The Feed My Health Podcast

Unlock Your Success: How the Right Habits and Mindset Can Transform Your 2025

• Rosalind Tapper

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode of, I dive deep into the power of habits and how they can shape our lives in 2025 and beyond.

Whether you're looking to improve your fitness, mindset, or overall lifestyle, your habits play a crucial role in achieving your goals. 

I discuss the science behind habit formation, share personal experiences, and provide actionable tips on how to set and maintain habits that stick.

I also highlight the importance of mindset in making habits sustainable and how small, consistent actions lead to massive transformations. Plus, I share an inspiring story from a client who has successfully built new habits.

Tune in to learn how to create the habits that will empower you to unlock your full potential and make 2025 your best year yet!

If you'd like me and my team to help you improve your daily habits, to lose pounds every week, and keep them off forever...

Apply Here

Speaker 1:

Welcome back everybody to the Feed my Health podcast. I hope you all had a fabulous weekend. I have a very exciting episode for you today, and we're going to be talking all about the power of habits so that you can unlock your full potential this year and every single year thereafter. So, if you do not know, if you are a new listener, my name is Rosalind and on this podcast we talk about all things health, wellness and mindset. I own Feed my Health online coaching. I live in North Yorkshire, have three children and a husband, five chickens, five cats and a lot of dust.

Speaker 1:

So, whether you're looking to hit your fitness goals, achieve better health or unlock the life you've been dreaming of, we're going to talk about what's absolutely key for this, and this is habits. So let's dive in and learn how to master them, shall we? So habits are often very, very underestimated. Right, we all have them. Some of us consciously choose them, others just fall into them by default, and the truth is our habits are like the framework of our lives. They determine our outcomes, whether they're aware of them or not, and what I want you to do is I want you to think about it If your habits are aligned with your goals whether that's fitness, health or career you're setting yourself up for success. But if your habits are leading you down a path that doesn't serve you, then it's really time to make a change. And I know that often that can sound easier said than done. And one of the things that I'm actually working on this year which is really exciting and I'm looking at bringing another layer to our coaching is mindset and digging a little bit deeper into, kind of those ingrained patterns that stem from really, really early childhood. But I won't go into that into, I won't go into too much detail with that today. That is definitely something for a different episode.

Speaker 1:

But let's talk about habits, okay. So I'm not just referring to the physical actions we take, like going to the gym or maybe meal planning or whatever. I'm also talking about mental habits, so how you talk to yourself, your beliefs that you hold and how you approach challenges. Those little mental shifts are just as powerful as your morning workouts or your healthy meals that you prepare. And often, when it comes to things like talking to yourself, we don't even realize we're doing it half the time. Okay, we have no idea, do you know? I find myself when I'm driving my car, I find myself talking to myself out loud, and then I will catch myself doing it and I don't know why I do it. I don't know when that started, but we actually talk to ourselves a lot as well. Every time you walk and look into a mirror, you're talking to yourself, and it's just so autopilot, that we don't realise that it can be quite destructive as well, especially depending on what we are saying.

Speaker 1:

So why do habits matter so much? Well, let's take a bit of a step back and think about the science behind them. Okay, so our brains are wired to seek efficiency right, to keep us safe. But to seek efficiency. The more we repeat an action, the more our brain automates it, which is super clever. It creates what's called neural pathways, and that makes those actions easier to perform over time.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is why, after a while, good habits seem really effortless and bad habits just get really, really ingrained and feel really ingrained. Here's the catch, right, if you want to change the course of your life, you need to disrupt these patterns. Okay, you need to disrupt the pattern. We can break old habits and replace them with ones that help us move closer to our goals, but it's not always easy. Right, it's not always easy, especially if it's something that is ingrained. From a psychological perspective, right, I'm talking about things like addiction here, um, and this is why I'm I'm really doing a lot of work on and in that area, because I believe that a lot of people struggle with psychological issues that can really make change very, very difficult. And it's not just about oh, I just want to try and change this habit, okay, then I need to do this. Sometimes it is deeper rooted than that, so it's not always easy, but it absolutely possible. Here's the thing that I want you to remember Habits don't just happen overnight. You're not going to wake up tomorrow with a brand new, healthy routine, but with consistent effort over time, these small habits can really snowball into big, big changes. I promise you that.

Speaker 1:

So how do we set up habits for success? The first step is knowing exactly what you want to achieve, okay. So, whether that's losing weight, whether that's improving your mindset or boosting your energy, your habits need to reflect your goals. So one thing that I recommend using is the SMART goal framework when thinking about your habits. So I'm going to run through what SMART stands for. You may have heard of this before, and there are lots of different ways to create habits, but this is the way that I feel like you've covered all the bases and it's really achievable.

