Change Academy podcast

I’ve decided that my special word for 2024 is Reboot. 

Much of my last year was consumed by the reboot of the Weighless program–a coaching program that I launched with Brock Armstrong 7 years ago, and which has now been now relaunched in a new format that I think is its best version yet. 

The Change Academy is not about weight management, per se. My goal in this podcast is to give you tools that you can apply to create positive change in any aspect of your life. But in this episode, I want to talk more specifically about the Weighless Program and take you behind the scenes of our recent reboot. 

If that is not of interest, you might want to check out our introductory series The 8 Things You Need to Create Change, or the more intensive series called the 50,000 Mile Tune up.  There are free listening guides available for both of them and either one of them would be a great way to charge up your batteries for your own reboot, or whatever else 2024 has in store for you.

Continue reading “Behind the scenes of our recent reboot”

There are apps and devices that help us what we eat, weigh, spend, save, how much water we drink, how many steps we take. But what is all of this tracking doing for us? Are we using these tools and this information to improve our wellbeing or have we succumbed to the tyranny of tracking? 

Joining me on the podcast is registered dietitian and workplace wellness consultant Cassie Christopher. Tracking is a a topic that comes up a lot for each of us in the coaching work that we do and in this episode, we explore what tracking offers, where it often goes wrong, and how we can leverage the benefits without it becoming an unhealthy or unhelpful practice.  

I’m also excited to share that the Weighless Program is once again accepting new members! The next group begins on January 1st. All the details are at weighless.life/enroll.

Continue reading “Is your diet-tracking app helping or hurting?”

If anyone is telling you they can guarantee that you will succeed (as long as you follow their method or their strategy or whatever), they are not being upfront with you. Here’s the hard truth: If you want to succeed, you have to be willing to risk failing.

In fact, if there is anything that actually does guarantee success, it’s being willing to fail–repeatedly if necessary.

But let’s not make this harder than it needs to be. In this episode, I (and a bunch of former clients) talk about how to make this easier.

Continue reading “In order to succeed, you must risk failing (again)”

Today, I’m sharing a bit about my circle of support and inviting you to evaluate your own network. Who are you grateful for? Where might your support network need a little building out? Whose support network are you a part of and how do you support them?

Many of us have bigger and more varied support networks than we even realize–or fully take advantage of.

And for those whose networks are a little threadbare, I have some ideas on how to shore those up.

Continue reading “How to build the circle that supports your best work”

If you’ve ever taken an introductory psychology class or done some reading on human behavior and development, you’ve probably stumbled across the Transtheoretical Model, better known as the Stages of Change. 

It offers some insights into how behavior change happens, why it sometimes doesn’t (or seems like it doesn’t) and how we can better support behavior change efforts–both our own, and those of people around us.

But there are some nuances to this that I think deserve a little more exploration and who better to do that with than clinical psychologist and friend of the podcast, Dr. Bethy Campbell?

We have also created an assessment for you to get a read on where you are in relationship to any change you are working on or contemplating, along with a playlist of Change Academy episodes targeting that particular stage of change.

Continue reading “What they forget to tell you about the stages of change”

Hedonic self-care involves activities that we find pleasurable. A massage or a nap or time spent with dear friends. 

Eudaimonic self-care includes those things we do not necessarily because they are pleasurable in the moment, but because they support our goals and objectives.  Things like getting our teeth cleaned, or doing meal prep ahead of a busy week, or spending time and money on a therapist or hiring a health coach. 

You could easily get the impression that eudaimonic self-care is better or more virtuous than hedonic self-care. But this is not the case. And I don’t want you to forsake hedonic self-care as lesser than. 

Continue reading “If it feels good, it must be bad for me…and other fairy tales”

In the previous episode, I talked about some of the things that can go wrong when we put corporations in charge of our wellbeing. In this episode, I share an example of what it looks like when it goes right, and how corporate-sponsored wellbeing programs can actually have a very positive impact on individuals and workers as well as on the company’s bottom line. 

Lindsey Soroka is a registered dietitian and works as a health promotion specialist for a major national corporation, where she’s in charge of (among other things) engaging the employees in wellness education, services, and programming. 

Lindsey and I first worked together when her company brought me in to offer the 30-Day Nutrition Upgrade program to their employees, Afterward, we sat down to talk about what she’s learned about motivating people and why major corporations want to invest in wellbeing programming.

But there are valuable lessons for all of us in this conversation. In particular, I hope you catch the ways in which our efforts to enhance our own wellbeing can ripple out into our families, workplaces, and communities. 

Continue reading “Better together: How community and connection build healthier habits”

A lot of employers and health insurers are now offering wellbeing apps and portals. They’re obviously hoping that giving people tools to help them manage their health conditions and nudge them toward healthy behaviors will reduce health care costs. 

I recently checked out the wellbeing app offered by my own health insurance company. I actually think that some of the well-meaning but poorly-conceived prompts could be doing more harm than good.

To be fair, figuring out how to nudge people to adopt healthier habits is a hard nut to crack. In this episode, I share five ideas on how we can design behavioral interventions that are more effective as well as more inclusive, accessible, and sustainable. I also have an opportunity for you to see these principles in action.

Continue reading “Should health insurance companies really be in charge of our well-being?”

The theme of treats and rewards is coming up in a lot of my conversations right now…with my coaching clients, with people who have reached out to talk about working together, even with my friends and colleagues. Specifically, using food as a treat or reward.

This is something a lot of us have learned to do. And like any highly rewarding behavior, this habit has the potential to do harm…and can be surprisingly hard to break.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about cultivating new sources of reward and pleasure — ones that make our lives richer, and don’t have unintended consequences. I’ll also share three ways that being more intentional about treats can increase the pleasure you get from them–as well as strengthening your willpower.

Continue reading “Recalibrating your reward system: treating yourself better”

How we see ourselves has an enormous impact on our mental health and wellbeing, how we function in our relationships, even what sort of goals we set for ourselves. Often, we believe that achieving those goals will improve our self-image and make us feel better about ourselves. But usually, it happens the other way around.

Our self-image is often very distorted. Others may barely notice “imperfections” that are all we can see when we look in the mirror. And, by the same token, we can also take steps to heal poor self-image without actually changing anything about the way we look. Often it starts by examining our beliefs about how we SHOULD look. 

Joining me today to talk about all of this is Cassie Christopher, whom you know from several past episodes. Cassie is a registered dietitian, workplace wellness expert, speaker, and coach. Repairing body image is a big part of Cassie’s work. She and I are also teaming up to offer a special program this October focusing on on Body Image Repair and Resilience. 

Continue reading “Why a healthy self-image is essential to your future growth”