September 2025 – Ask a Health Coach

You have questions, we have answers.

Jeanne asks: How do you get consistent when trying to make a habit change?

This is a question that came up during our August Brain Health Forum on Stress and Exercise, and it’s one we hear often as creating a healthy new habit and being consistent with it is something most of us struggle with.

Our discussion in the Forum centered around two areas; structure and motivation. Since the question asked was related to exercise, that’s how I’ll answer it, although it applies to any area where you want to create a new habit.

The first thing is to clearly define what your goal is, and create a plan for getting there. The goal should include both what you want to achieve and what your motivation is for wanting to achieve it, and most importantly be something that is realistic for you.  Your plan should start small and build in steps so that you don’t get overwhelmed and can make adjustments along the way. You also want to make the barriers to action as low as possible, in other words, make it easy on yourself, maybe even fun (nobody said habit change has to be painful!).

So, let’s say that your goal is to lose ten pounds over a three-month period (it is specific, time bound and realistic). You feel you have a pretty good diet and you know that adding exercise will help you achieve your goal. Let’s further say that your short-term motivation is that you want to slim down for a special event, but long term is to lower your blood pressure. That’s important to you because you have lost family members to heart disease, and you want very much to lower your risk.

You have decided that the best way for you to do this is to weekly do strength training at the gym 3x and walk two miles 4x, but you are going to start with where you are. If you have no exercise program at all, you might start with going to the gym once a week and walking a ½ mile twice a week. If you’re already partly there, simply add slowly to what you already do.

You will not be perfect! If you miss a day for no particular reason except you just didn’t want to, that’s OK. We all get a day off. If the one day stretches to more than three in a row, it’s time to ask yourself compassionately why this is.  Reconnect with your inner motivation and see if it’s still strong for you. Reconsider your plan and see if you are moving too fast, or if there is another activity that could achieve the same results that you would like to try.

We are always evolving. Goals and motivations can change. The key is to be aware, be compassionate, and keep moving forward in your own best way.

Myra Oney is a certified Holistic Health Coach and Brain Longevity Specialist. She is a coach in Sharp Again’s group programs.

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