Why Healthy Habits Aren’t Enough (And What Works Better)

We are the direct result of our daily rituals. I know that's a sentence that's hard to hear, and I know a lot of women change the subject before I can even get that out. So I'm going to say it gently, and I'm going to stay with you with this for the next half an hour. We are the direct result of our daily habits.

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From Others Over Self, it's Hardcore and at Ease, a show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I'm host Shelly Rood, and today we're going there. We're having a conversation about something that we're avoiding: our body, body acceptance, Body pride, body love. Because avoiding this conversation means that that is your default plan. In all my years as a fitness and nutrition coach, I can tell you that healthy habits are not enough. We're swapping out the word habits for rituals. And today you're gonna get one nutrition ritual and one movement ritual that you can start this week. It's gonna help you take the shame out of healthy living. This is Hardcore and At Ease. In 2 weeks, I will be in Boca Raton, Florida for a video shoot. Veterans Radio is being featured on a show called All Access with Andy Garcia. And as a co-host of Veterans Radio, I get the honor of sitting in front of the camera with my fellow co-hosts. Yes, I'm thrilled for this. And then I had to coordinate hair and makeup. That's right. The expert pulled up my headshot on the email, saw my long hair, and asked me to send more photos so the stylist could prepare. And that is when it hit me. That headshot is 5 years old. It's also the COVID art for this podcast. That headshot has long hair on me, and those are extensions. That's not even my real hair. A moment of panic moved through my whole body when she asked about additional photos because That photo's 5 years old, and I can say without a doubt that when I walk into that all-access studio, I'm a different woman to look at. So a hard decision had to be made. I could keep holding on to this woman in her 30s, or I could own the new decade and the new title of being middle-aged. I've earned that title since then, and I'm choosing To own it. Just recently, if you're looking at me on YouTube, you can tell that I cut off what little length of hair I had left, and now I'm sitting here with a clean chin-length cut, and I really do feel more confident because I feel like it reflects who I am in this moment of my life. The decision to go short on my hair was its own bundle of nerves, and there's a whole nother concern that comes up when you think about a video shoot. Having been in broadcast media for 25+ years, I can tell you one thing that I know for sure: the camera adds 10 pounds. Now, I'm a former bodybuilder, so I know how to make that scale go the other way and how to do it fairly quickly. And that panic, though, that panic of feeling like I only have 4 weeks left until the shoot. Something has to be done about this. That decision for change came more out of requirement and less out of some type of noble choice. My husband calls makeup witchcraft. It's a ruse designed to pull you towards a false reality. And I hear him when he says that, and I have makeup on today, not too much, and I'll be sitting in that professional makeup chair in about 2 weeks. The last time I did this, it was in New York, and it took the makeup artist 90 minutes to give me a natural look. Now, the odds are that you have your own version of this headshot. Maybe it's 5 years ago, 10 years ago. Maybe it's your mirror right now. It could even be a pair of jeans or a conversation that you keep steering somewhere else. Whatever form it takes, this image of you, this very public image of you, Well, it's telling you the same thing that it told me: this is not who you are anymore. That's how the haircut and the headshot got me thinking all about this. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the part that nobody likes to say out loud. It's the fact that time does not come back. More time cannot be created. I will never look or feel The way that I did 10 years ago or 5 years ago, or even 1 year ago. And that is really uncomfortable to sit with. I don't wanna rush past this idea because I think that rushing past it is why so many women have just stopped talking about the idea of aging at all. And the grief, the human grief of our bodies deteriorating is a real source of turmoil. Even when the rest of your life can be full and good. I have a constant tornado of thoughts about appreciating my body, and all of those thoughts together, they're still not enough to quiet the sadness that comes with knowing what I just said. If I do not love the body that I have today, I wonder how I'll ever learn to love it as it continues to deteriorate. And that issue is following me around, and I suspect that it's following you around too. And the rooms that I sit in, the conversation about the body, it gets steered somewhere else the moment that it starts. And I get it. I don't work in the fitness industry direct anymore. People don't come to me specifically because they're looking to drop weight or because they want to drop a dress size within a month. We're typically meeting for business advice. Or to hash out some relationship issue. And yet somehow it always seems to come back to how we feel about our own body. And I understand this because when your body has changed