Healthy Habits Suck

How to Get off the Couch and Live a Healthy Life…Even If You Don't Want To

By: Dayna Lee-Baggley PhD, Russ Harris - foreword

Narrated by: Tia Rider

Salad instead of steak? Working out? Skipping that second beer or glass of wine? Healthy habits are the worst.

If you’re someone who gets up every morning and can’t wait for your run, considers eating sweet potatoes a splurge, and sets aside 30 minutes before work to meditate - this book isn’t for you. If you’re someone who thinks about getting up to go for a run but goes back to sleep, regrets last night’s dinner of fast food, and can barely get to work on time - let alone meditate - then this book will help you find the motivation you’ve been looking for to live your healthiest life, even when you don’t want to.

With this funny, in-your-face guide, you won’t find advice on how to “enjoy” exercise, or tips for making broccoli and kale taste as good as donuts and ice cream. What you will find are solid skills to help you actually do the healthy things you know you should be doing. Using these skills - based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and neuroscience - you’ll learn to find the motivation you’re really craving to adopt healthy habits, even if they do suck. You’ll also discover how to accept self-criticism, develop self-compassion, and live a more meaningful life.

This book not only acknowledges that many healthy habits suck, it uses science to explain why we want the things we want (junk food), crave the things we crave (sugar), and dislike the things we dislike (exercise). At the end, you’ll feel validated in feeling like these things are the absolute worst. But you’ll also find the motivation to do them anyway.

©2019 Dayna Lee-Baggley, PhD (P)2019 New Harbinger Publications

permission to be human

simple, straightforward guidance on how to choose habits, discard habits and kindly advance your life.

Best book I’ve read

I’m a healthy psychologist who can’t seem to get back into regular healthy habits after the pandemic. I read these books and I teach these skills for a living, but I still struggled myself. And that’s because “knowin’ ain’t doin’” - doing is doing, so I’m really happy to share that this book is about actually how to do the hard work. I’ve read so many of these, but this was the first one I listened to / read that actually broke through my inertia. I’m so impressed with it - I wish I’d been able to write this book. It’s such a gem.

By the way, yes she shares that she follows a plant based diet and why she does it. But she isn’t telling the reader that they need to. She’s sharing an example of a health behavior and how it relates to her values. It’s just a specific example on how to connect behaviors to the things that are important to us.

Yes, she uses the METAPHOR of passengers on the bus to illustrate how automatic thoughts can get in the way of our own best intentions. It’s a pretty nice way to simplify the role of our cognitions.

To return a book and give a 1 star review based on these things, and then say you didn’t even read the book? What a load of garbage. That person’s “passengers” found a pretty effective way to give them a reason to give up. Don’t let your passengers do that.

So - as a professional, I recommend this to my patients - but as a 50 year old working mom? I’ve found it completely essential for my own healthy habits. Good luck to you.

Powerful, engaging, and playful

Excellent book! I'm a therapist who regularly uses ACT with clients. This book is the simplest explanation for making health changes and is powerful, engaging, and playful.

Feeeeelings and cow farts.

Nope.
I returned this book for a refund after the third reference to her plant based diet which combats global warming because cows emit more gas than cars.
The second, long,, drawn out chapter on feeeeeelings and letting them drive the bus - seriously, the bus analogy got very, very old - it was too much.