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30 Day Challenge Series, Day 18: Reach Out to Someone (Text, Call, Plan)

Today’s habit for the 30 day healthy habits challenge, is a seriously under appreciated part of health. However, it’s one that impacts both how you feel now and how you age over time: connection. Having supportive relationships and a sense of community isn’t just good for your mood, it’s strongly linked to longevity, resilience, and overall well-being.

For today’s habit, you’re going to reach out to someone. Call or text, but take it one step further and make an actual plan. Suggest a specific day and a specific activity, even if it’s simple and free, like a walk or a coffee. If you can, I want to encourage you to call. Hearing someone’s voice or even leaving a quick voice message creates a deeper kind of connection than a quick text, and it’s something we’ve gotten away from over time. Relationships require communication and follow-through, and today is about being the person who makes it easy for connection to happen.

Takeaways

  • Connection and supportive relationships are linked to mental health and longevity
  • Isolation can negatively impact health over time, and reaching out helps reduce that
  • A quick message is good, but a real plan is better
  • Suggest a specific date and a specific activity so it doesn’t stay vague
  • Consider calling instead of texting to create a more meaningful moment of connection
  • It does not have to be expensive or complicated, a walk, coffee, or casual catch-up counts
  • Relationships require communication and consistency, and someone has to initiate it
  • You can build a strong support system with just a few key people, but you have to invest in it

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Episode Transcript:

Cheryl McColgan (00:00.394)
Cheryl McHogan founder of HealNourishGrow and welcome to day 18 of your 30 days healthy habits challenge. Today is one that is such an underappreciated part of health and that is to reach out to someone and having connection in your life and having a supportive community is really just so key not only to your mental health but also it's highly related to longevity. So if you want to be healthier

Creating a small circle or a large circle of people that you have in your life that are available to you is just really important and an underrated aspect of health. So today's activity, today's habit is to reach out to someone. Now I'm gonna say call or text, but plan something. Plan to meet, plan to meet in person, plan to go somewhere. It doesn't have to be somewhere where you spend money necessarily, maybe go for a walk or just grab a coffee or it could be dinner.

just anything like that. And I am going to encourage you, I said text or call, but I'm going to encourage you to call because we all have gotten maybe a little lazy with that over time. And it's just nice to hear people's voices, even if I'm not able to pick up the phone for some reason in that moment, I always love getting a nice voice message because it's just something we don't do that much anymore. Why this matters again, social connection, it's protective for your mood and longevity and

It's just going to make you less isolated, which is also related to health over time. And if you don't reach out, you're not going to have those connections. You're not going to have a actual relationship like relationships require communication. It requires touching base. And I have to say, I'm really impressed. There are certain people in my life that are just so very good at this. And I really admire that quality. They're always the one to reach out or just say, thinking about you or let's get together soon and throw out a date and throw out an idea.

That's another thing. mean, people, I feel like that's one thing when you say, yeah, we should get together soon. That's not a plan. That's why that's part of this conversation of this habit is to get you to be the one that says, how does next Thursday work or throwing out a date and an activity? Because a lot of people, you were the one to reach out. You're the one that was thinking of them. And so I like for that to be kind of the way that you connect is to actually put an idea out there and

Cheryl McColgan (02:22.99)
not make it so ambiguous because quite often I have people in my life that will say that, we should get together. And yet they never suggest a time or an activity or a date. And it's just kind of, I don't know, it falls flat, I think in the realm of relationships. So it shouldn't always be one sided. You shouldn't always have to be the one to do that. But for this habit for today, I'm going to say, I'm going to put that on you to make that challenge to just reach out to somebody that you miss, that you want to catch up with, that you want to see and make some plans.

And so that is today's habit. As always, the research behind this, if you want to dig into it a little bit more, you'll just find that it's so related to many aspects of health. And I think you might really enjoy reading that if you need any encouragement about staying in touch with people, because it doesn't have to be a big group. You just have to have somebody that's got your back, somebody that you can rely on. And you have to create that. You have to put some energy into it.

So that is it for today's habit and I will see you again tomorrow.

Author

  • Cheryl McColgan

    Cheryl McColgan is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Heal Nourish Grow, where she has published evidence-based health and nutrition content since 2018.

    With over 30 years of experience in fitness, nutrition, and healthy living, and nearly 20 years of professional editorial and journalism experience, she brings both subject-matter depth and trained editorial judgment to everything on the site.

    Cheryl holds a degree in Psychology with a minor in Addictions Studies, completed graduate training in Clinical Psychology, and is a NASM Certified Personal Trainer and E-RYT Certified Yoga Instructor and trained in Yoga Therapy.

    She is the author of 21 Day Fat Loss Kickstart, Make Keto Easy, Take Diet Breaks and Still Lose Weight, The Grain Free Cookbook for Beginners, and Easy Weeknight Keto.

    Read more about Cheryl and the journey that created Heal Nourish Grow on the about page.

    Cheryl McColgan is the founder of Heal Nourish Grow, where she writes about protein, body composition, healthy aging, and evidence-based nutrition and wellness along with the everyday habits that actually make those things work in real life.

    With a background in psychology and graduate training in clinical psychology, plus nearly 20 years of experience in editorial and publishing, Cheryl approaches health from both a research and real-world perspective. She’s also been immersed in fitness and nutrition for more than 25 years, which gives her a practical lens most purely academic content tends to miss.

    Her work today focuses heavily on protein intake (especially for women), muscle retention, metabolic health, and sustainable fat loss, along with topics like sleep, wellness, recovery, and wearable health tech. You’ll also find a mix of high-protein, low-carb recipes designed to make hitting those goals easier without overcomplicating things.

    Cheryl’s interest in health and nutrition became more personal after navigating her own health challenges, which pushed her to dig deeper into how lifestyle, diet and daily habits impact long-term health. That experience continues to shape how she approaches everything on this site: practical, realistic, and focused on what actually works over time.

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    Most of the content here falls into a few core areas:

    Protein & Muscle Health: how much you actually need, especially for women and how to use protein to support strength, body composition, and aging
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