and you don't look the way that you did 10 years ago, that subject can feel like it's a verdict on your worth. So we're going to say this out loud today because I am tired of carrying it silently. I don't want to carry it silently anymore, and I don't want you to have to do it either. Maybe you're avoiding the conversation about loving and accepting your body. Avoiding that conversation—it's a plan. It's the default plan, and the body gets whatever it gets by default. Today is the youngest that your body will ever be again, and that makes today the best day that you have to start protecting it. A few months ago, I sat down with Jess Muse. She's a Coast Guard officer and a recording artist. You might remember her from America. On this show, you can go back to episode 57 where I asked her what she would say to women who left the service and feel like their body confidence just has never gotten back there. She told me, the way you look does not reflect your worth. And then she went somewhere with the conversation that I had trouble following. She was sharing about her time in Hollywood with the most shallow people she'd ever known. And she said, you can get fillers, you can do anything now. She said, I don't care if people get plastic surgery, I'm all for it. And she also said, I like fillers too, they're fun. I told her that plastic surgery sounds like hard work to me. It sounds scary. It's a medical procedure. And I've appreciated that conversation with her ever since. Because the wisdom that Jess shared Is that she never claimed to be free of the same pull that you and I feel. She said, I have problems with it too. And she said that Hollywood messes with her to this day. She drew her own line in what she was willing to do. She said that surgery could not be glorified as, I'm going to be this perfect person if I do this. And she said that the answer to anyone else's choice is instead of judging, Approaching with curiosity and being kind toward people. What if we took her advice about ourselves? What if instead of judging our own feelings about our bodies, we approached ourselves with curiosity and kindness? There's a question that sits in my mind of how far is too far? I don't have that answer for you. It's something that you're going to have to come up with. I am very grateful to Jess for saying her side of that out loud because it gives you permission to be able to hold that question without giving a verdict to yourself. What I do know about my own choice is the order of operations, if you will. So when it comes to my own health, the rituals come first because they're the part that I can control every single day. And I would rather see what these rituals can do on their own Before I start to chase other measures. What does that mean? That means for me, before I even think about any type of pill or supplement, I will go to real food as the answer. All the while that these rituals are taking place, the clock keeps moving in one direction. I am getting older. And so are you! And that's the terrain, and you navigate it with the body that you have today. You see, peace is available inside of this body right now while your body is changing. The question of how far is too far, well, that can be a very wide open door for a long time. So the word that I would rather spend our time on is the one that does the real work, and that word is ritual. Our company has always encouraged healthy habits. We used to do a lot more fitness and nutrition coaching than we do now. We've always offered teaching and guidance on what healthy habits could look like. And I'm telling you now that since doing this work for the better part of 15 years, the phrase healthy habits— it's not good enough. I've thought about why, and it really comes down to the word itself. This is a languaging issue. A habit is something that runs on its own, usually without you deciding something. And a ritual is something that you decide on purpose, and you perform it every day because it's important. Health is not a habit. Health should not be thought of as a habit. Health is an intentional series of rituals that we perform daily. Think about brushing your teeth. I had to fight with my 6-year-old this morning to get his teeth brushed. Tonight, you're going to stand at your bathroom sink, And you've got the taste of mint in your mouth, the water is running, and you're not going to negotiate with yourself about whether tonight is the night to brush your teeth because that argument ended years ago. Hopefully in your childhood, you were trained to brush your teeth when you wake up, and you were trained to brush your teeth before you go to bed. Nobody feels guilty afterward, and nobody congratulates themselves as an adult when we do this action. The act of brushing your teeth happens because you decided long ago that your body deserves it. Now picture caring for the rest of your body with that same standard, and picture how quiet your head can get. What if you stopped debating these things? What if you stopped waiting until you felt like it? And I'll take this a step further. What if you stopped holding that action against the person that you were 10 years ago? And it would just simply be something that you do every day for the body that you live in. I've been testing myself over the last month, and these last 4 weeks are proof of what we're saying today. I have been very strict with my nutrition and strict with my activity