Create a Foundation: Four Secrets to Prioritize Healthy Habits

Prioritize healthy habits. Habits are what create your foundation. They’re built in. When it comes to your fitness and health goals, creating a foundation is, without a doubt, the most important action you can take for yourself both in the short and the long term. I’m calling these secrets but once you read through them you’ll see this is stuff you already know.

Foundation: an idea, principle or fact that provides support for something else; a basis (tenet, value or axiom), upon which somethings stands or is supported. We use the idea of a foundation often, referring to something physical and solid, like the concrete foundation poured for a house, upon which everything built upon it relies. I want to offer up the idea that, though not necessarily physical in the concrete sense, there are basic health and fitness tenets and skills that you need first – before you can build the rest.

A solid foundation stands the test of time. Even if a tornado or flood wipes out the rest of it, a good foundation remains intact – ready to be built on again.

That’s what you want for your health: a strong, unwavering foundation that withstands new fitness trends, new life obstacles and opportunities, and new goals.

Creating Your Foundation: Four Secrets to Prioritize Healthy Habits

Think about foundational health behaviors and skills as the bricks that, one by one, create a platform. A platform strong enough to hold together no matter how much higher you build.

It is very easy to get swept up in fitness hype. A new, complex workout trend. A new supplement just hitting mainstream media. Complicated diets like ITF, Keto and FODMAP. The more difficult it sounds, the more we believe it must be the thing to change our lives/bodies/body composition.

But is you haven’t nailed the basics – daily movement, a balance and whole foods based diet, quality sleep, stress management, hydration – then the kinds of leveled-up trends I mentioned above will never stick. Which ultimately means: they won’t work.

Create your foundation first. Here’s how to prioritize healthy habits from the ground up:

1: Get a clear, emotionally relevant understanding of your values and goals.

Before you dive into how, figure out your why. Your why is your purpose. Your intention. For the purposes of this article today, I mean your purpose/intention in regard to your own fitness and health.

What drives you to want better health and better fitness?

What’s the emotional, big life reason for your goals?

This might take some time for you to figure out because honestly, most of us skip right over this piece of the puzzle in our rush to get to this diet or that workout program. Diet culture and the fat loss industry are scarily adept at making us believe that what is could for them ($$$), is good for us.

Start with what I call the “5-year-olds-endless-whys”. Why do you want your goals? The answer is your first why.

Now, ask yourself again: why?

And again, why?

The more times you ask, the deeper you will dive into finding a true, emotionally relevant answer.

Note: you will know that you’ve come to your answer when your response is evergreen. Meaning that this deep purpose and meaning will forever remain valid, compelling and unwavering.

2: Focus on one or two things at a time (houses aren’t built in a day).

One of the most repeated validations for giving up on a goal is overwhelm. We bite off more than we can chew because we believe that a complete change is the path to success. The reality is that when we take on too much at once it becomes unlikely that we can make much progress on anything. Because of that, we don’t see the progress that we want and we end up throwing in the towel.

Full disclosure: there are many steps that you can take, in many directions, that all have the potential to create success. But…choose just one or two. Nobody builds a house by trying to place all of the bricks, pipes and flooring at once. To guarantee the best possible outcome, you focus on just one piece of the puzzle at a time.

And keep it simple.

You will be more successful with a clear, simple focus in one or two categories of health than you will be with complicated plans and rules.

Use the example of someone who wants to lose 50 pounds. There’s a lot that goes into that. Improving eating habits and choices, exercising more – including both strength training and cardio, increasing NEAT, improving sleep quality. The list goes on.

Pick one thing and then get specific. If you feel like you’ll get the most bang-for-your-buck out of improving your eating/food choices…map out what improve means. Maybe you choose to eat a piece of fruit or a serving of vegetables at every meal opportunity. Or maybe you choose to eliminate fried foods from your diet. These are clear, concise and most importantly actionable focuses.

Every couple of weeks, once you are feeling confident in the focus(es) that you chose for yourself, take the next step.

3: Build on your strengths.

99% of the goals and focuses that we set for ourselves are emerge from a negative place. We’re so focused on the behaviors/skills that we don’t like or that present the biggest problems that we forget that we’re actually pretty good at some other important stuff, too.

Instead of obsessively focusing in on improving certain “weaknesses” or aspects of yourself that don’t feel up to par, focus on what you are already strong at.

Where do you already feel strong and capable?

What healthy choices do you already make regularly?

You already have powerful strengths. Use them to create momentum!

For example, if you already take your dogs for a walk every morning, add on another mile. If you already take a multivitamin, improve that good habit by drinking 16 ounces of water at the same time.

Building on your strengths puts a positive spin on everything that you do and more importantly, why you do it. Happy energy goes a long way in longevity, unwavering determination and confidence in your ability to get the job done.

4: Don’t forget about upkeep.

A well kept foundation keeps on giving. There will definitely come a time on your fitness journey when you’ve nailed the basics. Moving every day, making healthy food choices, getting enough sleep – these things will feel like routine. You’ll laugh at the thought that at one point you didn’t do any of these things!

This is about the same time that you’ll feel more confident in higher level fitness and health techniques and skills (although I’ll be honest, you’ll also feel less of a need for them).

Don’t forget about upkeep. Circle back to re – prioritize healthy habits that make up your foundation. Call it a self check-in. Instead of relying on assumption, get clarification. How are those basic healthy habits really doing? You might need a refresher once in a while – especially with any big life changes like starting a family, or moving, or changing careers.

Think of it as protecting the strongest part of the foundation that holds you up. You might find that there’s pieces of your foundation that provide your next jumping off point for success.