Ep. 51 How to Create Sustainable Healthy Habits for Teens

In this episode I discuss strategies to achieve healthy habits in 2025.

00:59 Setting Goals for a Healthier 2025

02:41 Focusing on One Goal at a Time

05:26 Identifying and Replacing Triggers

09:05 Building Consistent Healthy Habits

11:50 Teenagers and Habit Formation

13:13 Dealing with Setbacks

17:20 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

17:47 Invitation to the Lift Program

If you're wondering…
❓ Why are teens hungry all the time during puberty?
❓ Why are teens craving sugar all the time?
❓ Why teens feel so tired—even when they sleep?

You’re not alone—and it’s not your fault.

Hormones play a HUGE role in how teens gain weight, feel energy, manage emotions, and grow.

Dr Gourgari is a certified pediatric endocrinologist, obesity medicine specialist and health coach for teens.

Each week, she break down how puberty hormones work—and how simple habits like eating better, sleeping more, and moving your body can help you feel better, stronger, and more confident.

We’ll talk about things like:
🥗 Are smoothies really healthy?
🍞 Are carbs bad for weight loss in teens?
💪 And how to stop emotional eating before it takes over your day.

Whether you’re a teen ready to make a change—or a parent looking to support your child the right way—this podcast is for you.

🎁 Want to jump in right now?
Grab your free guide: 30 Healthy, High-Protein Recipes for Teens at lifestyleforteens.com/recipes

Transcript

 This is the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, Dr. Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children.

Because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr. Gorgory does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner.

And now your host, Dr. Jenny Gorgory. 

Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr. Jenny Gregory and I hope everyone is having a great time during this holiday season and the winter break. And as we are approaching 2025, maybe when you're listening, it's already 2025. It's common practice, at least for me, to think about my goals, my vision for the new year.

It's an opportunity for a new beginning. It's an opportunity to make new goals, what we would like to achieve. And oftentimes as part of this goals, a lot of us want to be in a healthier weight. And oftentimes we Jumping to in very enthusiastic the first week, the first couple of weeks or the first month, but then gradually these aspirations that we have are not successful and then we get disappointed.

So I wanted to bring my opinion and see if that would resonate with some of you about how can we make.  Our goal for a healthier 2025 give it more opportunity to be a success. And what that means is that let's say we have a goal to get into a healthier weight or build a healthy habit or multiple healthy habits that would lead to this goal.

How can we What can we do to increase our chances that we will continue our progress? We will stick to this call, and that we are more likely to be successful this year? So my one advice would be don't make it very difficult and stick to one goal and make it a habit. The difference. Between setting one goal and multiple goals at the same time can be that if you focus on one goal, you're putting all your energy into succeeding that goal, and that alone increases your chances of being more successful.

The second thing is, If you, obviously there are many ways and many habits that you can start building up in order to get to a healthier 2025 and to a healthier you. Some of these habits can be unique for some people. For example, some people might want to give up chocolate or they might want to go exercising more to the gym or they may want to eat less.

Pizza or eat less junk food in general, or they may want to eat, drink more water. So if you add all those things, and it could be all of those things that you would like to improve in your life, you may get overwhelmed because if you're asking someone to go from point A to point B, and the distance is huge, it is very difficult to make all those changes at once.

So my opinion is that if we focus on just one goal, Just choose one goal, one thing that you would like to focus, and put all your energy into that until it becomes a habit, and then you can move on to the next habit.  So for example,  I mentioned already  different habits that one could start with. So, If somebody, let's say, wants to give up chocolate, focus more, focus on this habit, focus on how can you be healthier by decreasing the amount of chocolate and break it down.

Start thinking, what is it that makes you prone to wanting to eat more chocolate?  Is there a specific time of the day? Is it a specific day of the week? Is it a specific group of people? Is it a specific event? Is it a specific emotion? For example, when you're stressed or when you're sad, that's when you feel it.

It's when you are doing the homework for a month. It's when you are skipping lunch and you're starving  Chocolate is the easiest thing. So the first thing to make that a successful habit  is to identify what is what we call the cue, what is it, the little thing, the trigger that seems to make you prone to want to have that habit.

Then once you identify the trigger, that by itself increases your self awareness. That makes you more likely to be aware of it. So when that happens, then you are more conscious and you're more likely to respond to the trigger with a different way. So,  In the beginning, you start to do it consciously. So once you identify what the trigger is, let's say that I always want chocolate after my lunch, or I always want chocolate on Tuesday afternoon after I do this stressful activity.

Then, in anticipation for your lunch or for the Tuesday afternoon, You know that  to expect this, so therefore you find yourself an alternative that is healthier. So you will say that when it is Tuesday afternoon, and I am in this scenario, instead of having chocolate, I am going to  have a banana, or I'm going to have a milk, or I'm going to have yogurt, or I'm going to go for a walk, or I'm going to listen to the music, or I'm going to start journaling.

Something that is easy for you to do, and it's an alternative that you have already decided this is what you're going to do, to deal with this trigger. Because if you don't have an alternative, And that trigger happens, our brain that is used to doing the chocolate thing is still want to go to go to the chocolate thing unless you have already thought about it ahead of time and you know what to do.

So first thing is to identify what the trigger is. Second is to replace that trigger with a healthier alternative.  The third thing is to, when you are successful in doing this alternative thing, then you reward yourself. Let's say you even saying, yes, I did it. I am amazing. I made it. I made a successful change today.

