The Self-Care Solution: A Year of Becoming Happier, Healthier, and Fitter—One Month at a Time

Dedication

To self-improvers everywhere. And to my two greatest sources of inspiration and motivation, Alex and Chloe.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Introduction

1: January

2: February

3: March

4: April

5: May

6: June

7: July

8: August

9: September

10: October

11: November

12: December

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Also by Jennifer Ashton, M.D., M.S.

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

I didn’t set out to do a year of self-care. In fact, if you’d asked me at the start of last year if I needed to spend a year to focus on taking care of myself and my life, I probably would have told you that I didn’t have time for that. Actually, I definitely would have told you that. While I’ve always been a self-proclaimed, relentless self-improver, the prior year had been the hardest I’d ever experienced. So when it came to self-improvement, or more important, self-care, in many respects it was the last thing on my mind.

The truth was, though, the fact that I’d kind of deprioritized self-care was perhaps the very reason why I needed it so badly. Before I embarked on this year, my emotional life had been in disarray, and taking time out to better myself seemed like the last thing I could handle. My previous year had been spent dealing with the painful aftermath of my ex-husband’s suicide, and during those difficult and emotional months, the thought of taking time to focus on myself felt selfish. My kids needed me; my family needed me. To be spending time on me just felt wrong and unrealistic. I wasn’t focused on the fact that hard times are often what make self-care so essential.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason why I stumbled headfirst into this whole plan. It didn’t start out as a plan or even a goal—it started out as one month.

As the holiday season wrapped up, I decided on a whim to give up all alcohol for January—not because I believed I was drinking too much but because I liked the idea of challenging myself to see how tweaking a regular habit could improve my life. What happened to me after one month without booze was shocking. First, I learned more about myself in thirty days than I had in years. Second, giving up alcohol for a short time dramatically changed my body, mind, mood, and attitude toward booze. Moreover, I didn’t want the self-discovery and feel-good benefits I’d enjoyed by doing this experiment to end.

That month of success reinvigorated something in me. It’s part of my DNA as a physician and a medical correspondent for one of the most watched television shows in America. But it’s also part of who I am, Dr. Jennifer Ashton—a type A, driven, and goal-oriented human being. There’s little I enjoy more than setting targets for myself and hitting them. And as a medical professional, I like using science and data to make sure I have my best chance at a bull’s-eye.

And like so many people, I start every year with the hope of a New Year’s resolution—often more than one. Of course, also like so many people, making resolutions stick permanently, knowing what’s really beneficial to you, is easier said than done. But doing something for just one month? That feels achievable. That feels like the ideal length of time for experimenting. That feels like a great opportunity to understand how different kinds of self-care can have positive impacts on your life.

What emerged from that dry month was a plan, or at least the makings of one. I decided to do an experiment: each month I would tackle a different self-improvement wellness challenge, with push-ups and planks for thirty days, then meditation for thirty days, then regular aerobic exercise for thirty days, and so on, until I’d completed an entire year of minor monthly health changes. In doing so, I would understand exactly how each health improvement impacted me and become more conscious about my choices going forward.

Looking back now, I never could have guessed the profound effect that this personal experiment would have on me. From my emotional state to my diet to my sleep, I ended the year stronger than I have been in a long time. And what I learned about myself along the way was truly surprising.

While I’m a doctor and a nutritionist, it’s not easy for me—or anyone, regardless of how much you take care of your body and mind—to assess what our daily habits are doing to us unless we take the time to actually examine them closely. And that’s something almost nobody does. If you asked any casual observer before all this started, I likely appeared to be the epitome of near-perfect health: I was slim and fit, as I still am, and I don’t smoke, use drugs, or have an alcohol problem. At that time last year, I also exercised almost daily, ate mostly whole foods, didn’t suffer any mental ailments, and slept at least seven hours each night (or so I thought), while maintaining a successful career, active social life, and close family relationships.

If you’re wondering why these minor changes each month produced such definitive change, the answer is simple. The impact of what we do every day for basic health—what and how much we eat and don’t eat, what and how much we drink and don’t drink, how much rest we get or don’t get, how we move or don’t move our bodies—has the potential to impact our overall health in very positive or very detrimental ways. That’s because food, drink, sleep, and movement are all essential for our survival. And while these habits may have only a minor impact on our daily lives when taken in isolation, what we do and how we live each day adds up quickly, or even exponentially, when you push repeat week after week, month after month, and year after year. What this means is that if one aspect of your habits for essential health is lacking or even less than perfect, it can compound over time and end up interfering profoundly with your health and happiness, often without you knowing it.

