Finding Your "Why": The Push & Pull of Real Change

Ever feel like you’re stuck in a tug-of-war with your own goals? One day you’re motivated to meal prep, and the next, your old habits are dragging you back to the couch.

Real change isn't just about willpower; it’s about understanding the forces that influence every decision we make. At Body By Hannah, we use the Push-Pull-Habit-Anxiety framework to help you navigate these shifts.

A Practical Scenario: The "Early Bird" Workout

Let's look at Sarah, a client who wants to switch from evening workouts to a 6:00 AM routine. Here is how she breaks down her transition:

• The Push: Sarah is tired of being too exhausted after work to give her training 100%. The "unworkable" part of her old routine is the constant "I'll do it tomorrow" cycle.

• The Pull: She is drawn to the idea of having her evenings free for family and the "win" of finishing her workout before the sun is up.

• The Habit: To make this work, Sarah has to change her late night scrolling habit to support an earlier wake-up call.

• The Anxiety: She worries she’ll be too tired to function at work or that she'll fail and feel discouraged. She has questions about whether her body can even handle heavy lifting that early.

Break Through Your Barriers

By identifying these four areas, Sarah can plan for the "Anxiety" and "Habits" instead of letting them surprise her. Whether you are looking to revamp your nutrition or finally stay consistent in the gym, you need to know what is actually driving you—and what is holding you back. We want to help.

Download our Push-Pull-Habit-Anxiety Worksheet below to map out your own path to success.

Download the Worksheet Here

Elevate Your Fitness Routine with Balance Training

Are you incorporating balance training into your workout routine? If not, now's the time to start! Balance training isn't just for athletes or yogis—it's essential for everyone, regardless of your fitness level. By focusing on stability, you enhance your body's ability to perform daily activities, reduce the risk of injury, and boost overall functional strength.

Why is Balance Training Important?

Balance training strengthens your core and stabilizing muscles, improving posture, coordination, and movement efficiency. It helps prevent falls and injuries, making it particularly beneficial for aging adults and those recovering from injury. Incorporating balance exercises into your fitness routine can also sharpen your mind-body connection, helping you stay focused and in tune with your movements.

Where Should You Include Balance Training in Your Workout?

Balance exercises can be done during the warm-up, mixed into your strength routine, or as a finisher. Adding it to your warm-up activates your stabilizing muscles and prepares your body for more dynamic movements. You can also use balance-focused movements like single-leg exercises during strength training to maximize core engagement.

Ready to take your stability to the next level?

Check out our top three balance-focused workouts on the BBH Fitness App:

1. Balance & Flexibility Yoga with Callie

2. Strong & Balanced

3. Bodyweight Balance

Incorporate these into your routine and feel the difference!

Stay strong, stay balanced,

Can Older People Really BUILD Muscle?

As I watch my parents age into their 80’s, it’s a topic that continues to become more personal to me and more important to talk about. According to findings from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, muscles tend to grow from birth until they peak at around 30-35 years old. From there, our muscle mass tends to slowly decline. Once we hit 65 (for women) or 70 (for men), the decline becomes even more rapid. This loss of muscle can greatly impact our metabolic health and quality of life.

While, it’s an inevitable fact of life that as we age, we experience a gradual loss of muscle mass, elderly people are perfectly capable of maintaining and actually building more muscle through a targeted approach to diet and exercise. The result is improved vitality, reduced bone loss, prevention of osteoarthritis and decreased risks of falling and fractures. So how can we start the mission of building muscle either before the inevitable decline or even after the decline to build our bodies back up?

Embrace strength training.

Resistance training, hands down, is the best approach for building muscle,. When you do exercises under resistance, your muscles are subject to stress and damage. When paired with the right diet and recovery processes, your immune system can begin to repair your muscles so that they grow back even bigger and stronger than they were before.

So strength training is one of the most effective habits to incorporate into your daily routine if you want to build lean body mass as an older adult. Research recommends strength training 3 or 4 times weekly.

A caveat here: if you’re new to strength training (or have not done it in a long time), it’s a good idea to work with a fitness professional like a personal trainer. Schedule a free 15-minute phone consult with a BBH trainer who can help guide you through your workout routines, perfecting your form and developing an effective workout schedule to help you build muscle while protecting you from potential injury

Prioritize protein.

Your diet is the other big piece of the puzzle for muscle growth. While doing resistance training starts the process, you can’t grow muscle without eating enough of the right nutrients necessary to repair and rebuild.

Protein is often referred to as the nutritional “building block” of your muscle tissue since it actually makes up its structure, so you’re going to need plenty of it to help your muscles recover from your strength training workouts.

So how much protein should you be eating overall? The official recommendation is that you should be eating at least 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of your body weight to hold off muscle loss, while some studies have also indicated greater intakes of 1.0-1.6 g/kg of body weight may help promote muscle strength and size. However, the exact amount you should eat is highly individualized and we recommend that it might be helpful to schedule a nutrition consultation with one of our certified nutrition coaches if you want to dial in the right amount for you . Everyone’s nutritional needs will vary based on their current health status and activity level.

If you need more resources for high protein meal plans, you can find multiple meal plans in the Nutrition Corner of our on-demand membership studio, BBH Fit.

The bottom line is that it is never too late to start preventing muscle loss or build muscle in our latter years! If you want to maintain vitality in your life as you age, muscle is the currency with some of the highest value for helping you achieve a vibrantly healthy life.