And then keep a calendar. Write it down a yes. Today on Tuesday, I was successful. And if it wasn't the next day, that's okay. You can still keep a calendar of the days that you did and the days that you didn't. Even if you do it one day out of the seven days, that is still progress compared to before when you used to do it every day.

So, and there's no competition here. You don't really Have to compete against anyone. You just becoming 1 percent better every day from what you did yesterday. That's all it takes,  because imagine if you continue this process. or other habits  and slowly, slowly that expands and  that small change happens over a year.

That's 365  days in a year. That's when change, true change happens.  Now, it's, don't, don't expect that this is gonna all of a sudden become a new habit. It does take a few days. Some people say it takes 30 days. Some people say it's 90 days. It doesn't really matter if it takes 30 days for you and or takes 60 days or it takes 90 days.

As long as you're persistent and you don't give up, and you eventually continue to do it again and again and again,  the secret is that it will become easier with repetition. Because your mind eventually will have associated now That Tuesday afternoon or lunchtime is not associated with chocolate.

Lunchtime is associated with a banana or lunchtime is associated with taking a walk for 15 minutes. Or, and, and, and if you do it, let's say you do it every single time for 30 days. Trust me, the 31st day is gonna be way easier than it was the first day. The more you do it, the more your brain gets used to it.

The more becomes a habit and the easier it is to stick to it. And once you do this process. For one little thing that is stressful for you,  then you can add the new little habits. So I would say if you want to do it super easy, just focus on one  thing  for the whole month. Let's say for the month of January, you will focus on having one extra fruit.

With your lunch. I'm saying an example. On February, you will focus on, instead of going to bed 11 o'clock, you can focus on going to bed at 10. 30.  And, or you want, in March, you want to walk for half an hour every day. Okay, you can do 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night. And that is your goal.

But you do that consistently. Okay. The, the, the consistency and the repetition is super important. The repetition is the, what creates a habit. We are creatures of habit. And the more you do something, you become of it. Then your body starts to crave it. And if your body is used to craving unhealthy habits, you can train your body to crave healthy habits. 

And I will tell you one great thing that maybe you are not aware of that has to do specifically with teenagers.  Teenagers can, are still very young and their brain is still has some plasticity in developing healthier habits and also bad habits, right? So if you are  a teenager, it's much easier to build this habit system with the, the cue, the repetition and the reward,  and it will, you can  catch it easier.

Because you haven't not been, let's say doing, you're not trying to break a habit that you've been doing for 40 or 50 years, right? You are now at the stage where you actually develop who you are, your brain, your character, your habits, the way you eat, the way you exercise, the way you behave with your friends.

It's all changing now. So take advantage of this. I mean, not that it cannot happen with adults. It can actually happen. Okay. With everyone, no matter what the age, but if you are a teenager, you have this advantage of you. And I would like you to make it, I would like to make it easier for you so that.

You don't give up and you don't build the bad habits now What I see as a problem is what happens Let's say if you say that I am going to not have chocolate That's my goal for january and i'm going to do it and you actually do it and you instead of having chocolate you're having a banana and you do that for week one you do that for week two and then week three something happens unexpectedly you have a fight with your best friend or you have a bad grade or there's some  stress going on in the family or whatever and then you start going back to having chocolate  And then the thoughts of, oh, there we go again, I failed, I'm not able to succeed, and I cannot even do this one simple thing.

And so you can start having all those  thoughts that can actually block your progress. And. What I will tell you is, is it is expected that you will have days that you are not going to be successful. It is absolutely expected. Don't be surprised. Don't be disappointed.  Don't kill yourself with why you did this.

It is expected that this will happen sooner or later.  If you expected that this will happen, it is more likely for you to not make it a big deal. And then you can continue the healthier habit. If you make it a big deal, if you turn it into, Oh my God, what I did, and I'm not capable and all those negative thoughts, then  It is, it is, it's not likely for you to go back to the healthy habit.

It's more likely for you to just stop all the progress and go back to the bad habits. So my advice would be to expect that you're going to have bad days and that is okay. The next day you can still continue the progress. And that's why keeping a calendar, keeping some short. Of journaling where you can actually track the progress.

It's very important because even if you did two weeks well and one week not well, that's still better than doing three weeks that you didn't do well. And even if you do two weeks well and five weeks not well, and then you start to do again, well, time will pass and you can still try to build that healthy habit. 

So. Instead of overwhelming yourself with  too many habits and too many goals that you want to do all at the same time,  I would suggest focus on one small habit that you can do, master it, make it a habit by doing it every day or as frequently as you can. If it's not every day, do it five times per week. 

The reason I'm saying every day is because  If it is every day, your, there is more repetition. So your body kind of gets used to it and your brain gets used to it, that this is the way things happen,  but you'll have the freedom to choose what it is you want to work on. So find one little habit that you'd like to change,  find what is the trigger that gives you the difficult habit, the bad habit, change that to a positive habit, Repeat it again and again.

And every time you are successful, give yourself a reward. Even if it's like a high five, you made it.  Giving yourself a reward is very important. Your brain realizes that this is important.  So that's all I had for you for today. I hope you all have a wonderful 2025. Set your goals the way you want them.

And be smart above. about it and be kind to yourself. Love yourself, be kind to yourself, and don't let overwhelm and stress ruin your pathway to success and becoming a healthy. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I invite you to come check out the lift program. It's Dr. Gregory's 12 week coaching program for teens and their moms.

Where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together. So your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed, and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteens. com and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away.

Thanks for tuning in. And we'll catch you in the next episode of lifestyle and weight loss for teens.