Making Healthy Habits
Using behavioral psychology to develop and maintain positive habits.
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How Much Exercise Do I Need? How to Stay Fit Over the Holidays
How much exercise do you need, and should you even try to stay fit over the holidays? The answers are easier than you think.
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What is a Plant Based Diet? The Fundamentals and How to Know if it’s Achievable For You
Have you thought about trying a plant-based diet? If you answered “yes”, you’re in good company. Plant-based diets are on the rise – around 10 million Americans say they follow a “plant-based” diet. That’s up from 290k in 2004! Interestingly, the number of self-identifying “vegans” hasn’t changed much. Are you asking yourself, “what’s the difference between vegan and plant-based?” In this post, we’ll get clear on just what a plant-based diet is (and is not). At the end, you’ll have the information you need to decide if you want to try plant-based yourself. What You Need to Know About Plant-Based Diets Let’s first define a plant-based diet and distinguish it…
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Six Ways to Know If You’re on a Fad Diet
Fad diets that promise amazing results are so tempting, but most people who try fad diets don't stick with them or regain lost weight. Learn how to know if a diet is a fad and if it's right for you.
- Food, Healthy Eating "in the Wild", Making Healthy Habits, Meals & Planning, Nutrition News and Research
7 Surprising Food Hacks That Will Help You Cut Back on Ultra-Processed Foods
Ultra-processed foods can be low on nutrition and high in calories and sugar. Here's 7 food hacks to cut ultra-processed foods in your diet.
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How to Eliminate Common Nutrient Deficiencies
Women's diets tend to be low in key nutrients. The good news is that a few small changes can eliminate common nutrient deficiencies.
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More Powerful Than Supplements – 5 Ways To Boost Your Immune System
There’s a lot of talk around how to boost your immune system every fall, and it’s reached a fever pitch this year. Retailers offer a ton of different supplements, tinctures, and devices that claim to jumpstart your immune system. While a quick-fix sounds great, kickstarting your immunity is not that easy. Our complex immune system is truly remarkable! It fights off illnesses and can distinguish between “good” and “bad” bacteria. At the same time, the immune system is smart enough to tell what is self, not self but not dangerous, and not self and dangerous. In order to be strong enough to fight off invaders – and smart enough to…
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4 Simple Eating Habits Everyone Can Learn From Kids
Have you ever seen a kid get upset, eat a pint of ice cream, and then feel guilty about it? Or, refuse to eat until after noon because they “pigged out” the previous day? Of course not! Children are natural intuitive eaters – they don’t stress about what, when, or how much they did or will eat. Instead, they just eat when they’re hungry and stop eating when they’re full. Amazing! How do they do it? We adults are quick point out that kids usually don’t have the emotional baggage and stress that we do. They naturally get plenty of exercise, and they don’t care about their waistline. All true.…
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10 Simple & Effective Workday Exercises
Have you ever stood up from a chair and felt your muscles tighten like vice grips around your shoulders, back and legs? Maybe your legs even “fell asleep”, or your wrists ached from over-mousing. It’s easy to lose track of how long I’ve been sitting in the same position and find myself with tight and angry muscles. Over the years, my husband and I have done some inventive things to keep our bodies from seizing up during marathon meetings, road trips, or even movie marathons. I’ve tried double pigeon pose, in office chair, with lumbar pillow (FAIL. I do NOT recommend.). He’ll bust out a few sets of pushups and…
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Three Reasons Noom is Not for Me
I was excited to try out Noom, a healthy-habit/weight loss app that’s been getting a ton of press recently. I dutifully entered all of my health info and stats as prompted and waited for my personalized recommendations. Imagine my surprise when Noom gleefully announced that I could lose 15 lbs by March! Surprised because, if I did lose 15 lbs, I’d weigh 100 lbs (I’m 5’6”), which would be unhealthy and darn near starvation. Noom. It’s an expensive app ($45/month at time of posting) designed by behavioral psychologists to help you lose weight. It’s targeted to millenials, because as stated by the app itself, millennials struggle to perform difficult tasks…
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10 Must-Have Foods for Healthy Eating
Ever think about overhauling your diet or just eating healthier, but then get overwhelmed with all the choices? It’s no wonder – the options are endless! The average supermarket now carries over 40,000 products, which is a 5x increase from the 1970s – so many choices [1, 2]!! When I talk about food and nutrition with friends and family, one of the most common questions I get is, “What do you eat?” I think to myself, “Yay – I’m so glad you want to chat about food!” because I could talk for days about it! Even though I think a lot about food and nutrition, the reality is that I…
