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I recently had to cancel three days of clients because of some vile stomach illness I wouldn’t wish upon my fiercest of enemies. I hate canceling on my people, but the primary reason for my reticence to send that apologetic text may surprise you.

I know from experience that once I cancel on people, I’ve sent a subtle signal that canceling our training sessions is okay. I fight hard to stay healthy, not just because it feels better for me—but ultimately because my clients’ success depends upon me being there. Every. Single. Time.

The personal training world gets a bad rap in part because it seems this don’t cancel on your clients policy practiced by every good coach I’ve ever known isn’t the standard it should be for many fitness practitioners. Sometimes I’ll take on a new client who’s used to working with a less than professional trainer, and they’ll begin the relationship with several cancellations. I have to have the conversation with them about how I will almost never cancel on them and in fact I expect the same courtesy in return.

Am I being prickly? Nah, because the truth is people know I have a 24-hour cancellation policy. So if they cancel on me late, I can still charge them for the session. I get paid for doing nothing.

What’s really going on is I know just how important establishing the fitness habit is, especially in the beginning of change. If you hire me to train you and I cancel on you rather than keeping our appointments, I’m failing at a significant part of the job—which is literally just showing up for you.

Life happens, and some canceling is inevitable (as my three-day stomach bug vacation proves), but a successful trainer/client relationship depends upon a mutual culture built on keeping appointments. You have to show up for each other.

If you’re working with a trainer, here are some signs that you need to find someone who takes you more seriously.

1.) Do you have set appointments with your trainer, or are you consulting your calendar every week? For the most part you ought to have a slot that’s yours unless your travel schedule or shifting work schedule dictates moving appointments from week to week. What shouldn’t happen is that your trainer texts you on Sunday night every week attempting to squeeze you into slots.

2.) Your trainer should never—and I do mean never—no show you. I heard from a former client in another city recently who had to give up on his current trainer because of incessant canceling and no-showing. This is simply unacceptable, and it shows that whomever you’ve hired to help you on your fitness journey really doesn’t much care about whether you succeed or not.

3.) Last minute cancellations should be a rarity. I used to work with a guy who would text his early morning clients and check in just to make sure their 6 AM was still a go. This is ridiculous behavior that you shouldn’t tolerate. If you said last week that you’re training this week on Wednesday at 6 AM, well that’s exactly what should happen unless an act of God, family emergency, or illness intervenes.

But it’s not all on your trainer. This is a partnership and the responsibility for your success can’t be all on her. Here are your responsibilities:

1.) Show up on time ready to work out. If you have a 12 PM session and you show up at 12:10 consistently, you’re sending subtle signals to the trainer that you’re not really invested in your own success. Early on in my career I used to show up for a 6 AM client at 6:03—until she rightly called me out on it. Frankly I was too grown to be acting in such an unprofessional and careless manner, and I’m glad she had the courage and self-esteem to say she wouldn’t stand for it. (She ended up being a good friend and one of my favorite clients). She was always on time, ready to work, and I’m a little embarrassed to think back on how I didn’t automatically reciprocate her behavior until she said something.

2.) Never no show, almost never cancel late, and rarely cancel at all. You’re not going to improve if you don’t show up. And again, the way you act toward your trainer sends subtle cues about how you want to be treated. The person who shows up a little early, ready to work out, always keeps appointments, and appears to be respectful of their trainer’s time is the person who will be rewarded with extra effort, extra research, and extra attention to detail.

My industry has failed a lot of you countless times because of a lack of basic grownup behavior. Early on in my career, when I still viewed fitness as a means to other ends (I’m going to be a writer or a journalist or an actor!), I was as guilty as the very people I’m criticizing today. You shouldn’t stand for this because your body is too important. But remember always to hold up your end of the bargain as well. A relationship this critical, this intimate, is based on mutual trust, respect, and professionalism.

I used to work with a trainer who would tell his clients that they ought to leave their jobs if their careers didn’t allow them to live healthy lifestyles. I always thought this was ridiculous, impractical advice, but I’ve been wondering lately if I was too dismissive of this trainer’s logic.

Modern American life is replete with responsibilities, financial pressure, and seemingly unrelenting time-consuming demands. So I mostly try to offer advice that allows people to make the best of a suboptimal situation. Lately I’ve been wondering if this practicality actually is feeding into an unhealthy approach to life by justifying it in a way. “Listen, I understand that you have two kids, a mortgage, and college to save for, so I understand if you don’t have the time to cook three meals a day, every day.” That’s probably a version of something I’ve said before.