every single day. I hate the workouts. For the past 4 weeks, multiple days a week, I have been working out intentionally to burn between 600 and 700 calories in an hour. These are not fun workouts, but they're being done with the specific intent of high caloric burn. I do them anyway, the way that I would brush my teeth. When I wake up, I don't wait for motivation. I just put the sports bra on, and I just put the running shoes on, and I just get in the car. Because motivation is a mood. Moods don't show up on schedule. The strength comes, the alertness comes, regardless of enthusiasm. I am such a crabby mess when I get to that workout facility in the morning. I don't want to say hi. I don't want to be nice to people. That's not what I'm there for. I am there for one reason: continue the ritual of high caloric burn for that one hour so that I will look and feel better about myself when I step in front of that camera in a couple of weeks here in Florida. It's so amazing to be in a place where I genuinely don't care what the scale says because I've done all sorts of emergency weight loss and watershed diets in my days. I used to do bodybuilding. I've been a CrossFit trainer. Yes, you can play the numbers game forever, but you know what? There's nothing that can replace the feeling of knowing that if even for a short time, You gave your all to a healthy ritual. A ritual holds because you make this decision ahead of time. You make this decision when you're calm, and you don't have to remake it every day. Now, you may not operate the way that I do, and you might be thinking that this sounds really rigid. And in fact, it's the opposite. Because once you decide, that frees you from making that decision every day. I no longer decide if I'm going to the gym. I am just going to the gym. That negotiating with yourself, that's actually the exhausting part. A ritual ends that negotiation. A ritual also asks for your attention. When you brush your teeth, it takes 2 minutes of your hands and none of your drama. You have to shut your mouth or open it and use it a little bit differently. Right? You don't talk when you're at the dentist. You don't talk when you're brushing your teeth. You are doing this one small thing completely, and then you leave. The ritual doesn't tell a story about who you are. You don't get a before and after picture when you're in the moment of the ritual. And that's a pretty distinct difference here between a ritual and a habit. Now, I want to be fair to all of the incredible motivational books that are out there about healthy habits and the teaching of habits and habit stacking, because it absolutely Absolutely points us in the right direction. A habit says to try to do this thing more often. A ritual is a different conversation. It says, this is what happens every day, whether I feel like it or not. So give yourself permission to miss one, and then perform the next one right on time. Because when you miss a ritual, it kind of doesn't matter. Because it's going to get jumped back into consistency that next day. The beautiful thing about rituals is there's only one rule: the very next scheduled occurrence still happens. The key takeaway here is to remember that a ritual is a decision that you make ahead of time, and the next thing to understand is why your body answers to that ritual. Let me show you with a plant. I want you to Picture a plant with its leaves drooping and curling at the edges, kind of like my lavender plants outside are doing right now at the turn of the fall. You can stand over this plant, and you can complain about it. You can feel like it's ugly with its drooping. And you know what? That plant will just continue to droop because complaining doesn't water the plant. Water is what changes that plant, and so does light, and so does good soil. Emotion is not on the list of what a plant needs. And you don't just water a plant once, do you? You water it more than once, continuously. So you can't water it on a Sunday and expect it to hold up for 2 months, unless maybe it's an aloe plant or something like that. Your body asks for the same thing. The conditions for success have to be there every day. Which is exactly what a ritual supplies. Now, your body works the same way as a plant, and this is the part of the conversation that, especially my women veterans, I want them to be thinking about today because this is where we tend to load up our emotion. When we focus on the shame that we feel about our bodies, it doesn't make us healthier. When we see a plant wilting, The act of wilting is information, and that information tells you what the plant needs. So consider this science. I've been talking over this issue with multiple people on my team lately because I know that I'm not the only one dealing with this. I'm really struggling with science and emotion, so I want to share with you what I discovered from a scientific standpoint that really helped me pull out the emotion that I'm feeling. Scientific American reported that the body replaces roughly 330 billion cells every day, which is about 1% of all the cells that you have. So over about 80 to 100 days, around 30 trillion cells are replenished. The cells lining your gut typically live for less than a week, and blood cells live anywhere from 3 days to 120. Some tissues turn over much more slowly. So while it's not entirely correct to say that you become a brand new person every 100 days, the numbers