3 Mistakes You’re Making When It Comes to Your Health Plan

22 Oct 2024

As a society we have grown to appreciate and lean more into preventative medicine as opposed to symptom management. We have become curious about our health and how to optimize the way we feel to live a longer, healthier life. With all of the misinformation that surrounds us on social media and the internet, it can be overwhelming for patients to filter through the noise and know how to curate a health plan that is best for them. This is why working with a healthcare professional that can formulate a comprehensive and individualized plan based on your history and health is imperative to making long term change.

Why Goal Setting is the Most Important, but the Hardest Step In Your Health Plan

In my naturopathic medicine practice, goal setting is something I speak about with every single patient. It’s integral to discuss habit formation and goal setting and is often where we can find the top 3 mistakes patients make with their health plan. A foundational understanding of how these changes are going to fit into a patient’s life is just as important as the recommendation itself. A goal has to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. This goal is the first step to habit formation. We all love rules as humans, and it’s easy for us to run off of motivation and adrenaline to shoot for the stars, but this can be the most detrimental part of someone’s health journey before it even begins.

Goal Setting vs. Habit Formation – are they different?

When forming a new habit, we have to identify the ‘minimum viable product’ that we are happy with. For example, if we are aiming to strength train for 2.5 hours/week to focus on maintaining muscle mass and balance our blood sugar, we have to decide the least amount of time that we would be happy with in the first week or two to meet this goal. This allows for patients to weave the habit into their lifestyle while making positive contributions to their health as they build up to their maximum goal. It allows exercise to become a part of their routine just as passively as is brushing their teeth. In women’s health, we often are met by resistance and obstacles to patient goals due to other obligations such as work, family commitments, lack of time and energy, and overwhelm.

Here are the top 3 mistakes I see patient’s make in their health plan:

Focusing on perfection instead of consistency

This is why I’m not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. We are motivated, encouraged and supported to make a goal that usually isn’t sustainable in the long term. We typically drop off within 2-3 weeks and end up feeling discouraged, resulting in the goal completely falling through the cracks and getting into the loop of poor health habits. With my patients I like to discuss the 80%/20% rule to live by. This allows some flexibility for life to happen and unexpected events that would usually ‘derail’ us, and not allow the feeling of guilt to come up when we have no choice but to deviate away from our goals. This commonly comes up when we discuss movement goals.



For example, let’s say we have a patient who is postmenopausal and we are recommending strength training to preserve muscle mass and bone density. If they have a goal of strength training 3 times per week, we can decide that our minimum viable product is 2 times per week. That way, if they become sick or have a late night at work, their goal is preserved, a positive impact on their health is made and they will remain consistent. If we kept the expectation of 3 times a week, this patient may have felt a fear of failure and become discouraged to keep going.



The same also applies to nutrition, where we want to remove the terms ‘cheat day’ and ‘treat’ and instead form a positive relationship with food and allow 20% of the time to have the things we love in addition to our other healthy foods. Lastly, this applies to any supplementation as well. Evidence based supplements are meant to supplement, not replace a healthy diet and lifestyle. When choosing supplements, herbs, or nutraceuticals, the clinical outcomes we expect shouldn’t be dependent on 100% commitment, so allowing some deviation from the routine within reason should be understood and explained. Perfection is not the goal, consistency is key!

Your goals are not sustainable in the long term

Following mistake number 1, creating a goal or habit in the first place that has room for too many obstacles, barriers and challenges is already setting up the patient to fail. We aren’t looking for quick fixes, we are striving for long term, sustainable solutions that naturally just become part of routine and no longer feel like a bullet point on your daily to do list. We see this a lot with foundational health goals around nutrition, movement, stress management, and sleep hygiene. A really common area where we see this in women’s health is weight loss. It can be tempting to follow a restrictive eating plan with short pain and short term gains, but due to the restrictive nature patient’s usually end up reverting back to old habits and any ‘benefits’ are reversed. This is besides the fact that these dietary recommendations are typically not evidence based, cause more harm and disordered eating habits and further health challenges.



Our current conventional medical system has created the assumption that we can just do something quickly to remove our symptoms and not do the hard work that doesn’t give us initial positive reinforcement a lot of the time. We are re-writing this narrative by doing a lot more education on why patients are doing certain things in their health plan, so they can continue to be compliant without initial feedback a lot of the time. For example, we know that correcting vitamin D deficiency can positively impact mood. However, this benefit may not be noticeable until after the first 8 weeks depending on level of deficiency and dose of supplementation. Informed consent around this recommendation is key to help the patient continue to feel motivated.

You’re not filtering out the noise – using non-evidence based and non-individualized recommendations

We live in a huge virtual world filled with do’s and don’t’s from unqualified professionals, making it really difficult to know what the next right step is. This is why it’s so important to work with someone on your healthcare team who is a qualified professional to help to properly assess, treat, and monitor you. Every treatment plan should be individualized and shouldn’t be a 30 second reel on Instagram. A lot of time in my office is actually spent debunking a lot of health and wellness myths and misinformation that is actually harming the patient. Money, time, and energy is being wasted filtering through the noise in desperation just to feel better.



I allow so much space for this in my practice because it’s really tough to feel confused about your fatigue, constipation, menopausal symptoms, fertility struggles and the list goes on. A state of desperation and being misinformed doesn’t set you up for success – every patient is unique and your health plan should be too.

Conclusion

If you feel like you’ve made any of these mistakes, you’re not alone. Reach out to your naturopathic doctor or someone on your healthcare team that you trust to help you navigate through the obstacles and barriers and you will be one step closer to feeling your best. I am taking on new patients at Natural Choice Medical Clinic in Guelph. You can book a complementry meet and greet to learn more.

Written by Dr. Annaleeza Caputi, Naturopathic Doctor



“This article was originally published by EcoParent magazine.”

www.ecoparent.ca