The problem with my approach, however, is that I’m not sensing that most of us are actually happy with the way we’re living. The parents I talk to say that they’re overwhelmed, and people seem to feel less in control as they rise through the corporate/government/organizational ranks. We get more, in a sense, and then we’re afraid of losing what we just earned.

When I ask people how they would like to be living, almost invariably they tell me they would like to be spending more time with their children, they would like to be exercising more, and they would like to have more time to cook. The conventional wisdom suggests that people are just idiots and that’s why they eat the way they do and avoid exercise. But I think what’s happened is we’ve bought a narrative about what our lives–and by extension our houses, cars, and clothes are supposed to look like. In short, I wonder how much our unbridled consumerism is linked to our declining wellness.

By investing in stuff instead of experiences and our health, we’re voting for stuff in a sense with our dollars. Let’s take cable, for instance.

“According to estimates from the NPD Group, this year the average subscription pay-TV customer will pay an astonishing $123 per month for pay-TV. NPD estimated that same figure was $86 in 2011, which indicates an increase of 9.4% annually between 2011 and 2015.” —Motley Fool, February 2015

$123 a month seems high, but that’s not the only cost associated with that cable bill. There’s also the lost time with family, with books, with friends, with creativity, with love, with sex, with thinking, with doing, with our communities. $123 a month is almost $1500 a year. Once we start to appreciate how much money we’re essentially throwing away, then the choice to stay at that miserable, life-sucking job seems less like a sacrifice necessitated by saving for college and more like a silly choice to watch “Say Yes to the Dress” instead of spending time with our spouses.

I pick on cable television a lot, but there are other examples. We eat out at mostly terrible restaurants and fast food joints. We buy two gigantic cars instead of trying to make due with one. We even buy gigantic homes that are expensive to heat and maintain.

Lest anyone think I have some sort of superiority complex, I can assure you I’m guilty of wasting money on stupid things too. When we first moved back to Dayton I was a baby about how the water tasted. So I convinced myself that we “needed” to have water delivered every month. Several weeks ago we eliminated that water delivery service from our ledger, bought a filtered container at the grocery, and now we’re saving a lot of money as a result. (Bonus points too for eliminating the wasted energy used to ship water to me on a truck instead of turning a faucet.)

I’m not telling you to quit your job. I am asking you to think about where your money is going. Could you make less money but live closer to your home, thus buying you valuable time with your family? Is there a walkable neighborhood to which you could move where you wouldn’t need multiple cars? If you took a hard look at things like cable service, could you reduce the amount of monthly costs?

When we think about our choices related to fitness and health, general we focus on nutrition and exercise. But I’m here to tell you that where and how you choose to spend your money is as much a wellness decision as what you’re having for dinner tonight.

So don’t quit your job…

…but think about how your life might be different in another one.

I keep returning to this theme of understanding, loving, and respecting one’s body because every week I’m reminded of how many people don’t fully grasp the ideas. So I try to come up with new ways of saying the same thing. You, the fearless reader, probably suffer from deja vu every day my column appears.

Today I want to explore the ideas of discipline and norms as they relate to our bodies because I think there are some misconceptions packaged within these concepts that require some scrutiny.

I often talk to be people who tell me that they need to be more disciplined, and I’d say the majority of the time what they’re referencing is an inability to wake up early and work out. They think that fit people live like a boxer in the Rocky and Creed franchise, waking up at the break of dawn to run five miles, drink a raw egg, and do one-arm push ups. With this type of mindset–only slightly exaggerated here for underwhelming comedic effect–it’s no wonder that many people intimidate themselves out of getting fit.

Not everyone reading this is a morning person. I happen to be able to function rather quickly upon waking, so getting in a workout in the early morning hours is something that’s doable for me. That doesn’t make me more disciplined, it just means that when I was in kindergarten the neighborhood mother who drove carpool called my mom to tell me once that she really loved driving me, but my energy and mouth were a bit much in the morning.

My point is that we are who we are to a large extent, so you shouldn’t beat yourself up if you can’t quite make the morning workout happen.

BUT, this shouldn’t be an excuse for staying up later than you know you should. Not being a morning person is one thing, but lacking the processes in the evening that allow you to get to bed at an hour that would allow you seven or eight hours of sleep is quite another. You might not be a morning person because no one is on five hours of sleep. If this sounds familiar, then maybe the problem isn’t that you’re not a morning person so much as you’re just not going to bed on time. Know the difference. If, even after a decent night of sleep, the thought of working out just isn’t something that’s going to work for you, then you need to troubleshoot ways of getting in a lift during the day or evening.

