Happy February, Noosers! First of all, thank you so much for your support with our subscription changes, we love doing what we do. Noos has become our weekly ritual of reflecting, writing and being creative and we love this outlet on Substack! February is heart health month, so a good opportunity to tune into what’s going on inside your body and experiment with some healthy habits that serve you. If you’ve been working on some new habits in 2025 and wondering if they are “working” or worth sticking with, that’s a common sentiment! When meeting with patients, we have realized that a major contributor to success or failure when implementing positive change is their environment.

For instance, if you’re trying to shift your eating pattern, but constantly have work dinners — that’s tricky! Or if you’re trying to implement a workout routine, but you have a baby or toddler who won’t sleep, that will impact your ability to commit to exercise. The first step to making your environment work with you and not against you is to become aware of it. Today’s post is aimed to help you to do just that! We hope you enjoy ✨

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Nutrition

Something caught my attention last week. As my son studied for an exam at the kitchen table, I noticed how his gaze followed my daughter darting in and out of the kitchen, and watched his hands fidget with the salt and pepper. I noted his frequent trips to open the fridge and then finally to the cupboard for a glass of water. With the timer beeping, the faucet running, and the noise of my daughter chatting and rustling papers in her backpack, it was clear the kitchen was NOT a conducive environment for studying. Robert is a kid who loves to always be in on the action. After the groaning of “can’t I just study down here,” I quickly asked him: “what’s a better environment to help you study — the quiet of your room where you can focus on the material, OR the loud, distracting kitchen?” No argument there. I did offer him the option to help me with dinner, he double timed it up to his room to study.

Our environment shapes many parts of our lives. You might be unaware of how much it impacts your choices and actions. You know how they say, “you are what you eat?” Well, it's more like, you are where you live, work, and play!

From the fast food restaurants clustered near your office that make lunch choices tricky, to that cookie jar sitting on your counter that’s practically whispering your name every time you walk by — our environment is pulling the strings. On the other hand, when you've got a quiet, clutter-free space to study in, it suddenly seems a bit more manageable (hint hint, Robert). It's fascinating how our surroundings — whether at home, work, or school — quietly guide our choices without us even noticing. The foods we pick, the habits we form, and even our ability to focus — they're all taking cues from the world we've built around ourselves.

Have you ever wondered why you reach for certain foods throughout the day? Sure, hunger plays a role, but there's something bigger at work: your environment. Think of your environment as your personal food GPS. It's constantly directing your eating choices, whether you realize it or not! When that bag of chips is sitting on your counter, it's like having a billboard in your home advertising "eat me!" Try flipping the script. Put a bowl of colorful fruit there instead, and suddenly your snack GPS recalculates to a healthier route.

Here's what's fascinating: making healthy choices isn't just about willpower. It's about setting up your space to work for you, not against you. Since we all can’t live at Canyon Ranch (the thought!), we can strategically position things to help us make better choices more easily. Investing a little time (prep!) and organization goes a long way.

Quick tips to enhance your environment:

* Kitchen Layout: Having fruits/vegetables at eye level in your fridge vs. hidden in drawers increases consumption. A study found that visible food placement in homes significantly impacts consumption and that homes with fruits/vegetables on counters vs. snack foods showed lower BMI in residents. When we can visibly see healthy snacks, it has the power to guide us to make a better choice. I’ve been putting nuts and dried fruit out on the counter as an experiment the past week (as opposed to inside the cabinet where they usually sit), and both bags are almost gone. My kids are more apt to grab what’s sitting out, than open the drawers and grab something.

* Plate size: Using smaller plates naturally reduces portion sizes

* Keep trigger foods out of the house or in hard-to-reach places

* Pack lunch to avoid fast food temptations

* Create a designated eating space (avoid eating at desk/couch where it can be hard to focus on your meal)

* Use clear containers for prepared foods like veggies and fruit. You will be more likely to pick a nutritious snack when it’s in your line of vision.

The cool part? Once you start noticing how your environment pushes and pulls your food choices, you can become the architect of your own healthy habits. Small tweaks to your surroundings can lead to big changes in your health. It's not about having iron willpower — it's about making your environment do the heavy lifting for you!

