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30 Day Challenge Series, Day 21: Weekly Reset: Reflect and Adjust

In this episode, Cheryl McColgan discusses the importance of reflecting on progress during the 30-day healthy habits challenge. She emphasizes the flexibility of the challenge, encouraging participants to celebrate small wins and make adjustments to their habits for better integration into daily life.

Cheryl also highlights the significance of planning for long-term habit maintenance beyond the challenge, ensuring that participants can sustain their new habits over time.

Takeaways

  • You don't have to be perfect on this challenge.
  • Celebrate the progress and reinforce the behavior.
  • Small adjustments prevent an all or nothing mindset.
  • Keep your focus on being consistent.
  • Choose the habits that resonate with you.
  • Missed days are just data for you.
  • List out three wins this week, even if small.
  • Creating small daily habits supports your core values.

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Episode Transcript

Cheryl McColgan (00:00.142)
Hey everyone, I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of HealNourishRo and welcome to day 21 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. So day 21, we've made it through the third week and if you've been doing the challenge along with us the whole time, then you know that this is time for the weekly reset. We reflect and adjust. So again, you don't have to be perfect on this challenge. That's why all the habits have only taken five to 15 minutes a day is so it gives you some things to try, gives you some things that

see which habits could really work well in your life, what could help you the most. And knowing that you don't have to start over again, if you miss something, you can just do the little habit along with the next day's habit, or you can just jump right back in. It's not anything, one of these challenges where you have to start over if you miss a day. This is meant to be very flexible, to fit easily into your life, and to just give you some new ways of thinking about habits that might be helpful to you, and that you might wanna integrate.

each and every day going forward instead of just trying it on these little five minute, 15 minute intervals. So today's habit is look at your tracker, celebrate what you did, and then choose one habit to make easier next week. So some of these, if you've been going through, you know, I've encouraged you, you're just trying the one habit each and every day. But if you found a habit that speaks to you or that was super easy that you wanted to add in for the entirety of the challenge, maybe you've been doing those.

And so notice if you told yourself, hey, I was gonna drink that glass of water every single morning before I drank coffee. Have you stuck with that? Have you done it? And just notice what's making it more difficult to keep that habit in is that you didn't put the water next to your bed like I suggested, or maybe you go downstairs and you just go straight for the coffee and you forgot one day to do the water first. So whatever it is, just look what's making these easier. And so I've been sending out the emails at 6.30 a.m. Eastern time.

Eastern time, that's probably not the perfect time for everyone in the whole world that decides to do the challenge, obviously. But noticing if it's harder to integrate into your day because you just got it later, maybe you kind of set it the day behind where you read today's habit and you actually do that tomorrow so that you can plan ahead for it and know where it best fits in your day, that sort of thing. So again, we're just looking to make these easy. We're looking to make them fit with the habits that we already have, trying habit stacking, putting one habit, sticking it with another that makes it easy. Like we had the idea about,

Cheryl McColgan (02:19.554)
taking supplements when you brush your teeth kind of thing, or putting your running shoes next to the door where you have to see them before you go outside to go to work and remind you to take your bag with you for the gym. know, whatever it is, you're just trying to plan ahead so that you make things easier and repeat it every day until it becomes a habit. So the consistency is the key.

Again, not every day is gonna be perfect, but making these small adjustments on a week to week really prevents you from getting to this all or nothing mindset like, why are you missed three days? So now it's too late and you just forget about it and you never come back to this. It's always noticing that evaluating the week. Okay, yeah, maybe I wasn't perfect this week. I missed this and this. How can I do that better next week? Maybe I'll come back to those habits because I actually missed them this week and I wanna try them. But just you've got to celebrate the progress.

and reinforce the behavior so it feels rewarding. So we want to notice the positive. We always want to be training our brain to notice those positive things, have gratitude for the things that did work this well, easy this week, and then set your mind up for noticing which ones were more challenging and figuring out a way to make that easier for yourself the next time. It just, you know, also keeps the momentum going. So we just want these small wins. And I want you to list out.

Three wins this week, even if they were small. Ideally, they're related to the habit that you did. You were able to try this one that you weren't so sure about. But you can also just start with three wins, period. Just evaluating your week and thinking about the positives. And then choose one way to make it easier. So if you missed some of your 10 minutes of movement every day this week, how can we make sure that you hit that every single day next week? Because really,

I think that that is one of the most beneficial habits that if you don't have already integrating that, you will just do yourself so much good. And specifically, like I mentioned, if you can make sure that you walk outside on a regular basis, you're not always being in the gym on the treadmill, something like that, but being outside, connecting with nature. So if that was one of the friction points when you were having your habits this week, maybe plan out next week where you look at your calendar, you figure out what's your biggest, busiest day, and then figure out where you're going to fit in your movement.

Cheryl McColgan (04:34.85)
figure out where you're gonna fit in your five minute habit. And then again, we're just resetting the miss days, they're just data for you. We're just observing, we're not judging, we're just noticing what went well, what didn't, that's it. So don't look for, you know, I didn't do enough, I didn't, you I messed up, no negatives like that. We want to keep it all positive and just frame it in a way of learning and noticing the data so that we can make it better the next time. So keep your focus on being consistent.

doing the little habit every single day. We've got seven more days to go at this point. And I hope you've enjoyed it up to this point. Like I said, there's gonna be habits where you might do them and you think, okay, that's not really for me. That doesn't resonate for some reason. Or maybe there's some habits that really do resonate. And then you look in the literature on it, you look at the research. I just gave two links, but most of them, there's many more links that you can look at for these habits.

So just choose the ones that you want to dig into and notice what might be better for you going forward. We've got, like I said, only about a week left. So at some point you're going to come out of this and you're going to need to have a plan for maintaining these habits. Because I'm assuming if you've practiced this the entire time, you really want to create new habits in your life. So we want to figure out a way that we can keep carrying that forward, not just after 30 days, but 60 days, 90 days, a year, year after year, repeating those small habits that are going to get you to your bigger.

goals. And I think I mentioned it before on one of the other podcasts is I have the 10 year core values and goals worksheet for you. So that's at the website. If you go and search what is ultimate wellness, the link for that form is in that article. And it also just talks about, you know, figuring out what is wellness for you, figuring out what habits work for you on a day to day basis. So the article is kind of all about that. And the worksheet helps you notice like, what are your core values? What's important to you?

And it kind of goes back to the very beginning when we picked the three focus areas for this challenge. You know, that'll give you a good hint into what might be your core values and what might be these overarching things where you want to plan out for the next five years, 10 years going forward. know, creating those small daily habits that will support that. So anyway, that is it for day 21. I hope you have a nice little reflection and reset. And as always, I would love to hear in the comments what you found challenging, what

Cheryl McColgan (06:56.652)
What were your wins? It's just always exciting to celebrate along with you. So that is it for today. 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.

    What Cheryl Covers

    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
    Fat Loss & Metabolic Health: sustainable approaches that prioritize muscle retention and long-term results
    Healthy Habits & Lifestyle: sleep, movement, strength training, consistency, and the small things that compound over time
    Wearables & Recovery: real-world testing and comparisons of tools like Oura, Whoop and others
    High-Protein & Low-Carb Recipes: simple, realistic meals that support your goals without feeling restrictive
    Travel & Lifestyle: wellness-focused travel, outdoor experiences, and a slightly more elevated take on healthy living

    If you're new, here are a few good places to begin:

    30 Day Healthy Habits Challenge

    Protein Foundations

    High Protein Recipes

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