Now that we’ve dispensed with the idea of “discipline,” let’s tackle norms. During an initial consultation, new clients often will say to me preemptively, “well I know I should…” Sometimes they’re right, as in, “I know I should be eating more vegetables,” but often they’re wrong, as in “I know I should be eating low carb” or  “I know I should be eating low fat” or “I know I should be running more.” What they’ve done is adopted questionable conventional wisdom as an accepted fitness norm with little relation to the actual science. Worse, they beat themselves up for not following a norm that doesn’t really exist in the first place.

When the idea of discipline meets false norms, fitness becomes an overwhelming, all-encompassing project rather than the beautiful, mind-opening, life-enhancing journey it can really be.

How do you know the difference between a true lack of discipline and a false narrative you’ve adopted?

1.) If you haven’t worked out at all in more than two weeks, then you need to troubleshoot what’s going on that’s not leaving you the time to care for the one body you’ll ever have.

2.) If you have worked out in the last few weeks, but your consistency has been sporadic, then you need to figure out why. Often this is a process issue–meaning, your days are not organized enough to allow you the time to be good to yourself. Do you use a calendar? How often do you check it? Better organization usually trumps discipline for busy people.

3.) Are you happy with the way you look naked? Do you have unexplained aches and pains? Do you have energy crashes during the day? A negative answer for the first question and affirmative answers for the latter two could mean that something needs to change in your diet. Remember, you have to be eating for YOUR goals. When I’m in a heavy training cycle, I’m eating as many potatoes as I can get my hands on. If you’re trying to decrease body fat to get ready for a photo shoot, then reducing the amount of starchy carbs you’re consuming might be a good idea. The key is to understand that there are different ways of eating for different people. There is no normative diet, in other words. There’s just the right way of eating for you.

There’s an interesting diversity directly linked to geography that I’ve noticed while coaching clients around lifestyle issues in different parts of the country.

Not the greatest lunch idea.

My New York clients ate well at breakfast and lunch because the range of healthy options available to discerning Type A personalities was plentiful. Dinners were most difficult for them because I trained a lot of people in finance and law, industries in which late nights, after work drinks, and sometimes gluttonous dinners were actually part of the job description.

My Washington, D.C. clients had a harder time with breakfast, I think in large part because of the long commute times in a notoriously terrible city for traffic. These clients often were government workers or lawyers who were trying hard to get a jump on their day and skipped breakfast as a result.

Perhaps counterintuitively, my sense of the nutrition picture for my Los Angeles clients was actually pretty good. The slower pace and less formal atmosphere among my many entertainment industry clients meant that people took the time to eat a healthy breakfast while sitting on their deck or taking a walk in the sunshine to grab lunch at a local, fresh eatery (where your waiter is probably the best looking person you’ve ever seen in person).

Turkey chili recipe from the New York Times’ beautiful cooking app.

In Dayton I’ve noticed a trend both in my personal life and among my clients: eating well at lunch is difficult. If you have the time to go out with colleagues and sit at a restaurant, you’re probably in luck because there are some really good, local options. But what if you want something quick? That’s where things get more difficult, and that’s where I’m a strong advocate–at least for now–of almost always packing your lunch.

I’ve written before about “fast food” chains like Sweetgreen, where for around $10 you can grab a locally sourced salad with a fantastic balance of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat).   I’ve struggled in our city to identify the equivalent, where you can eat a veggie-centric meal that also contains protein and healthy fats. (If you know of any–please comment on Facebook!) For the most part, your “fast” lunch options in Dayton generally aren’t going to do you much good.

That leaves you with two options. First, you can still go out for lunch but make the best of the situation. Try eating mostly vegetables and make sure you’re getting protein and a healthy fat (like olive oil or avocado) as well. The protein and fat combination is important because that’s what’s going to help you feel both full and satisfied–avoiding the M&M bowl that Debbie keeps at her desk.

The second and preferable option is for you to bring lunch from home. Now, some people object to this by saying that they “don’t have time” to pack a lunch every day. My answer to that in recent months has been the big batch, one pot meal. Think soups, stews, and Crockpot dishes. This turkey chili recipe from the New York Times has been getting a lot of run in my house recently, and I’ve recommended it to several clients. I like the recipe because of the great combination of tasting great as a leftover, not taking very much time to prepare, and being easily divided and saved for lunchtime meals. Make it on a Sunday and eat it for lunch throughout the week.