For example, how much water you drink in one day isn’t likely to send you to the hospital (although dehydration did put me in the hospital on three occasions earlier in my life, I didn’t know water was to blame at the time). However, failing to consume enough water every day for weeks and months can be associated with chronic dehydration and, consequently, a whole host of physical and mental problems, including weight gain, fatigue, and bad breath.

To that end, all the health habits I focused on last year weren’t inconsequential: Every monthly challenge I included in this book has been objectively linked by reams of research to being critical to overall health and happiness. They’re not just arbitrary practices that affect only me; they are well-studied behaviors (or lack thereof) that can have a known and profound effect on universal wellness, no matter who you are. They are habits everyone can and should do, regardless of your age, gender, body type, fitness level, financial means, career, or lifestyle.

After a year of challenging and changing these imperative habits, I can now tell you that I’m happier and healthier than I’ve ever been—and not because I made a big dramatic change, went on some crazy diet, or spent three torturous months starving or working my butt off at some pricey health retreat. In short, I learned the solutions to my own self-care. And now, I want to share those solutions with you.

I used to think of self-care as mostly cosmetic—things I had to do to look better and keep up appearances, like haircuts, facials, blowouts, manicures, and spa treatments. Sure, I considered going to the gym and, more recently, meditating as part of my self-care, but I saw these habits as something to do to maintain my health, not necessarily to improve it. And also, to be honest, I looked at these things as part of my job: After all, I am the face and the voice of health and wellness for the country’s number one news network. I felt I needed to look the part!

After a year of monthly health challenges, though, I now know self-care goes far beyond surface appearances and fundamental physical and mental health. Analyzing what I did with my body, mind, and free time on a daily basis forced me to realize that taking care of myself also includes how I act, think, make decisions, treat others, feel about the world, and, perhaps most important, feel about myself. Self-care now means deliberately taking the time to take care of my inner self as much as I do my outer self, giving my behaviors and emotions the same, if not more, attention than I do my hair, face, and skin.

If you’re thinking, Hey, I don’t have the time to give my behaviors or emotions any attention, let alone take on any physical or mental changes, I was in that boat last year, too. If someone had asked me to change twelve things about my daily routine, I would have balked at the idea. But now, I know that self-care isn’t a matter of having time; it’s a matter of readjusting what you do with that time. Self-care is also something that everyone—from the busiest CEO to the hardest working TV personality with two jobs to the person who works from home—can make time for. And as I’ve learned, spending just a few minutes every day to take care of yourself actually creates more time, because you’re less stressed and more focused, energetic, and self-confident as a result. And as a mom, spending time on self-care has paid off big time in terms of what my children have learned about taking care of themselves by watching me. In fact, self-care may just be the most critical component in effective time management. If you’re not doing it on a daily basis, you’re likely wasting your time—and letting your health and happiness suffer as a result.

Of course, I didn’t come to any of these realizations overnight because I didn’t change all twelve behaviors at the same time. That’s the beauty of this book; each month contains a different challenge, a new beginning, and a fresh chance for you to gain control over your health and happiness.

If you’re a go-getter, you might be tempted to try to nail all twelve challenges at once. But as a doctor and a relentless self-improver, I’m here to tell you that that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. As a physician, I know big dietary changes, major behavioral disruptions, and lifestyle overhauls just don’t work for 99 percent of the population. I see it over and over again in my medical practice: When a patient tries to change one major thing about her diet, fitness, sleep patterns, or general routine—or she tries to change too many of these things at once—it’s almost always a recipe for crash and burn. And while some patients may see temporary results from big, drastic changes, those results usually disappear in months, if not weeks or even days.

That’s the biggest benefit to changing one aspect of your health, one month at a time. Improving your body and mind in bite-size pieces, over bite-size time periods, nearly guarantees lasting success. If you’ve ever tried a crazy fad diet, you already know this. Trying to cut gluten, dairy, meat, coffee, and alcohol all at once, for example, usually means you’ll end up bingeing one night on an extra-large meat lover’s pizza with a few glasses of white wine and a pint of coffee ice cream for dessert. But if you were to eliminate, let’s say, only dairy, and you did it slowly over a sustained period of time while you focused on finding satisfying cheese, milk, and ice cream alternatives, you’d likely be successful. Similarly, you’re more likely to sustain small changes to your regular routine than giant overhauls. And as I learned, one month’s time is the perfect amount to adopt any change, then adapt to that change so that you can sustain it for months and continue to reap its benefits.

