In this YouTube/podcast episode Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow, introduces a free 30‑day Healthy Habits Challenge designed to help people move beyond fleeting New Year motivation and develop lasting discipline. She explains that while motivation rises and falls, discipline is a trainable skill that can be strengthened through small, consistent daily actions. The challenge is built on three pillars—daily movement, mindset, and consistency—and each day requires only 5‑15 minutes of practice. Participants receive a short video, an audio version on the podcast feed, and a daily email that includes a habit description, research links (PubMed), a tracker, and optional journal prompts. The program emphasizes that it is not a weight‑loss or “all‑or‑nothing” regimen; missed days are simply restarted without shame. Movement is flexible, encouraging joyful activities like walking, yoga, or dancing, and participants are urged to try new modalities. Cheryl highlights that the habits are research‑backed, offering optional deeper dives into the science. She shares her own background—graduate training in psychology, 20+ years of yoga teaching, consistent strength training, and ongoing personal‑training certification—to establish credibility. The challenge launches January 1 2026, is evergreen on the website (healnourishgrow.com/habits), and can be started at any time. Cheryl invites listeners to join, promising that disciplined practice will strengthen the “discipline muscle” and improve confidence throughout 2026.
Chapters
Hi everyone. I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow. And today I wanted to chat with you about a new program that I'm starting. And it's basically this time of year, you know, everyone's interested in making a lot of resolutions and starting new habits, but they're really hard to maintain over time. And that's where I really wanted to be able to help you and hopefully create a program that will actually help you meet your goals and make the challenges that you want to make this year. So What I'm starting is a 30-day Healthy Habits Challenge. If you're tired of starting over, this is going to be the program for you. Everybody starts the new year, you know, with a lot of motivation, and that is something that wanes over time. Quite often before even the end of January, people have given up. But the challenge is to create something that you can maintain for the whole year, right? And that really comes down to discipline because while motivation may wax and wane, Discipline is something that's very real, and it's also something, a skill that you can actually train so that you will be better and better at it the more that you practice. And that's what this program is all about. So building that skill over 30 days, it's going to be small habits each day so we can learn to train that skill. And it's free. It's totally free. I've wanted to do this for a long time because habits and consistency and discipline are something that have been in my content for years now. And I've always wanted to do this and I could never just quite figure out a great way to deliver it and to make it make sense. But basically it's built on 3 pillars, and this is how I wanted to challenge you with this, because I think it's habits that will sustain you for your whole life, obviously. Uh, and that is daily movement, mindset, and consistency. And so each day that we practice these short habits, it's only going to take 5 to 15 minutes total each day. You get a short video, and that's why I'm starting this now, cuz this is the introduction, tell you all about it. And then there'll also be audio on my podcast feed. And so So if you are in a big rush and you are driving to work, you can still listen to the habit, learn the research behind it, learn a little bit about why we're trying it, and you'll be able to listen to that on your daily movement if you're taking walks or you're biking or whatever it is you're doing. So there'll be the podcast feed, and then you also get an email that lays out the challenge for the day, gives you the research links. There's a handy tracker. I'm suggesting some apps for tracking also if you'd like to do that and make it completely digital. Um, but the habit tracker spreadsheet still works perfectly great too. So you don't— you want to keep it simple and old school, that's totally fine. So what this is not: this is not another weight loss challenge. This is not all or nothing like a lot of you have heard of or tried 75 Hard. This is not about perfect. This is about just practicing consistency day after day. And if you miss a day, it doesn't mean you have to start over. It doesn't mean you failed. It just means that you start over again. And that is really what I have learned over the years and what I— when I practice my discipline, it's not that I'm perfect. Perfect all the time. It's just that I always start over and I don't wait till Monday. I don't wait till the next day. Once I realize it in the moment, I notice that and start again right that moment. And that's the kind of practice that we're going to be doing throughout this whole challenge. So your daily checklist will look something like this. You'll either watch or listen to the day's video. You'll do the habit of the day. You'll do your daily movement of 10 minutes. If you're somebody that already exercises a whole lot more, this is already part of your lifestyle, obviously you're going continue to do that, but I will challenge you to maybe make some different kind of choices in your movement patterns. So if you're a runner, let's say, maybe challenging yourself to try some yoga or try some mobility work or strength training, if that's not something that you do currently. So you'll do the habit, you'll do your movement, and you'll check these off in the tracker. Hopefully it'll give you a great sense of accomplishment. It always does for me when I'm making— checking off things off my list. And then optional things are to do the journal prompts. So you'll get a journal prompt each day and to read the PubMed link. Because I don't want you to just think I'm picking habits here at random. Obviously, a lot of these are based on my own personal experience, habits that I think are very, very helpful and contribute to your health. But the reason that we do these habits is because they're based on research so that there's at least some, something behind it that why it's good