Tiny Changes for Midlife Health
Today I am speaking with Michelle Bazinet about midlife women and their mindset. With a quarter-century of wisdom, Michelle shines a light on setting achievable goals, cultivating gratitude, and embracing mindfulness in everyday life. The diet space is very confusing, and her goal is to help lift the pressure and stress by making tiny changes for midlife health. She loves to teach the concept of ‘laughable habits’—a term coined to describe the small, seemingly inconsequential actions that can, in reality, catalyze significant life changes. This concept encourages women to reduce the overwhelm that often accompanies ambitious transformations, advocating for a patient and gradual approach to personal growth.
We are all looking for the quick answer to solve our problems, but quick hasn’t worked. If you tend to think we need to go all in or do absolutely nothing, but what if instead we create small actions. Build upon the little things to help make lasting results.
Creating Expectations for yourself and where to start:
You should realize it won’t all happen on day one. You are going to want to grow into the person who does the things you need to do to reach the goals. Also understand that no one can tell you what you need to do if you want to stick to it. It must come from you. Here is a simple exercise involving post-it notes that you can do, which will help you identify actionable steps toward one’s goals.
Post it Note Exercise
- Write down some of the things you think you can do to reach your goal
- Look at the post its and identify what are you actually willing to do right now
- Get down to a few post it notes that you know you can do
- Then make the time for those few things and honor your word to do it
- Understand you don’t need to be perfect
This tangible method reinforces the importance of honesty in personal commitment and the power of leveraging individual strengths. When you begin to grow your discipline, you will start to feel like you are able to add something else in. Change can be overwhelming but if you start with tiny changes for midlife health it will begin to feel natural and you will be able to stack something else on.
This is a constantly ongoing change that should be occurring within you; which is known as the principle of Kaizen—constant and never-ending improvement. If you can only do one thing, get good at that one thing until it becomes easy and you will start to change other things as well. Emphasizing focus on one thing at a time and consistency over immediate results. Spend some time journaling who you want to be next year. Write about what this new you does, what habits are you practicing, what do you feel like, and what you look like. The impact of parents modeling the behaviors they wish to see in their children, asserting that actions speak louder than words.
Weight loss is more than just movement and nutrition:
Your mindset and your thoughts have a lot to do with weight loss. This is such an important peace of changing. Growing into this new person, there are many layers and pieces to weight loss. If the scale doesn’t move, will you be miserable for the rest of your life. Can you love your body and nourish your body no matter the size. If we work on the mindset of weight loss, we will naturally lose the weight. It’s important to look at non-scale victories as you go to help you feel more accomplished. Focus on what you can control. You can control your thoughts and how you feel, you can’t control the scale. Your thoughts determine your feelings, your feelings determine your actions, your actions determine your results.
Changing your mindset must start small. You need to bring your thoughts back to neutral. Everything is neutral, we just decide what something is based on our feelings about that thing. Reframe your day and determine what is something you did well today. And for many it starts with someone’s actions each day so that they are able to build confidence in themselves. Celebrating the win in your day is important.
Learn more from Michelle:
Michelle is a Nutrition, Fitness, and Mindset coach helping women find Magic in their Midlife years. She asks the question, “If you could wave a magic wand what would you want your body and your life to look and feel like in your 40’s and 50’s? Then, she helps them make those things happen. She has been in the Health and Wellness space for over 25 years. She is a proud wife and a mom of three ensuring that she is modelling magic in her own life for her children.