do tell a story. They say that your body is rebuilding itself while you're listening to this podcast, and it rebuilds with whatever you give it. What you eat and how you move arrive as the rebuilding materials. So the body that you have today, good news, it's not a fixed result. It's forever a work in progress that gets new material every single day, and the next 100 days are going to be built from something, and you get to choose what. Let's think about that gut lining since it turns over in under a week. The meal that you eat today becomes part of the material your body is working with throughout this next week. And the distance between what you do and what your body rebuilds is so short. I hope you can really think of this as hopeful news because your next ritual that you can perform— day 1, day 2— when you get to day 7, that's a huge congratulation and a huge thank you from your body because your body is using that ritual in the very next round of rebuilding that it does. Even so, nobody gets to choose how fast the clock is moving. We all have the same 24 hours in the day, and we also don't get to choose our genetics. Like my hair, my hair genetics. I will forever have thin hair. Long hair has never been in the cards for me. I do have power over the rebuilding material that I give my body. I can enhance it with collagen. And eat the proper nutrition to keep the hair that I have as healthy as it can be. But I also have to face the truth that time can't go backwards and your body directly reacts to what you do. Think about that. The clock doesn't reverse and the material that you give your body in the days ahead is the part that you control. That right there is why I have been able to think of my time and my efforts over the last 4 weeks And not even care about the number on the scale because I know that I feel stronger and I feel more alert. If you're thinking about your body as being a wilting plant, please remember that is temporary to today. It's simply a set of conditions, and conditions can be changed one ritual at a time. Your body is rebuilding itself from what you hand it. So the next thing worth knowing is where you're standing today. We're going to start with food. And in the next segment, we're going to talk about movement. Years ago, I was a personal trainer and the National Academy of Sports Medicine was my certification. They teach something called the stages of change. And I want to use this as a mirror for us to reflect on ourselves. I don't want you to think of these stages of change as a grade. You know, are you doing bad or are you doing good? This is simply a way for us to look at how changing a behavior tends to move through stages. Most of us pass through these stages more than once. So I'm going to walk through them for food first, and I want you to listen for the stage that sounds like you. I want you to actually say it to yourself quietly, that sounds like me. Picture the kitchen late at night with the refrigerator door open. There's light spilling across the floor. If you are in the stage of pre-contemplation, that means that you have no plans to change how you eat, and you might not even see it as a problem yet. The next stage is contemplation. And when you're in contemplation, you know how you eat matters, and you think about it often. You haven't necessarily committed to anything. A lot of women live in this space for years. This is a very tiring stage to be in. Because that thinking is just thinking, and it never turns into doing. The next phase is preparation. In preparation, you tend to act within a month, and you may have tried it before without it holding on, and that really can hurt. What you're doing here is you're gathering what you need, and this stage deserves its own level of respect because this right here— is where a ritual gets designated. Beyond preparation is the stage of action. In action, you have changed what you do, and you've changed the environment around you. Your food is changing. That ritual is easier to keep, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. The last stage is maintenance. In maintenance, you're protecting the change that you made. And you're watching for the moments that could pull you backwards. This is where a ritual really earns its name. I'll never forget the comedian who shared a joke about being at the gym and looking around and seeing all these fit people and saying to himself, what are you doing here? You are done. The truth is, there is no done. Once you hit your goal, you go into maintenance. So for today, my friend, I want you to pick your stage, And say it out loud as it relates to your nutrition, because every stage is information about where we're starting. This isn't a failing or a passing grade. Each stage also has that next step, and these aren't huge steps. These are very small steps. If you're in pre-contemplation, I just want you to think about what you're eating in one day. Don't judge it. Just think about what you're eating. If you're in the contemplation stage, put a date on your calendar of when you want to make change. When you're in preparation, it's time to choose a ritual and decide where it lives. And in the action stage, let's make this ritual easier to keep by changing what is sitting in front of you. If you've made it into the maintenance phase, then just name the situation that is most likely to pull you off course, like a big trip coming up and then plan for