for you. And you can, you know, read the study or not, or just read the abstract and read the conclusion just to get an idea. But basically you can dig into this kind of as much as you want. So if there's a particular habit that really speaks to you when you try it, that That might be the day where you take those items that were optional and add them in. So, and the reason I'm trying to keep this to 5 to 15 minutes is because we want the small wins here, right? You don't wanna take on something that's so challenging that you set yourself up for failure for the very beginning. Small habits build into big habits, and you've gotta take it one step day by day, um, to get to these bigger habits that we have in mind for ourselves in the future. So it's like you wouldn't, you know, if you wanna build a beautiful house, right? You're not just going to get a bunch of 2x4s and start nailing them together. You have no foundation. It won't hold up over time. And so that's the same thing that we can do here. We're going to build the foundation. And then later, after you've built these small habits or found things that really help you on a daily basis, then you can tackle the bigger things and bigger goals and goals that are 5-year goals, 10-year goals, that kind of thing. But it really starts with these everyday little habits. So we're going to set up so that these systems help you beat willpower. You're just going to do it every day. And they're so easy. You almost can't skip them. That's what I like about them. You just return quickly to it if you missed one. And there's no shame, there's no judgment. It's just, we're all human, right? We're all gonna miss a day or we're gonna have a day that's so busy, but these are really small. So hopefully you'll be able to do that. The movement is very flexible. It's really whatever works for you. I like to say that find something that's like a joyful movement that you can do once in a while. So for me, it's like, you know, dancing around the kitchen while I'm cooking or something like that. That just makes me happy. Put on some good music. But then of course I have my strength training that I do and walking and all of that. Um, but you're going to pick one that works for you. So if it's hard to squeeze these things into work, it's only 10 minutes. You might walk a little bit over your lunch break. You could walk 5 minutes in the morning, 5 minutes at night. And of course, if you can do more and want to do more and you have more time that day, please feel free. This is not— this is just the minimum. This is just getting you into the habit of moving your body every single day. And then we're going to just realize that even on busy days, that's where you fit in these little tiny things. So let's see here. I want to make sure that I don't miss anything. Okay. We're not dieting. We're not losing weight. You'll have the tracker. So yeah, I think I covered all of the points. I just was going through my notes just to make sure that I didn't miss anything. But I think that that gives you a good sense of what this challenge is about. If you don't know me already and you come across this, you're like, well, who is this? That's leading this challenge. I have a whole about page over at my website, but basically my degree is in psychology. I have some graduate training in psychology. I'm a registered experienced yoga teacher. I've practiced yoga for over 20 years. I have been strength training now consistent. I've done it my whole life, but really only gotten consistent the last 3 years. And so that's been a really exciting thing for me as what I classify now as an older person. It's so important to health. And so you'll probably learn a little bit about that somewhere along in the challenge as well. And then I'm also studying for my personal training certification. I don't know if I'll ever use it, but I've just been so into learning all the things around strength training that I thought, hey, why not? And it's something that I can share with you guys. And hopefully, you know, give you some further information to benefit you and your goals. But yeah, so that's a little bit about who I am. If you wanna learn more, go over to the About page of my website, and I am on stories daily on Instagram. And as we start this challenge, I'm going to be starting it January 1st. I'm going to be doing it along with you. Um, a lot of you'll be starting on January 1st, which is awesome. But the great thing about this is I've set it up to be evergreen content on the website. So anytime you go to the website and click and sign up, you can start the challenge that very next day. So it's something also that if you, you know, get, like I said, there's no off track. Hopefully you want to complete the 30 days and just, if you miss a day, go again. But say you get busy and you kind of just give up on it, but you come to a time in your life again where you want to restart, you can always do that. It'll be there for you to do 30 days at a time, anytime of year, because like I said, that's what I always believe in. I don't think you should wait. I think whenever you have the inkling to make a change, to start something, start it today, start it now. Just the only thing I will say is if you happen to find this before January 1st, 2026, I am in the process still of completing the content. At this point, it is Monday, December 29th. So hopefully it's further along by the time you find this and it should be available. But if for whatever reason it's up and you sign up before January 1st, then you're just going to have to wait a couple of days before you get started. So now the most important thing, if you're listening on audio on the podcast feed, to sign up, you're going to go to healnourishgrow.com/habits. And if you're here on YouTube, the link will be down below. Um, but yeah, I hope you join me. I think this should be fun. Like I said, it is a challenge. It's 30 days of consistency, but it is nothing that you can't handle. And I think it'll give you a lot of confidence and a lot of, um, interest in learning more about discipline and practicing that on a daily basis. And it's just like your muscles. The more you practice it, the stronger it gets. So let's all get more disciplined in 2026 together. And I'd love to have you join me and help you meet your goals. Anyway, until— well, you're listening to the podcast, I'm gonna say until tomorrow. I will see you soon. Okay. Thanks. Bye.