What about the boredom factor? People tire of eating the same thing every single day, but if you’re one of those people who are going out for lunch five days a week, then having turkey chili twice a week probably isn’t going to get old too fast–and you’ve reduced the amount of times you’re eating out by 40 percent. So if the one pot meal can get you to two times a week of packing your lunch, and you can make enough dinner one night to have leftovers for lunch another day, you’re up to cooking 60 percent of your lunch meals at home. Not bad, right?

The takeaway here is that I’ve talked to a number of people in Dayton over the last few months who want to bring their lunch more, both from a health standpoint and from a financial standpoint. Given that we don’t have a lot of great, quick, healthy options for lunch to begin with, you have some incentives to brown bag it. But the key in implementing this behavioral change is not biting off more than you can chew. Don’t make your goal 100 percent compliance with packing your lunch. Start off with two days a week. If you can do that, then you’re well on your way to saving money and eating well during your work days. Better for the body and the wallet.

I used to write a regular newsletter for my business, but contributing weekly columns here largely has brought that output to a screeching halt. It’s not a complaint so much as an admission to my limited capacity for meaningful output. To the extent that I lament my newsletter’s slow demise, it’s because I miss having an avenue where I could explore broadly without fear of alienating anyone. That is, if you signed up for the Present Tense Fitness newsletter, you sort of knew that you were just as likely to get a think piece on street art as you were anything about squats.

In this space, I know people tune in a least partially because they want to learn about something fitness related. I confess to being a little self-conscious about the sometimes tenuous connection between what I write here and straight up fitness. This self-consciousness is a close cousin to the insecurity I sometimes feel around my own accomplishments (or lack thereof) in the weight room. I’m not as strong as most well-known trainers, for example, and I’ve never competed in any sport at a high level. So why the hell should you even listen to what I have to say about fitness?

When I describe what I do, I try to be clear that I’m not the guy to go to if you’re trying to achieve a 600-pound deadlift. I can teach you how to deadlift, but if you’re looking for elite, I’m just not the right guy. Sometimes I feel that my niche–people who are new to fitness who are trying to live well-rounded, rich lives–is an excuse used to paper over my own lack of accomplishments. But then my clients remind me why I do this, and why the way I’ve chosen to use the space can be useful.

Earlier this week I was coaching someone who told me they “hate the gym.” We’ve been working together a while now, and this person is thoroughly convinced of strength training’s efficacy. That’s not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether this person will ever be the type of person to love driving to a place, maybe changing clothes and heading over to the power rack, and busting out some barbell front squats. That’s likely never gonna happen.

But yoga, yoga is something this person has always loved. And having been convinced of why strength training is important and can measurably improve one’s life, this person sprinkled in some dumbbell work with a recent yoga workout.

And loved it.

Will this client ever load up 225 pounds on a bar and squat to depth?

Will this client deadlift twice bodyweight?

Will this client compete in a powerlifting competition?

No. I try generally to avoid words like never, but I can safely say in this case the answer to these questions is almost certainly “never.”

But can this person love the body they inhabit?

Can this person live a life full of passion, soul, and creativity?

Can this person with a combination of yoga and selected strength-training exercises mitigate bone density loss, enhance mobility, and increase the amount of lean body mass while decreasing fat mass?

Yes. So much yes.

So whenever I get that imposter feeling, that feeling that I’m not really serving a purpose, and that I ought to use this space to break down the force vectors involved in a high-bar back squat, I remember conversations like I had this week.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t find the right mix of exercise for you. That you shouldn’t run. Or you shouldn’t do yoga. Or that you’re wasting your time if you’re not doing X, Y, or Z. (Especially Z. Z is overrated).

I’ll say it again. Every person on the planet ought to be doing some sort of weight-bearing exercise at least two days a week. What form that takes though can be highly individualized. Chances are if you’re reading this you’re not getting ready for the Olympics, so your goal is to find the right combination of exercise that will allow you to live a life full of passion, soul, and as much creativity as your brain can handle. Live. Get stronger and go out there and live.

Edit: I actually sent out a newsletter ahead of this column. It was about songs with outer space as a theme. I’ll say you’re welcome in advance for not writing about that here.

With the Thanksgiving holiday rapidly approaching, I thought it wise to address a stubborn myth about health living, which is that one must be obnoxious about their food choices as guests in other people’s homes or during holidays. My advice? Eat well, but have some manners.