it ahead of time. That date, the date on my calendar, is what moved me 4 weeks ago, looking at my calendar and saying, oh my gosh, I have to be in front of a camera in 4 weeks. Your date might be a doctor's appointment. It might be a reunion or a trip. As a personal trainer, I've heard it all. I've dealt with women who wanted to look best for their 50th birthday. I've trained men who didn't want to feel Like they weren't able to take their shirt off when the beach time comes. If you're able to name a date and get that on your calendar, that is such an important and crucial step for the next part of action. Now, if food has been a particularly painful subject with you now or in the past, or you could be like some of my friends with autoimmune diseases who are managing health conditions, I want you to make sure you're talking to your doctor, you're having conversations with a registered dietitian about what fits your body, Before you go into this change. For today's episode, I'm sharing with you my experience as a certified personal trainer, as a former bodybuilder, as a fitness junkie, and I'm just sharing my own experience. I am not your medical team. You have to decide that for yourself. So now I'm going to review the stages one more time, and I want you to think of where you are in relation to your nutrition. Are you in pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, or maintenance? Now, movement— movement is a separate decision because you can be in action with walking, but still be in contemplation with food, or the other way around. Lots of people think that if they just go to the gym and sweat it out, they'll get the results that they want to see. But food and motion do affect each other. So it's this mix that tells you where your next ritual belongs. And I'm not even talking about discipline. I'm talking about the mix between your nutrition and your movement and what you're trying to achieve. So let's walk those same 5 stages again for movement. In precontemplation, you don't have any plans to move any more than you do right now. In contemplation, you're thinking about it, but you haven't quite started. In preparation, you have signed up for that gym membership, and you intend to begin within the next month. In action, you're moving on purpose. That's me right now. And if you're in maintenance, then you're protecting that routine that you've already built. Pick your stage for movement, and notice Whether it matches the one that you picked for food. If you're looking for significant change, then you're going to have to focus on both at the same time. Now, if the two are different for you, it is very normal. And that is very useful information because the next steps that you take, they work the same way. You see, if you're in pre-contemplation for movement, I just want you to notice how many hours of your day you're spending while you're sitting. That's where things like smart rings and smartwatches can come in handy. They can give a little notification when you've been sitting for too long. If you're in the contemplation stage for movement, just choose a time of day when you think movement would fit, maybe a morning walk or a couple of squats every afternoon. In the preparation stage, just pick one ritual and then attach it to something that you already do. If you're picking up the kids every day from school at 3, make that a rule. It's your ritual that you do 50 air squats before you walk out that door. In action, I want you to protect that time on your calendar the same way that you protect a business appointment. And if you're in maintenance phase for movement, I want you to really look at that ritual and change it. Before boredom puts that beautiful ritual of yours at risk. So now that you know which stage you're at for nutrition and which stage you're at for movement, go ahead and write down both of those and start your first ritual in the area that sits closer to the action phase. Why, why do we do that? Because momentum is much easier to build the closer that we get that way. When you're in pre-contemplation, that's where it is really hard to start because you've got a couple of stages to get through before you're ready to walk through that gym door. Let's be honest. I started a podcast about a year and a half ago, and I'm not gonna lie, I put on some pounds. Long hours of sitting, they wear on your body, and they do it quietly. I don't even think about it, but just Sitting here day after day, a body that sits for most of the day, it gets used to asking very little of itself. And that's how a lifestyle can damage you without it ever feeling like a significant event. I don't have any plans to quit this podcast anytime soon, so I have to change the lifestyle. And I want to give you permission to do the same. So give yourself permission to start with that short walk. Make sure your shoes are by the door at night. When that first cold breath of air hits you on that first block around your neighborhood, let that settle in for just a minute. Give yourself permission to hate the workout like I do. It's okay to hate your time at the gym. That's not what it's about. You're not there for joy. You're there for perpetuity and to grow your wilting body into something strong. The beauty of the ritual is that it reminds me that on the hard days, when I don't want to go, I go anyway. Because the ritual doesn't care about your mood, and it doesn't ask you how you're