Speaker 1:

So the S stands for specific, m is measurable, a is achievable, r is relevant and T is time bound. So let's break it down. Specific. So what exactly do you want to achieve with this habit? Is it to drink more water? Is it to work out more often? Or maybe it's to stop negative self-talk? Maybe you're very aware that you do that. And then M measurable. So how will you track your progress? Really important so maybe you're aiming to work out three times a week or drink two litres of water. How are you going to measure that? A is achievable. So is this goal realistic? It's important to challenge yourself, but also make sure the habit is doable, okay.

Speaker 1:

So one of the biggest struggles that I see is when people don't set big enough goals. They try and keep themselves very closeted, very small, because they fear failure. Okay, so it is important that your goal is big enough, that it challenges you, but that it's actually realistic and achievable for you. The next one is the R, so relevant. So does this habit align with your bigger goals? Make sure it's something that will help you on your journey. And then the final one, which is T, is time bound, so set a time frame to measure your success. For example, I will drink two litres of water a day for the next 30 days. Okay, so super simple makes it very straightforward. You will know whether it's achievable and how you're going to measure it, and that's already going to make you feel a lot more confident.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about the struggles. Okay, really important to talk about struggles, because we've all been there. Right, you start out strong with a new habit. I need to find yourself slipping back into an old routine, so how can we actually push through this? The truth is, the mindset around habits is just as important as the actions themselves. Here's a mindset shift, actually, that has worked wonders for me and many of our clients. So, instead of focusing on perfection, focus on progress. You've probably heard that so many times, but until you actually take action on it, when you've created that smart goal, it's really hard to understand what that really looks like. So if you need more help with this, please don't hesitate to let me know, because I love, love, love this sort of stuff. It's really my wheelhouse Now.

Speaker 1:

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if we don't nail our habits 100% of the time we've failed. I've been there, I'm sure you've been there. But the thing is, consistency is the key, not perfection. And, weirdly like again, it's another one of those cliches where everybody sort of knows that but not doesn't really understand what that means until you are, like, physically in the moment, physically doing the thing. It's not about going for a walk every single day, for example. It's about being as consistent with that walk over the course of a week as possible. Some days will be better than others. Life happens. For goodness sake, give yourself a break.

Speaker 1:

The key is to get back on track as soon as possible, as soon as possible. So I have this little rule that I never go more than two days, so it's like the rule of two. So if I set out to do something and I miss one of those days, I don't allow myself to miss the second day. So let's say I have a workout scheduled in on a Monday. If I miss that, for whatever reason, life happens, excuses come in, I don't feel well, whatever, I am not allowed, of course, obviously dependent if it's like an emergency or you know, I am really unwell, then I'm going to miss that second day. But generally speaking, I don't allow myself to miss the second day, and by giving myself that boundary, it really, really helps me to get back on track as soon as I can. So that might be something that really works for you as well.

Speaker 1:

So let's say, let's give you another example right, your goal is to exercise three times a week, but you miss a session. Rather than beating yourself up about it which is what I would have done and I would probably would have thrown in the towel just ask yourself how can I get back to it? Okay, and be specific. When you say, like, when you come up with a solution, don't just be like I'm going to do it tomorrow, like when are you going to do it tomorrow? Realistically, what time are you going to do it? Is that going to fit your schedule? Is it just a? I hope to get it done? Whenever we do that, I hope to it usually means you're just going to blag it and hope to fit it in. Okay, really take control of this stuff, because until you take control, you don't get. Give yourself that confidence. So make a plan, be specific with the plan and then move forward. Okay, I want to share with you some stories, actually, of clients who've successfully built new habits.

Speaker 1:

Habits is something that we focus quite strongly on, in fact, very, very strongly, within our coaching program. So one of my clients, alison, came to me in June with the goal to feel stronger, to be lighter, so she wanted to lose body fat and she wanted just to feel more energized. So it's really important that we start small, especially if you're going from like zero. It's not realistic to slam on all these new things into your life, because your life currently isn't set up to handle all of those things. So we have to gradually ease in and starting small. We added in things like strength training. We added in things like a water habit, a specific one to her. We added in getting outside for daily walks. That really was beneficial to helping her increase her energy and the key really was that she didn't try to change everything at once.

Speaker 1:

Like I just said, you know, we started small. We start with sustainable steps. We don't bombard with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of things that you now need to add to your already busy world. It's just not realistic. So it's important to set the foundations. Now.