Don’t show up at grandma’s house with your own bag of food. Don’t skip the office holiday party because there’s going to be a lot of pie. Don’t make faces when the composition of the menu at dad’s house isn’t what you would like it to be. There’s a word for people who do these things. I think you all know what that word is.

I can’t imagine living a life in which I couldn’t have a piece of pecan pie with my dad while talking football at Thanksgiving. We’re human beings, not animals. Food isn’t just about feeding our bodies. Preparing a meal for others, or eating a meal as an invited guest, is an act of love and companionship. Your relationships with the ones you love are as important to your health as anything else you do, including the food you eat and the exercise you do. You work against both human nature and good manners when you adopt an air of condescension and restriction at the communal table.

What to do then, if you’re at a table without vegetables, or in a room full of delicious pies, or in the living room when your slightly buzzed uncle starts talking politics?

You do the best you can. Just like you should every day.

1. Load your plate up with vegetables first. This will serve as an automatic portion control mechanism.
2. No, or few vegetables? I’d err on the side of protein (like turkey) and limit the amount of starchy carbs (like mashed potatoes).
3. Put down your fork in between each bite. Pay attention to the conversation around you. Listen to the person with whom you’re speaking. Don’t anticipate what you’re going to say. Just listen. Be thankful for the time you’re allowed to spend with a loved one. (The science linking gratitude to health is increasingly strong and convincing).
4. Never, ever, drink with the intention of getting drunk. Not only will you end up acting a fool, but you’ll also probably eat a lot more. Yes, your ultra-lefty cousin is home from college and she’s telling you all about how you should be composting. And your super duper conservative childhood neighbor has some questionable views on diversity. But you’re a grownup, aren’t you? Drink like a gentleman. Consume wine like a grown woman. If you don’t like the conversation you’re in, politely excuse yourself and find a better one.
5. When it’s time for dessert, try to eat in a room without a television. Hopefully you’re in a home with good taste in coffee, so they’ve served you a fresh cup of Wood Burl from Press in the Oregon District. Sip your coffee, eat your pumpkin pie. Again, put your fork down in between each bite. Listen to the conversation. Taste the pie. Smell the coffee. Be aware. Be present.

You’re going to be reading a lot of “surviving the holidays” fitness articles in the coming weeks. Few of them will focus on the idea of acting like a dignified human being and practicing the art of conversation. But a healthy lifestyle is a holistic lifestyle in which you’re living, loving, cooking, moving, and feeling well. You don’t have to live like a monk. You don’t have to have the discipline of an Olympian. Ultimately, all you have to do is embrace your humanity, treat both the food and your company with respect, and always–always–eat as many vegetables as you can.

I’ve been thinking a lot about change lately because when you boil my job down to its essence that’s really what I’m supposed to help people do. They come to me because they want to feel better–physically and emotionally–and usually what they think they’re going to get by hiring a coach is a prescription. Eat this. Lift that. Don’t eat this. Don’t do that.

Instead I ask questions like:

“Why are you here?”

“What has your best experience with fitness been?”

“What do you value?”

I never get around to prescribing a diet of any sort. And rather than yelling or cajoling the way a celebrity trainer on The Biggest Loser might, I constantly remind them of their already demonstrated capacity for greatness.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Am I just a big softy? No, not really. It’s just that I’ve learned a thing or two about change. Believe it or not, we know a lot about human behavior, what allows people to change, and how to develop sustainability. The name for my coaching approach is motivational interviewing, and the technique grew out of psychologists’ work with addiction. The most important aspects of motivational interviewing in the context of fitness are empathy from me and a client-centered approach that assumes varying levels of readiness to change.

How does this play out in practice? Someone who’s resistant to change might hate going to the gym. So in talking to that person about their goals, I might develop with them a weekly goal to put together their gym clothes the evening before a work day. And…

And that’s it. That’s the goal. Simply put your gym clothes in a place where you can see them. Prepare gym shoes, clothes, and bag as if you’re going to the gym on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Demonstrate to yourself that you can do this, experience victory, and create a habit around fitness.

Next week’s goals might be putting those clothes on.

And the week after that the goal might be getting to the gym.

If you’re counting at home, that took about three weeks to get the person who hates the gym to get into the gym. Slow? Yes. Deliberative? Sure. Effective?

Absolutely.

By demonstrating empathy with this person and recognizing their readiness to change, I didn’t front load their fitness with things that they cannot do. I met this person where she was and built success into her program.

I do versions of this deliberative process with clients every week. For some people we work together to develop a goal around reading about fitness. For others we make a goal about grocery shopping. The goals vary from person to person–which is why prescriptions in fitness aren’t often the best way to coach change. The cool thing about this process is that you can do the very same thing for yourself!

