By Dr. Adam Carter, DPT, CF-L2, CSCS
I recently listened to a podcast called The Knowledge Project where the guest, BJ Fogg, talked a little about the concept of his book called Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. The more I thought about it, the more I could see the similarities in the idea of tiny habits and how one would go about rebuilding health. There is so much information out there about diet and exercise and all these other things that we must do to be “healthy” and it can become overwhelming. The fact of the matter is that eating well and exercising regularly can be a hard routine to get into. Which is where tiny habits come into play. BJ talked about rather than planning to clean out his whole fridge every saturday, he would just plan to throw out one item. He did this over and over again with other tasks. What he found was that more often than not, he would end up doing more than his planned task of throwing out one item in his fridge, or taking one piece of trash out of his car, but if he didn’t do more than that was okay because he still met his goal. I look at diet and exercise in the same manner. I may not eat a great meal, but I do try to get ONE nutrient dense food item in each meal which may be as little as a handful of berries with dinner. Or I may not feel like doing a full workout, but I still at least do a warm-up and more times than not I end up working out anyways. Try it out for yourself and see what happens. Commit to doing one perfect squat and one perfect push-up each day. Maybe that one squat turns into 10 or 20 or 100 and even if it doesn’t you still hit your goal of doing one tiny habit each day. Also if you’re interested in more tiny habits you can incorporate into your life to increase overall health and wellness check out my Rebuilding Health article for a good place to start.
Until then...
KEEP IT MOVING,
AC