How To Set Relevant Goals & Achieve Them
How To Set Relevant Goals & Achieve Then
5 Quick Hacks To Lower Blood Sugar
Making Data-Driven Decisions
+ PART 1: Settling In
This lecture is all about habits. We are going to learn to (1) make healthy habits, (2) how to break out of bad habits, and (3) how to make habits stick for good. A lot of this lecture is based on the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. We encourage you to read the book for yourself!
There are Four Laws of Behavior Change: (1) Make it obvious (2) Make it attractive (3) Make it easy (4) Make it satisfying. Let's dive into each one.
1. Make It Obvious
The process of behavior change starts with awareness. Before you build new habits, you have to be aware of the ones you already have. When our behaviors become automatic, the less likely we are to consciously think about them. But when we actually point out a habit, it can make us aware of the habit we are doing. Start by making your own list of your daily habits: wake off, turn off the alarm, check my phone, brush my teeth, get dressed, eat eggs, and bacon for breakfast. You can start to determine if it’s a good or bad habit. Habits that conflict with your goals are usually bad. Do not judge yourself tho! This is just a way to acknowledge your habits. The first step to changing bad habits is to recognize them.
One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking. The key is to tie your desired habit into something you already do each day. Consider when you are most likely to be successful. Don’t ask yourself to do a habit when you’re likely to be occupied with something else.
After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].
Examples:
Exercise. After I drink my coffee each morning, I will work out for 30 minutes.
Meditation. After I eat breakfast, I will meditate for one minute.
Action Item: Fill out the Habit Stacking sentence for all three habits.
2. Make It Attractive
We need to make our habits attractive because it's the expectation of a rewarding experience that motivates us to act in the first place. You're more likely to find a behavior fun if you get to do your favorite things at the same time or after. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. The hope is you’ll start to look forward to your oatmeal or elliptical workout because it means you get to check Instagram or watch your Netflix show.
Only after (or during) [HABIT I NEED], I will [HABIT I WANT].
Examples:
Nutrition: Only after I eat oatmeal for breakfast, then I will check Instagram
Exercise: Only during my elliptical workout, I will watch my favorite Netflix show
Mind: Only after I meditate, I will go see my friends
3. Make It Easy
When starting a new habit, it’s important to keep the behavior as easy as possible so you can stick with it even when conditions aren’t perfect. Focus on taking action. Forming habits is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. People often ask “How long does it take to build a new habit? But what people really should be asking is “How many does it take to form a new habit?” That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic? The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.
Sometimes it can be hard to just start a habit or sometimes when even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to want to start big and you end up not doing it at all or trying to do too much too soon. You can counteract this by following the Two-Minute Rule, which states, “when you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” Let's see how we can incorporate this rule. Eat overnight oats every morning becomes assemble one container tonight. Run three miles becomes putting on my running shoes. Do thirty minutes of yoga becomes take out my yoga mat. Meditation for 10 minutes becomes meditate for two minutes.
4. Make It Satisfying
We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying. What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided. Positive emotions cultivate habits. Negative emotions destroy them.
Give Yourself a Reward
Our bias toward instant gratification causes problems. Overeating is harmful in the long run but appetizing at the moment. With our bad habits, the immediate outcome usually feels good, but the ultimate outcome feels bad. With good habits, it is the reverse: the immediate outcome is unenjoyable but the ultimate outcome feels good. At some point, success in nearly every field requires you to ignore an immediate reward in favor of a delayed reward. If you don't buy dessert and chips at the store, you'll often eat healthier food when you get home. If you go to bed early instead of staying up late watching your favorite TV show, you will feel much better in the morning and have a more productive day.
A way to get a habit to stick is to feel successful -- even if it's in a small way. In the beginning, you need a reason to stay on track. This is why immediate rewards are essential. They keep you excited while the delayed rewards accumulate in the background. One solution is to turn the situation on its head. For example, open a savings account for something you want like a massage. Every time you pass up on drinking a soda or eating ice cream, you transfer $5 into that account. If you want to stop eating out so much and start cooking more. You can create a savings account “Trip to Europe.” Whenever you skip going out to eat, you transfer what you would have spent into that account. Incentives are good to start a habit. The more that habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Immediate reinforcement helps maintain motivation in the short term while you're waiting for the long-term rewards to arrive.
Never Miss Twice Rule
Perfection isn't possible. Before long, something will come up -- you get sick or you have to travel for work, or your family needs a little more of your time, etc. When this happens, remind yourself of a simple rule: never miss twice. The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It’s the spiral of repeated mistakes that follow. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit (a bad one). Try to stick to it even if you can’t do a habit as well or as completely as you would like. Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all. This is why “bad” workouts are often the most important ones. Sluggish days and bad workouts maintain the compound gains you accrued from previous good days. Simply doing something -- ten squats, five sprints, a push-up, anything really -- is huge. Don’t put up a zero. Don’t let losses eat into your compounding.
Accountability Partner
An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us. A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful. Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.
In the beginning, small improvements can often seem meaningless because they get washed away by the weight of the system. Just as one coin won’t make you rich, or one minute of meditation is going to deliver a noticeable difference. Gradually, though, as you continue to layer small changes on top of one another, the scales of life start to move. Each improvement is like adding a grain of sand to the positive side of the scale, slowly tilting things in your favor. Eventually, if you stick with it, you hit a tipping point. It will start to feel easier and the weight of the system is working for you rather than against you.