Change can feel like an uphill climb.

Think about a change you’ve been wanting to make. Maybe you’re eating too much fast food. But if you say to yourself, “stop eating fast food,” you’ve set yourself up for failure.

Instead, think about why you eat fast food when you do, and develop an incremental strategy for eliminating it from your diet. Hint: Usually one of the first steps toward eliminating fast food from one’s diet is learning how to shop at the grocery store. With that in mind, maybe your goal for the week might be to think about your schedule for the week and to make a grocery list. That’s step one. Step two for next week might be to make a grocery list and actually go to the grocery store. Step three might be list, grocery shopping, and trying ONE new recipe. The key is you can’t judge yourself (“why can’t I just stop eating fast food?”) and you have to acknowledge your own reticence to change. Change is hard, remember? So acknowledge that.

Not everyone can afford to hire a coach, but everyone can learn to practice more empathy and to troubleshoot their least healthy behaviors. There’s no need to wait until New Year’s resolution season.

I gave a talk called “Becoming a Wellness Detective,” on Monday at the Whole Foods Market in Centerville. The idea behind the lecture was to help people figure out why they do what they do, replace bad habits with good ones, and provide a sustainable framework for replicating the process.

Getting ready to talk habits at Whole Foods.

The impetus behind me focusing so much on habits was unquestionably Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit,” in which he describes something he calls the habit loop: the cue (the thing, person, place, smell, or memory that prompts us to want to do something); the ritual (the action we take, like eating something we know we shouldn’t or engaging in a behavior that will have negative consequences); and the reward (what emotion or sense of satisfaction we get out of the ritual).

Duhigg’s work radically altered the way I coach my clients to achieve their fitness goals precisely because he gave me an easily digestible framework that clients could learn and replicate on their own. The investigative part of the process—hence the name, “Wellness Detective”—is figuring out the individual pieces of the habit loop. Figuring out the reward for our behaviors is often the most difficult part and can take some trial and error.

I got into fitness to support a fledgling (read: unsuccessful) screenwriting career, and when I lived in Los Angeles I was especially depressed about my professional prospects. My habit loop consisted of training early morning clients, going to McDonald’s and buying multiple breakfast sandwiches, then sitting in my car and listening to Jim Rome’s show.

The cue was the time of day and finishing at the gym early.

The ritual was eating the sandwiches and listening to brotastic sports radio.

And the reward—ah, here’s where things get interesting.

You might think the reward was eating the salty and fatty breakfast sandwich. But really the reward for me was the distraction from my crumbling writing prospects.

Now that I have healthier mindset about my place in the world, early morning clients don’t represent the same health obstacle to me. The cue stays the same (early morning), but instead of visiting a fast food restaurant I drink a healthy shake and then work out (the new ritual). The reward is that I continue to get stronger even as I approach 40—and I still get a little bit of a distraction from professional and personal stress.

The important thing about my personal example is that I had to really identify the reward and what was going on with me before I could hope to change the habit. I needed to understand that I was feeling a little depressed about my life, and I only compounded that by treating my body like a veritable trash compactor.

At Whole Foods on Monday someone in the audience asked a question about what happens when we are able to successfully change habits, maybe even for several months, but then we slip back into our old ways. Sometimes this slippage can be prompted by life events or just general fatigue from maintaining our new habits.

This is where mindset matters. If changing habits is the beta version of developing a healthy lifestyle, then the latest software release is full integration of healthy actions (nutrition, fitness, wellness) into our everyday lives. What’s the difference between working on habits and having a healthy mindset?

I would argue that habit transformation or formation necessarily involves purposeful action. For a while I had to actively tell myself not to eat fast food. Now it doesn’t occur to me. The bridge was knowledge: even though I was a so-called “fitness professional,” I never really bothered to think or care about nutrition. Once I learned how thoroughly interrelated what we eat is to how we feel, think, and perform, putting healthier things into my body became easier. And now I’ve nearly automated things like eating vegetables at every meal.

Think about where you are on the continuum of healthy living. If you’re just starting out, I think it’s a great idea to start with Duhigg’s “habit loop” framework.

But if you’re already consciously working on your habits, you might benefit from seeking out and internalizing new information. Choose one area of your lifestyle (fitness, wellness, nutrition) and use your Google machine to find the latest. You might just find that reading one fact about the power of strength training (or sleep or vegetables or healthy fats) changes your life.