There’s another, more scientific reason I focused on altering only one aspect of my behavior at a time. As a medical professional, I know that any good experiment can have only one independent variable—or X factor—you want to study, if you truly want to ascertain how that factor affects your body, mind, or mood. On the other hand, if you include too many variables or change too many things at once in your experiment, you won’t know which variable is responsible for which effect (or lack thereof).

Go back to that example of the fad diet: If you try cutting gluten, dairy, meat, alcohol, and coffee all at once, and then your skin clears, you lose five pounds, and you suddenly have more energy, you wouldn’t know which food was responsible for which result. Perhaps you’re sensitive to lactose but do just fine eating gluten. Or maybe alcohol is really the culprit in your inability to lose weight, while eating too much meat is causing your skin to break out. Making small changes one at a time allows you to understand how each change impacts your health and can accurately show you the best way to sustain that change so you can truly be healthier and happier.

Let’s be clear about one thing: The goal of this book and this year’s journey is not necessarily to help you clear up your skin, lose five pounds, or gain more energy. While you’ll likely experience all three of these results if you follow the challenges within, my goal is to teach you incredible things about your daily wellness behaviors and what you, the reader, can do to take better care of yourself.

You also don’t have to complete every challenge in the exact order or way that I did. We are all unique human beings with different DNA, lives, and lifestyles, along with different practices, preferences, and physical, mental, and emotional needs. What worked for me may not work for you. Instead, what I hope to give you are the tools to let you individualize each challenge and learn the solutions to your own self-care so you can be your healthiest and happiest, too.

While I encourage you to keep an open mind and to explore each and every challenge, even those you think you may not need (Spoiler Alert: the challenges I mistakenly assumed I would ace, like September’s Less Sugar Challenge, were some of my most amazing and eye-opening times), you don’t have to complete every monthly challenge here. Feel free to pick and choose those that appeal to you while experimenting with other forms of self-care. For example, vegetarian or vegan readers may want to tweak May’s Less Meat, More Plants Challenge to make it more about trying to eat a wider diversity of plants or less processed vegetarian and vegan foods.

When you complete a monthly challenge and start the next one, you will also be able to pick and choose those habits that you want to continue to sustain on a regular basis. After a few challenges, you’ll understand how to unlock behaviors you learned in the past to access those benefits when and where you want. In other words, this book will teach you how to gain more control over your daily health and happiness.

It’s important to note here that there are no mandates or expectations in this book that require you to do X or accomplish Y results in order to be successful at self-care. Just like in scientific research, you don’t ever predict your results before you start an experiment. To that end, I wasn’t triumphant at every monthly challenge in this book, to say the least. But during each and every challenge, I learned something invaluable about myself and, most important, what it really means to take care of me.

If I can give you one piece of advice before you start your year’s journey, it’s to be curious about yourself. During the last twelve months, I continually reminded myself I was doing an experiment on and for me. I remained eager to try new things and I wasn’t afraid to look at my behaviors to see what did and didn’t make me happy. I tried not to make assumptions or dismiss certain feelings or any results that I didn’t like. After all, I wasn’t trying to publish my results in a medical journal, and I didn’t have to share them with my friends or family if I didn’t want to. This was my year—my year to discover me and how to truly take care of my own precious self.

Similarly, this year is about you. You are the most important thing about this book, and everything you do, see, feel, and believe matters. Don’t be afraid to turn the microscope around on you—it’s not a serious or frightening process, especially when you examine only one little piece, one month at a time. To that end, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I truly believe that everyone, no matter who you are, can live a healthier, happier, and fitter life. You have only one self, after all, one that grows and changes every day like an exquisite and intricate garden. Like a garden, you can choose to either let yourself wither and struggle to find your own light, or you can learn how to give yourself the light you need so that all your colors shine brightly, beautifully, and more boldly.

1

January

Dry Month

My Story

I don’t remember the exact moment I decided to do a dry month, but it was sometime in early December of 2017. We had just finished the Thanksgiving holiday, and like most people, I was preparing for another month of work parties, holiday events, and big family dinners—all things that go hand in hand with alcohol for me and most Americans.

At the same time, I was seeing patients in my private practice, as I always do, but more often, I was having the conversation with them about their alcohol consumption. It usually went like this:

Me: How many drinks do you usually have a week?

Patient: Well, hmmm, I like to have a glass of wine or two a couple times a week, then maybe every Friday and Saturday, too . . . I don’t know. Maybe seven?

Me: And are you having those drinks at home or out?

Patient: A little bit of both, I guess.