feeling. I was at the gym the other day, and the trainer said, questions, let me know. Concerns, keep them inside. What an amazing phrase to use with so much of this hard adulting that we don't want to do. Questions? Let me know. Concerns? Keep them inside. Now that you know which stage you're at for nutrition and which stage you're at for motion, think of both of those stages, and it's time to turn them into rituals that you can start this week. You're going to leave this episode today, With 2 rituals, you're going to create one for nutrition and one for movement. Each one has to be small enough to do on your worst day. There's the beauty of this. We are making a worst-case scenario plan. So think about the day where you have no energy. Like me, you were up for no good reason between 1 and 4 AM. Everything around you feels loud and harder than it should be. That ritual is still going to happen. Give me about an hour here and I'll be in that gym. Because a good ritual has 3 parts: it's small, it's attached to something you're already doing every day, and you decided it ahead of time so you never have to negotiate with yourself in the moment. Use that toothbrush as your anchor. Right after you brush your teeth in the morning or right before you brush them at night, Add one thing to increase your health because the brushing is already happening. So now you're just going to piggyback off of it. For nutrition, you might decide tomorrow's first meal before you go to bed. So that decision's already made. You wake up, you get the egg frittata out of the freezer, and you pop it in the microwave. You don't get to stand there and maybe consider the toaster strudel that your kids have in the freezer. You already know you're going for that healthy vegetable frittata. Or you might fill up your water bottle at the same moment that you're making your coffee. That way, you know that things are stacked next to each other. Rituals for movement: you might take a short walk after dinner. You might stretch while the coffee is brewing. Those are 2 really good rituals to put together. The whole kitchen smells with coffee, and there you are with things cracking and snapping because, you know, you're middle-aged. Whatever healthy ritual you're thinking of with movement, pick the one that you feel like you can do this week, because it matters only if you actually do it. One ritual that I added over the last month is my heart rate monitor. I make sure that after my gym, when I get back in the car, I take it off and I plug it in to charge. That way I never have to worry about if the charge is there. The next time I go to use it. Now test each ritual that you have with just one question: whether you could do it on the worst day. And if the answer is no, then I want you to take your ritual and shrink it down until you're able to answer yes. Because again, that ritual is only going to work on the days when you don't want it to. I also want to caution you here against adding a 3rd ritual. We're only going to do 2 rituals today. Just come up with 2 things, one for nutrition and one for movement, and get those on the calendar. Give it a couple of weeks, and then you'll know when it's time to add another one because the first 2 rituals that you put into place, they're going to go quiet. That's the beauty of it. They sort of disappear into your day, and without even thinking about it, your body's a little bit healthier. Now, as we wrap up today, I wanna remind you that your health is not a habit. It is an intentional series of rituals that we're performing daily. Time cannot be turned back, and neither of us gets to ask it to, even though we do ask it to. It's not gonna listen. The body that you have today, it can get stronger. It can be more alert. And the material for that It comes from what you hand it tomorrow morning. The question that Jess and I sat with— how far is too far?— the answer to that question can stay open while you're doing this ritual work. So I want you to ask and revisit that question when you're doing a ritual of yourself. When you're in a moment of panic, that's really not the time to decide if you want to start Botox. First, go towards these healthy, natural rituals, like getting the appropriate amount of water in, and then you'll be in a healthier place to be able to make those bigger decisions. Picture yourself just 1 month from now. You are stronger. You are more alert. You've stopped negotiating with yourself at the sink. You walk into your Hard week with decisions already made. It's a beautiful place to be. As someone who is living it myself, I can tell you that peace today is available inside of this very complicated terrain of life that we're walking. So take those 2 rituals, put them into your world, and give your body a fighting chance for tomorrow. Life does not move in a straight line. You navigate it. You're not gonna win it. With every move, you're the one authoring each experience as you live it. That is lived authority, my friend, and it's already yours. I'm Shelly Rood, and I am so grateful that you spent this time with me today. Thanks for allowing me to bare my soul to you about where I'm at with my own fitness This is not easy terrain, but it is terrain that we're navigating together. I'll be back with you on Tuesday with a guest. Until then, I want you to stay hardcore, be at ease, and trust the process.

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