Welcome to Keto Life Support, where we make your keto life sustainable, fun, and low-stress. I'm Kim Howerton, and I'll be coming to you weekly with some of my keto besties to bring you the practical, real-world keto advice that you need. Quick disclaimer - I am not a doctor, and even if we do have a doctor in the house from time to time, he or she is not your doctor. And nothing we say on this show should be taken as medical advice.
Always check in with a trusted medical professional about your own personal medical concerns. Hello and welcome to Keto Life Support. This is Kim Howerton with episode number 209, and we're going to talk about systems. [music] So it's coming up on spring. I guess we're in spring. Spring has happened. Spring is happening.
And what happens, I think, every year as we come out of our winter hibernation, is it might be a good time to check in on your food habits, your food choices, your health habits. I know a lot of you live in places where it's slick and icy and snowy through the winter. It may still be a little bit that way, but the sun might be peeking its lil head out. Look at what kind of systems you might need to set up so that your spring, summer, fall, rest of your life feels and works better.
So one of the things that I think is really important is based on a quote from James Clear, right, "We don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems or our habits," because habits are what we do within our systems, right? And so maybe you can look at each area of your health and say, "Well, what is my current habit? Is it a fallback habit - something that I just default to - or is it an intentional thing? Do I mean to be doing this?" Right?
A fallback habit for me might be getting up in the morning, sitting on the sofa with some coffee, and just starting to work. And a thing that I actually want to do is have a time (if not right away but within the first half of my day) where I get up, I go for a walk, I get some sun on my face, I'm outside for a little while, I breathe in some fresh air, I get a little exercise, and then I start my day. Right?
That's one thing were you're like, "Okay, what's the default habit versus the thing I want to create? And so, okay, so there's a system. That's how I get delivered to my habits." It's just like, well, if I want to go to Albuquerque, I'm going to need to have a system. What's the system? Well, I'm getting in the car and I'm driving on the highway. That's a long drive for me, by the way, but you get the idea, right? I need a vehicle. I need a system. So what systems do you need to set up?
The first thing I would do is I would look at from now to then, what are the things I want to have as my intentional habits? There doesn't have to be a time frame on this, right? This is my eventual habit I want to be in. Like, I could say, "I want to walk every day for X period of time. Okay, that's a habit I want to have. How do I get from where-- where am I now? What's going on? Oh, I do it two days a week. Okay, I want to go from two days a week to seven days a week." And I might have a pit
stop at five. Like, my initial goal might be like, "I'm going to go from two to four. I'm going to go to--" you know, whatever sounds right to you and doable and tolerable, and then you can reassess. But you're going to need to set up those systems. So take out a piece of paper or a blank document on your computer. Look at your movement. That might be your daily movement, plus your intentional exercise, right? They're kind of a little different.
They might not be, but it might be like, "Oh, I want to get this many steps in and I want to do this long a-- just outdoor walk for my mental health. And I want to go to the gym. How many times? How long? What's my thing? What do I want there?" So that's your movement, your food, your mental health, your sleep, right? Like, all the areas that impact your quality of life and your health. And then work backwards. What is the thing-- what is the system I need to create?
Maybe if you're like, "I want to eat better. I'm going to do that using the system of meal planning and meal prepping." Maybe it's, "I want to stop eating out so much." That might be both financial and, you know, health wise. But then it's like, "Okay, what is keeping me from doing that? I don't love the food I cook at home. I'm going to invest in a meal-prep service," or, "meal planning," or, "looking up recipes on Sunday and planning my week,"
right? So you need, "What is the thing I want to create?" And then working backwards, "What is the system that will create it?" Like, you could give somebody this template and say, "You're doing these things," and then they would get the same outcome. They would be like, "All right, now I'm eating at home five days a week because I did the thing that the system set up for me.".
Then, working backwards, once you've made your list of the habits you want to change from impulsive, or unintentional, or fall-back to intentional, planned, directed - "What do I need to change? What do I need to do to get there?" And then-- notice, I didn't say like the goal. I wasn't like, "I want to be 100 pounds less," or, "I want to weigh 120," right? Or, "I want to be muscular." Like, okay, you might know that already. Probably, you know that already, right?
So, you know the steps that are going to get there. But if you wanted to look even further, you'd be like, "All right, I want to lose this much weight. Okay, to lose this much weight, what am I gonna have to change in my life? I'm gonna have to change my habit of not moving. I'm gonna have to change the way I eat." And then again, you're going-- it's just starting one step further out. But you're always going to come back to your systems. So give yourself an honest look. What are your systems?
What are your vehicles? What are your roads, right now? What do you have set up in your life that's not quite working? You know, that might be, "My system for dinner is I go to the fridge at 6 o'clock. I look in it and see what I can eat." That's the system that isn't working for you, potentially. So, okay, what am I going to replace that system with? It can be a little hard to think, "Do I actually have a system for this thing?" But you do. It's sort of like a really easy one, potentially.
My system for sitting on the couch all day is getting up, not getting dressed in real clothes, getting a cup of coffee, and parking my ass on the sofa, right? That's the system I'm using, right? That is not a good system. Okay, what am I going to do instead? What is the path I'm going to follow? So write that all out because, as we come into the spring, it's-- for a lot of us, it's a mood boost, and that mood boost can really propel you to create these new systems in
your life. And, you know, maybe you want some support on that. Enlist a friend. "Hey, I'm trying to go for a daily walk. Will you come for a walk with me at this time of day on these days?" Whatever. Right? So don't think you can't get help. You can get help. And set up those systems. Don't overwhelm yourself. You can't change 20,000 things all at once, but start with one.
When that one's under your belt, add another, add another, and, by summer, you can totally have turned your whole world around. But now is this time to start thinking about, "If this is going to be different, what is going to be different? What am I going to have to change to have a different outcome, to have a different life, to make this be easier instead of harder as I navigate through this next season?" All right. Thanks for listening to me. I will talk to you next week. See you then.
Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Keto Life Support. Want more information? Want show notes? Want to suggest a topic? Just head over to ketolifesupport.com - that's where all that kind of thing can go on. By the way, I have a request. If you could go to your podcast host and hit 'subscribe', we would really, really appreciate it. And what would be even more awesome is if you could write a review.
And what would be even more awesome than that is if you could write a really flattering review. Just asking. You know, you do you. All right. So thanks so much for joining us. I'm thrilled that you're part of the keto fam. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.