Me: Okay, so you know, one serving of wine is five ounces and one serving of liquor is one and a half ounces. But your drinks may be larger than that, especially if you’re out at a restaurant or bar. Here, let me show you . . .

(Stage direction: I pull out a life-size chart of wine and cocktail glasses to show the patient just how small five ounces and one and a half ounces really is.)

Me: So, is this how much you’re drinking?

Patient: Well . . . Probably a little more than that.

Me (using hands to portray serving size): Maybe your pours are like this for wine? And maybe like this when you have a cocktail?

Patient: Yeah, probably.

Me: That’s fine, but that means you’re really having twelve or fourteen drinks a week, not seven.

Patient: Really?

Me: Really. And twelve to fourteen drinks per week will increase your risk of breast cancer, weight gain, obesity, depression, diabetes . . .

Yep, this was pretty much my daily script at work. I had it down pat, from the subtle pulling of the life-size cocktail chart to articulating alcohol amounts with my hands while nodding my head sympathetically.

But after years of having this conversation (and doing it well), I finally realized in December that my sympathetic nod was a little too sympathetic. I knew so intimately what these women were doing because I was doing it, too. And while I was telling them to change their habits, I was doing nothing to change my own. As they started to show more concern about the resultant increase in their risks for illnesses like breast cancer, I did, too.

I’ll tell you how it started. I’m not a big drinker by any means. I drink only socially, one to two times during the workweek, and then during the weekends, if and only if I am doing something social. I also don’t like ever feeling drunk. When I was in college at Columbia, I worked as a bartender three nights a week, but I never drank what we sold. Instead, I watched other people slur their words, act obnoxiously, and yell, which turned me off to drinking altogether. I was also admittedly vain and into fitness, and the idea of extra calories from alcohol seemed like a giant waste.

After college, I got married, got pregnant with my two children during medical school, then did a four-year residency in ob-gyn—there was never time to drink alcohol. That changed about five years ago, when my children were finally teenagers and able to take care of themselves, and I finally felt I had the time to enjoy a cocktail if I wanted. It started one summer, when there were lots of cookouts and barbecues by the pool with friends, and a glass of wine just seemed like a relaxing addition to the evening. We also started having dinner at the houses of some friends who happened to be amazing cooks—and who would pour amazing wine. In the last few years, I’ve also become interested in wine as a hobby—learning about the grapes and tasting different varietals and vintages.

Today, I still like wine, but my preferred drink has become Casamigos Blanco tequila, served on the rocks with a slice of orange. My good friend Moll Anderson introduced it to me a few years ago as, in her words, the perfect paleolithic drink. It contains no sugary mixers, juices, or liquors—it’s basically just tequila with a slice of orange—so it’s relatively low in sugar and calories.

Before January 1, 2018, I drank tequila or wine once or twice a week at special dinners or occasions, and during both nights on the weekend. Like many of my patients, I’ve always assumed I’ve stayed at or below seven drinks per week—the recommended maximum for women. But in December 2017, after having the same conversation over and over again with my patients, it suddenly dawned on me I was likely making the same mistake. I may have only been drinking seven physical glasses of alcohol per week, but like I told my patients, the serving size in one glass at any restaurant or bar was usually equivalent to much more than one and a half ounces of tequila or five ounces of wine.

The hypocrisy was a slap in the face for me: I couldn’t keep doing the same routine about alcohol with my patients if I wasn’t adhering to the same advice. I had to change my habits, and when I realized that in December, I figured the New Year was the perfect time to start. I don’t believe in resolutions—science shows they don’t work—but I do believe in challenging ourselves to change small specific actions or habits. Unlike resolutions, research has found that challenging yourself to take on a specific, actionable, and manageable change can help you sustain that change until it becomes part of your daily routine.

I had made up my mind. I was going to do a dry month. On New Year’s Eve, I enjoyed a celebratory lunch with rosé and dinner with tequila, feeling no apprehension for the month ahead. I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere, and this was it.

Doctor’s Notes

Overcoming Alcoholism and Alcohol Disorders

A dry month is a wellness challenge designed to help individuals with normal, healthy drinking habits benefit from the ramifications of giving up alcohol for thirty days. If you have a problem with or dependency on drinking, this challenge is not for you. Instead, you should speak with your physician or seek professional help. Warning signs of a problem with alcohol include suffering frequent hangovers, feeling like you need a drink or can’t stop drinking after you start, making poor or dangerous decisions while drinking, and incurring negative relationship, career, or other personal consequences when you do drink. If you think you have a problem with alcohol, don’t try to hide it or be embarrassed: it’s common, and professional guidance can help you overhaul your life.

Week 1

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