Starting Fresh
Welcome to your 40FRESH journey! Over the course of the next 40 days, you’ll be taking small, bite-sized steps that lead to a huge difference in your health. Eating healthy can be challenging and we want to help develop lasting habits.
How does that work, you ask? It starts with a solid system that supports and reinforces the health habits you’re trying to build. As the master of habits, James Clear, says, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your system.”
For the first few days, we’ll be focused on putting together a system that will support you as you learn to adapt your life to the 40FRESH diet. If you’ve already read Atomic Habits, then the structure of our system will feel familiar. If not, I can’t recommend it enough!
Today’s Checklist
Each day of the 40FRESH Challenge comes with four todos. Here’s your homework for today:
Read this post
Print a one page calendar
Pickup a food journal
Decide on your mantra
Never miss twice...
The first thing that we’re going to do is print off a calendar. Yes, on actual paper like you see in the image above. We made one that you can download here.
Once you have it printed out, put it somewhere where you’re going to be forced to look at it every day. For every day that you successfully complete all the tasks, put an X over that date. We’re going to start small and easy, so pretty soon you should have a nice string of Xs across your calendar. And hot damn, it’s going to feel good.
Your primary goal over the next 40 days is to keep that chain of Xs going. That said, life is unpredictable and there may come a day where you miss. It happens to the best of us. Don’t beat yourself up. Just dust yourself off and remember: never miss twice.
Get a Food Journal
In addition to your progress calendar, you’re also going to want to pick up a journal. or a notebook like this. This is where we’re going to write down our daily checklist and our health mantra. It’s also where you’ll keep track of what you’re eating and where it falls in the NOVA Food Classification System. Don’t worry about the classification system for now. There will be plenty of time to dig into the details of an unprocessed food diet over the next few days.
Forming a New Identity
To have the best chance at forming habits that are going to stick around for a long time, it is helpful to mold a new identity for yourself. To help form that new identity, we’re going to pick out a mantra that we can repeat to ourselves as a reminder of the healthy person we’d like to become. At first, it may be a bit of fake it ’til you make it, but just trust me–this is critical.
Here’s the mantra I chose for myself:
I care about my health and I make healthy choices.
You can use this one or make up something similar for yourself. Whatever you choose, write it down on the calendar you printed out.
All set?
Congratulations! You made it through day one. Go ahead and check that X off on your calendar. Feels good, right? When you’re ready for day two, head on over to the next post where we’ll start to explore the NOVA Food Classification System. This is the system that inspired the 40FRESH Rules.