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How To Set Relevant Goals & Achieve Then
5 Quick Hacks To Lower Blood Sugar
Making Data-Driven Decisions
+ PART 1: Settling In
Making Data-Driven Decisions With A Food Log
Food-logging is important because it helps you visualize the exact amount of macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) that you are eating on any given day. We recommend using a food-logging app such as Cronometer to make this process easier. I will show you how to use this software later on. As you have already learned, the most optimal macronutrient ratio to reverse insulin resistance is the following:
Carbohydrates: 60-70%
Fat: 15-20%
Protein: 15-20%
The purpose of this photo is to show you a macronutrient comparison of two different meals. On the right, a typical American breakfast meal which is very high in fat. If you were to input this into Cronometer, the macronutrient breakdown is 44 g of fat, 28 g of protein, 15 g of carbohydrates. Most people think they eat 40-50 g of fat in a day but they are actually starting their day with 44g of fat. Imagine doing the same for lunch and dinner. You can easily reach 200-250g of fat per day, which can easily lead to insulin resistance or may it worse. On the left side, we have a typical plant-based meal we recommend. By putting this food into Cronometer, we get 5g of fat, 22g of protein, and 87g of carbs. You may be scared about the number of carbs it contains, but they are complex carbs, they come from plant-based sources, they are full of vitamin minerals, phytonutrients, and water. As opposed to the carbs on the right side which are refined carbs in the form of white bread. If you were to eat this way (the left side) for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it is actually very hard to surpass 40g of fat in a day. By eating this way, you will lose weight, increase the nutrient density of your diet, reverse insulin resistance, increase your insulin sensitivity, and many other benefits.
**Jump to 6:10 in the video for an in-depth explanation of Cronometer and how to track your food.**
Food-logging also comes hand in hand with logging your daily blood glucose values. Having this information will allow you to compare how your food choices affect your blood glucose. Doing this daily will record the specific days in which your blood glucose was great and the days in which it was not, and will allow you to clearly see which foods caused these results.
You will need one sheet for each day. You will write the time you wake up and your fasting blood glucose upon waking. Then you write the time you had breakfast and the grams of carbs and fat in your breakfast (this data you will extract from Cronometer). You will complete this for all meals throughout the day. At the end of the day, you add up the values of carbs and fat. We recommend doing this exercise 3-4 times per week. Even if we are giving you a meal plan, you should try implementing the foods into Cronometer to get a better understanding of the macronutrient breakdown of how you are eating. Having a visual representation of how much fat you are eating will help you understand how easily fat can add up. Having a food log like this will be very important when getting your questions answered by us, so we can give you better advice regarding your diet. When asking us questions regarding your blood glucose, please attach a food log with your question so we can get a clear understanding of your current diet and provide well-informed advice.
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Click Here To Download Daily Food Log
How To Set Relevant Goals & Achieve Then
5 Quick Hacks To Lower Blood Sugar
Making Data-Driven Decisions
+ PART 1: Settling In
5 Quick Hacks To Lower Blood Sugar
This video is about 5 quick hacks you can implement in your daily routine to help Lower Your Blood Sugar… and you may be very surprised by the last one!
Hack 1: Move for at least 10 minutes after your meals
Use your muscles for at least 10 minutes after lunch and dinner. Our muscles use glucose for energy, so if you experience some blood sugar spikes after a meal, one of the best ways to bring them down is to use your muscles. And this can be any sort of movement: walk, dance, clean up your house, do the dishes, vacuum, walk up and down the stair or anything else to get your muscles moving and you’ll see your levels come back down.
Hack 2: Eat your veggies first during your meal.
Eating vegetables as a starter dramatically slows down the absorption of glucose from the rest of your meal. So eat your veggies first or have a salad as an appetizer, then have the rest of your meal. This will result in a much smaller blood sugar spike and result in fewer cravings and crashes throughout the day.
Hack 3: When you eat something sweet, have it as dessert at the end of your meal
Let’s say you really want something sweet like a cookie…we are all human and we sometimes want a little dessert. The best way to lower your blood sugar spikes after eating something sweet is to have it at the end of the meal and not on an empty stomach. If you have it on an empty stomach, it will start a blood sugar rollercoaster that might make you crave even more sweets. So if you want something on the sweeter side, have it at the END of your meal. This is not a pass, to have sweets all the time. Sweets should still be had as a treat.
Hack 4: Sleep 7-9 hours each night
Sleep is so so important to help our body regulate our blood sugar levels. When we don’t sleep well, our blood sugar spikes are bigger, for the same exact foods. So for example, if you slept really well and had some fruit in the morning, you may see a normal, blood sugar response to it. But if you slept poorly, that same exact fruit may lead to a much higher blood sugar response.
Studies find that a lack of sleep leads to a higher sugar level the next day. A lack of sleep affects our hormones, especially our hunger and satiety hormones. It can also lead to worsening glucose control, insulin resistance, weight gain, and increased food intake.
Hack 5: Add vinegar to your meals! Yes you heard that correctly, vinegar
This one sounds a little odd but having a tablespoon of vinegar before a meal can cut the glucose and insulin spikes of the meal by 20%. So, having some vinegar before eating your meal can help flatten your blood sugars significantly. Any vinegar works the same; so you can choose the vinegar you want. You can dilute 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water (dont have it on its own!) or if you don't want to drink it, you can use it as a salad dressing! Add vinegar to your salad or meal.
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