Speaker 1:

Alison is getting some incredible results because of that. So we haven't just focused on nutrition, which is incredibly important, we haven't just focused on exercise, which is incredibly important. We focused on a lifestyle, because we are very much about lifestyle change and, as a result of that, she's now much stronger, she's a lot more confident and her energy levels have absolutely skyrocketed. But the best part about it is she's not just relying on willpower to maintain her habits. She has developed a mindset that supports her new habits and that has been an absolute game changer. It's absolutely phenomenal to see, and when she messages me and she tells me how she's getting on and things like that, and she's achieved certain things, it's the most incredible, incredible feeling, because she was once really really stuck, feeling sluggish, feeling overweight, feeling, you know, weak, and now she's completely transformed her mindset, let alone her body, her mindset, which is amazing.

Speaker 1:

So you see, the secret isn't just about the action, it's about the mindset you cultivate around those actions, and that's what makes habits really, really stick. So how do you start building habits that are going to stick for you? So this month, our clients have been focusing on the habits challenge that I've set them, and this was simply to get them back into the swing of things post Christmas, and that's been really, really important, because I do find, no matter how much you want a change or no matter how committed you've been or no matter how you've been in a program for you've been in a program for when you're coming off the back of, let's say, a summer holiday or you're coming off the back of time away focusing on different parts of your life, different values, it can be more challenging to get back into a routine. So you know it's important to focus on those foundations again and make sure that we are we are keeping that solid foundation for the rest of the year. So we've been working on habits this month and it's been great to see them absolutely smashing it, so super happy about that.

Speaker 1:

I remember everything is about repetition. So if you take a activity that maybe you did as a child, maybe you learned to play an instrument. You didn't just pick up a violin and learn to play it. I mean, if you're anything like me, I sounded awful on, awful on the violin, honestly, like I could empty a room quicker than anything with my little violin. Oh god, um.

Speaker 1:

But with anything that you learn, with any new skill that you learn, you have to do the reps. That's the reality of it. And the question is for you is the juice worth the squeeze? Sometimes the juice is worth the squeeze, but it's very, very hard to get stuck in and keep that momentum going, and that's why it's so, so powerful to have accountability. Um, but starting small, doing the reps, committing to the process and enjoying the journey is absolutely flipping crucial, okay. So I want you to remember that building habits is a process. Enjoy it, start small, be very, very kind to yourself but, most importantly, stay consistent. Even if you have to write off an entire week for whatever reason, that doesn't mean that, in the grand scheme of your life, you have to write off the goal Just because seven days of your entire life didn't go how you wanted it to do not write off your goal. Habits are the key to unlocking your full potential in 2025, in 2026, in 2027. Okay so, if you start something small today, you are dramatically improving your health and your happiness for 2026.

Speaker 1:

If you want to look the best you could possibly look for your summer holiday this year, starting today on something very, very small is going to serve you so much better than if you wait two weeks before your holiday and try and do some massive overhaul of your life Because, realistically, you're not going to make a lot of change. Let's say it's a physical change you want to make. You're not going to make a lot of change in two weeks, not the kind of change that's going to give you confidence, not the kind of change that's going to give you strength, that's going to make you feel energized. Yes, you can give it a go, but the things that you're going to need to do in that short frame of time are going to be so incredibly drastic that it's going to be very hard to be consistent with it. So start small now and just watch it snowball and then by June, july, august, you're going to be looking phenomenal and you're going to look back and go, wow. August, you're going to be looking phenomenal and you're going to look back and go, wow, actually I didn't really have to do an awful lot to get where I have got and I've got an amazing result.

Speaker 1:

So if you are ready to take your habit building to the next level, you should absolutely join VMI Health. To be honest, it's a no flipping brainer. Our program is the program I needed. Okay, I could have saved myself 10 years of struggle. So if you're even remotely thinking about it, you've thought about it for too long.

Speaker 1:

But anyway, if you are looking for some serious help, you are ready, you want to really do things right this time, then all you need to do is look in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

I've put a little popped a link in there for you to get in touch, and thank you for tuning in today. I hope this episode has inspired you to start taking action and to create the habits that will transform your life, and I will see you in our next episode. I won't see you because it's a flipping podcast, but I will be talking to you in the next episode, which will be coming out on Monday, and until then, please keep feeding your health. Oh and, by the way, just one more thing if you have listened to this episode and you like this episode and you think it would help somebody else, please do something amazing today which will make you feel really good, and it will make me feel really good. But do something amazing and please share this episode on your socials, because it will really help the podcast grow, get the message out a lot more and actually you could really help somebody who needs it. So anyway, until next time, take care.