go in and out of ketosis at times still, but much more carbs in my life, right? So that, that's the example, is that when you do something like keto and you go all in at the beginning, you're really doing a lot of restriction. But instead, can you replace those? And that's really what it looks like for a healthy diet, no matter what kind of style of eating you choose, whether it's just eating more whole foods or eating less sugar, whatever it is for you, making those adjustments in a sense that you're replacing something rather than restricting it is a lot easier. So in the idea of like the keto diet, one of the things like, so for example, carbs, let's say potatoes. Well, instead of just getting rid of potatoes goes altogether, maybe you replace it with something else that's lower carb, like cauliflower. Cauliflower is the solution for everything, right? So it's just a replacement thing, and it also just creates better adherence. Because if you try to cut everything out at once— and that's really, again, what this whole challenge is all about— is that year after year when I've talked to people or worked with people on doing new habits or New Year's resolutions or goals for the new year, people always tend to bite off more than they can chew because when it comes to the time of year, like if you happen to be doing this in January, I mean, I hope you pick it up anytime. Cause like I said, it's always for me, it's like, okay, notice that you need some help with something and don't wait till Monday. Don't wait till tomorrow. Just start doing it now again. So you could start this challenge over anytime that you need it. But really what it's meant to do is get you thinking in the right direction and start trying little new things so that you can create bigger changes later if that's your goal. Or, you know, maybe there's something that you think you wanna change in your life. So maybe you try this one little habit around that first, and then you think, okay, well, that's really not the right way to approach it. Or maybe you don't actually need to change that thing at all. Maybe you just need to replace some behavior. So anyway, I hope that gives you some sense of why we're doing it this way, but also in this particular one, like the restriction versus replacement, it's just an easier behavior change. Cuz if you're still going to have, here's another example. If you need to cut down your coffee, right? Or cut down your caffeine instead of cutting out coffee completely, maybe you switch to decaf or maybe switch to half-caff. You still get the taste, you still have the behavior, you still have the enjoyment of it, but without the thing that you're trying to negatively impact. So hopefully that makes sense. Just doing these behaviors that replace things rather than restricting them is a lot easier. It can also just make you, if you, if you're working on diet in particular, we talk, I mentioned adherence, like diet is probably the place where it really impacts the most. Because again, like, cutting out those things that you love is eventually going to cause a rebound effect, possibly. Whereas if you put in something similar but healthier, it just makes that behavior easier to repeat over time. And then you might find, as you practice behavior longer and longer, it becomes more of a habit. Then maybe you cut down or cut back or cut out certain things, because there are definitely certain things— and again, diet's probably the best example— but there's there's definitely things in your diet that just aren't healthy and you'd be better off if you cut them out completely. And you could probably say the same things about some lifestyle behaviors as well. So I think I may or may not have mentioned earlier in the challenge that, uh, you know, another thing that people like to look at this time of year tends to be behaviors around alcohol. And I in the past had interviewed Ian, who's the founder of Sunnyside, and he had reached out to me because they're doing something this month. So their app is available year round and it's actually a really cool app because it's kind of on the same vein. It's not totally taking the behavior away or it's not restricting. It's just asking you to be more mindful and track things. And as you track things and become more mindful, sometimes your behavior changes automatically. And so around alcohol, they're not saying don't drink at all, but they're just saying be more mindful and maybe eventually, you know, do replacements, do mocktails, do different kinds of beverages, or eventually start cutting back. But it's the tracking and the mindfulness about it. And that substitution behavior that makes it really useful. So anyway, I'll make sure that is in the show notes as well because they are actually offering a totally free January program that you don't even have to put your credit card in for. But anyway, the app is really awesome and if that's one of your behaviors that you'd like to do this substitution with, I would definitely recommend trying that app at some point. So hopefully this makes sense. That's a pretty simple habit to try for today. Just swap one thing. We're just replacing or changing slightly. We're not restricting, but just Again, that practice of being mindful around this and noticing what it is you might need to change, I think will be super helpful. So that is it for today. I will see you again tomorrow.
