Your questions pour in from all platforms, but I answer them best in our 21-Day Metabolic Kick (21DMK) class—held twice a year. The February class was our best yet, with students transforming their metabolisms in just three weeks. These emails come from the questions asked inside the class.

If you find this email valuable, forward it to a friend who wants to learn about the authentic ketogenic lifestyle. Let’s reach more people who are ready to take control of their health!

This week’s Question:  “How do I develop the habits to keep my health improvements.”

Last week, we shared four major indicators found in a patient who had made changes in their life that stick. We curated part of the list from James Clear’s book called Atomic Habits and shared that these four steps are found in every one of the patients who sustained the improvement.

1. Small Changes:
2. The Power of Identity:
3. Consistency Over Perfection– Embrace Boredom:
4. Track Your Habits:

If you find yourself on the struggle bus for changing behavior, read more about those four major indicators.

Let me use the example of my son. He had failed to achieve his goal of routine exercise.  With many failures, he took nearly 6 months to master the 4 pillars outlined above. In hopes of competing in a half-iron man, he sought out a swimming pool to learn how to swim for a mile in open water. Having never swam before, he tried to jump into this habit way too fast. He went daily for a week and then avoided the pool for the following 2 weeks.

Using these pillars, he reset his expectations to small changes with consistent improvement. Then, to maintain the habit, he made the goal easy yet consistent. And tracked how often he attempted to swim. Using this tiny momentum, he found himself identifying as a man who routinely worked out and embraced the routine of trying.

If, like my son, you’ve implemented these four staples in your life, read on to see the following steps to master a habit:

1. Environment, not Goals, Shapes Behavior:  Our surroundings heavily influence our habits, and you are the average of the five people you hang out with. The influence of a workplace, church, family, or an even an exercise group impacts people.  Use this.As Prescott found the habit of routinely identifying as someone who goes to the gym every day, he noticed the positive pressure from the other people who routinely swam. The influence these people had on his habit shaped the way he behaved.  Although they were strangers.

2. Make it Obvious and Easy: Design your environment to make visible clear cues for good habits. Prescott set up a cue that resulted in fewer days missed for swimming. He packed his gym bag and placed it on the front seat of his car. If his workday ended without a swim, he made it very easy to drive to the pool and try.  This was an obvious cue that forced him to think about swimming.

3. Make It Attractive & Satisfying: Pair habits with positive feelings and immediate rewards to reinforce the behavior.  After each swim, Prescott would call his little brother and compare who swam the farthest.  This tiny victory played out in more than one way for him. He enjoyed the competition with his brother and took pride in inspiring him to do better.

4. The Goldilocks Rule– Reflect and Adjust: Keep the habit challenging. Regularly review your habits to refine them.  Prescott saw consistent minor improvements in his routine. It has been almost a year since he and his brother ran a marathon.  Swimming had become his major focus because it needed the most work.

Recently, as he walked past the treadmills toward the pool, he had an epiphany, “I am going to need to run a 1/2 marathon after swimming a mile.  Maybe I should add running as a warm up.”  The time to stack the running habit to his swimming habit had arrived. The next day, he tried running before swimming and it knocked him flat. Reflect and adjust your habits to keep them challenging, yet not too impossible to take the win.