Movement

Anne wrote about how your surroundings affect your food choices. When it comes to movement, your environment matters, too. Every weekday morning for the last few months, my alarm goes off at 5am. My workout doesn’t get me out of bed (though I know I will feel better after it), but what does get me out of bed, is the coffee machine, that’s been preset to brew at 5am. I hear it beep to signal the coffee is ready from my bed, so I get up — I will wake for coffee without a problem!

My workout clothes are in the bathroom by the sink, because when I lay them out the night before, I don’t fret about where my sports bra is or my favorite socks and fumble around in the dark. I get changed, and head to the kitchen to froth my protein coffee — yum! The house is quiet and I have a moment to collect my thoughts while I fill my water bottle. I head down to the basement to lift and walk or run around 5:20.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t jump out of bed every morning. Sometimes I hum and haw, but mostly I can get moving when my environment supports me.

I head down to the basement, and turn on my cheap red light I got on amazon and start warming up. I don’t know if this red light is actually doing anything, but it makes the start of my workout feel gentle and inviting. As I warm up, I close my eyes and imagine I am somewhere warm. The environment allows me to ease into things and creates a welcoming start to my workout.

I love making playlists to accompany my workouts, so there is usually a song or two I’m excited to hear. If you have children that are old enough to request songs, you will understand that this is a reaaaal delight to listen to the songs I want, at the volume I want, without any push back.

5am feels early, but it gives me enough time to myself. I require some solitude every day to keep my wits about me — I have four boys who need my help, ask me impossible questions as if I were google, and are generally awake around 6am. By getting my “me” time in first thing, I have a better chance at being a patient, caring mother who can handle breakfast requests, tying 8 shoes (we need to work on that), and the inevitable scuffles the boys get into on our way to school.

By setting up my environment ahead of time (set the alarm clock the night before, make the coffee, layout the clothes), my routine flows more easily — there’s less resistance to slow me down. As Anne wrote in Nutrition, it’s about making your environment work for you, not against you.

How can you make your environment supportive of your goals? Everyone is different and has different needs. Feel free to take my routine and make it your own, or come up with something totally different that works for you. Creating an environment that welcomes movement and brings you back for more feeds consistency. Prioritize your health by making movement part of your morning ritual. You wont regret it.

Behavior

If you started a new habit this year, you may be thinking, “wow, January lasted forever, I should be seeing results by now!” Many of our patients can get discouraged when results don’t appear quickly enough, or they catch a glimmer of a result, but then back track. It’s easy to get bummed out if the scale isn’t dropping, or it’s harder than you thought to hit nutritional goals (more fiber? protein? plants?), or you can’t keep your new exercise routine going. It’s hard to make new habits stick, especially when progress is hard to see. This visual is a great reminder that success isn’t linear.

Here is your reminder that change takes time and consistency (usually more than 21 days).

Remember when you learned how to ride a bike. You didn't just hop on and cruise away, right? There were wobbles, falls, and probably a few scrapes along the way. The same goes for building healthy habits. Research from University College London found that it actually takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a new behavior to become automatic — with an average of 66 days. That's a far cry from the "21 days to form a habit" myth we've all heard!

Let's get real. Maybe you aimed to cook more at home, but ordered takeout three times this week. Or perhaps your goal of morning walks got derailed by cold temps or a busy work schedule. Instead of seeing these as failures, think of them as data points.

Each "setback" is actually teaching you something valuable about your habits, your triggers, and what you might need to adjust. Remember, even professional athletes have off days, and they've been training for years!

We rarely see the middle challenging parts on the way to success. We see the new book in its glossy book jacket, or the winning touchdown, or the mom next to you in workout class looking like she’s got it all together. We don’t see the process — the ups and downs, the daily commitment, the setbacks or the small wins.

We shared this quote by James Clear this week. It’s a nice reminder that we can’t just fixate on the results. We have to embrace the process in all of its phases:

"It doesn't make sense to continue to want something if you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process, is to guarantee disappointment."

The trick isn't to aim for perfection — it's to build resilience. Every small win counts, every setback teaches, and most importantly, you're still showing up for yourself, even if it doesn't look exactly like you planned. Make your environment work with you, not against you, trust the process, and the results will come with time.

Until next time…

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