The Habit Architect

THA S2 EP#5 - Fueling Focus: How Smart Eating Shapes Productive Days

• Michael Cupps • Season 2 • Episode 5

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 If your habits are inconsistent and your energy constantly dips, the issue might not be your willpower. it might be your nutrition. 

In this episode of The Habit Architect, Michael Cupps speaks with registered dietitian Marissa Dankosky from Foodsmart about how food choices impact focus, consistency, and long-term habit formation. 

They explore the real reasons it’s hard to stick to healthy routines—and why your favorite FoodTok advice might be making it harder, not easier. 

This isn’t a conversation about diets or discipline. It’s about realistic, sustainable shifts that support your goals, especially when burnout, travel, or a busy schedule get in the way. 

If you care about performance, wellness, or building better habits, this is your sign to start HERE. 

This Show is sponsored by TimeBandit.io

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Michael Cupps:

Hello and welcome to the Habit Architect. My name's Michael Cups. It's good to see everyone again. I'm really excited about today's episode and I want you to stay tuned through the end because we have a great guest on here to talk about what we eat, how we work, how that intertwines with our energy levels, and what that means to you. From an outcome perspective and a productivity perspective. And there's a lot of things going on with food out there in, not only in the US market, but everywhere. So we've got a nutritionist on and she's gonna tell us what's really happening. From my perspective, I've lived through working on, burning on both ends of the candle as they say. Working really hard and having poor dietary habits. I used to drink alcohol and I then when I drank alcohol, that meant you had a cheeseburger or whatever that might be. And what I really began to learn is that what you eat is directly re impacting your energy level that you show up with. And I've cut out alcohol and we'll talk about other things in just a moment. So let's welcome on. Marissa. Hello Marissa. Nice to see you.

Marissa Dankosky:

Good to see you too. Thanks for having me

Michael Cupps:

so just for everybody on the guest Marissa is a registered dietician with Food Smart, but I'm gonna let you introduce yourself even further because there's probably more about you that I don't know.

Marissa Dankosky:

Sure, yeah. Hi everybody. I'm excited to be here. Thank you, Michael, for having me on. Yeah. My name's Marissa Dankosky. I'm a registered dietician. I've been a registered dietician for. Four years now. I started in the nursing home setting. I was there for about two years, and I provided medical nutrition therapy to those in the nursing home both long-term, short-term. And there was an assisted living facility there as well.

Michael Cupps:

Yep.

Marissa Dankosky:

And then I moved to a doctor's office after that. And I, for the most part, I worked in their weight loss center helping their patients. With weight management. And then I also did provide nutrition counseling to the patients there at the doctor's office based off maybe their blood work if their blood sugars were high. We talked about how to manage those if their cholesterol is high, talk about how to manage that blood pressure high, things like that. Yeah. And then now I'm doing virtual nutrition counseling through Food Smart. And I mostly work with the Medicaid population with those patients who are on Medicaid insurances all across America, which is really cool.

Michael Cupps:

That's fantastic, and thank you for covering some of that too, because. When a lot of people think of food and changing their diet, they think of it as losing weight, but there's also necessary measures that we need to take, not because we're trying to lose weight. Some of us may be, but not because of that, but because of other healthy reasons. So I hope hopefully we can talk about, weave that in as we discussed. And there's also, you said something that I'm curious about. Maybe we can start there. As we age.'cause you said you started in nursing home and as we age, how drastically different does our diet need to change with us? I know that's a big question, but

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. What I would say is it really doesn't have to change that drastically. It does depend where we started, or what our current diet is. It would pretty much be the same as a general healthful diet with a couple of changes. So fruits. Vegetables, lean protein, whole grains. If you can tolerate dairy products like you don't have lactose intolerance then low fat dairy products to get your calcium and protein. One big thing is we age is muscle loss. As we age we naturally lose muscle. It's called sarcopenia. So in that case we do need a little bit more protein as we get older. So that would be one thing I would focus on as we get older is definitely. Protein intake.

Michael Cupps:

Okay. That's, thank you for that. I'm curious because I am aging. I think everybody is, but I am aging, so let's talk about what I eat. And I really don't wanna do this, and I will say that my diet today is better than it was 10 years ago or probably even five years ago. So I'll just give you I, and what I find when I'm at home, I eat better than when I'm traveling. I do travel a lot, so it becomes. A challenge, if you will. And so this week I was in Louisville, Kentucky. I was thinking about, the meals I had a, Caesar salad with some chicken. I did have a club sandwich one day with fries. For breakfast though, what I did is I had a grocery store deliver protein shakes and these and it seems healthy because, it says it's got a lot of protein and stuff like that, but I don't really know if it does. It says one sugar. And five sugar alcohol. So is that good or bad? And, it's interesting and we can talk about it next, but, so that was my kind of trip. I drink water and I drink unsweet iced tea. So I quit alcohol. I don't really like juice that much, so pretty bland on what I drank. And then, but that was my diet this week is kinda hard. And I've actually, I don't know if this is good or bad, but I've tried to go to one large meal a day. And then not eat another big meal. And I accomplished that this week. Is that bad or good? What do you see? What do you think?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. So right off the bat, I do recommend the classic breakfast, lunch, and dinner, three meals a day. Eating every three to four hours. The reason for that is I do want everybody to have. Consistent intake throughout the day. So we don't have any crashes. I would say if we're not eating a lot, then our energy levels will get low. We may crash. And then also we're super hungry that we may end up overeating or larger portions than if we ate consistently throughout the day. It can also help with blood sugar management if we're eating consistently throughout the day. So that's another reason as well. So I do recommend three meals a day. But how some people too, they may not be able to do three meals a day, so maybe five to six smaller meals. Snacks is also Okay. Just to make sure we're getting enough calories, protein, everything we need to sustain ourselves.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. So what I heard, if I can play it back what I think is, so if I just eat that one meal a day and then have a few snacks here and there, what happens is the fuel in my body. Gets low or off balance and it needs and it's better just to keep it at the right levels. Is that a layman's way of saying that?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah, I would try to, we wanna keep our energy levels nice and steady throughout the day. We don't wanna have any crashes.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm not gonna tell you what my diet was before. Okay. Because then you would throw something at me through the screen. So we won't do that.

Marissa Dankosky:

No, I would never. No.

Michael Cupps:

So let's talk about that. I mentioned a few things on this protein bar that have, if you go through a grocery store, it seems like the stuff that's really affordable is bad for you. And the stuff that you really need to health wise seems expensive. Now I'm talking about packaged goods. I know fruits and vegetables and stuff like that are different, but. Does it seem like healthy eating has gone up in cost or what are you thinking from a nutrition?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. I think the price of groceries has definitely gone up. For example, the price of eggs, it went up to I max, I don't know what the most you heard was. I think the most I heard was 12.99 for a dozen of eggs at one point, which is wild. So I do think the price of groceries has definitely gone up. However. I would say we can work with whatever our budget is to continue to eat healthy. And we can make nutritious meals for ourselves, not only ourselves, but our family as well, because a lot of people out there have families we need to be concerned about. So we can work with the budget. And I know you just mentioned fruits, more processed foods. Yeah. Fruits and vegetables are gonna be a big part of a healthy diet, so I do just, I wanna talk about that for a second. More affordable fruits and vegetables may be frozen or canned and they are just as nutritious, as fresh. So those are some options to look at. I do recommend to always be stocked up with some kind of frozen fruit or vegetables. You could add it onto a meal real quick. Add some nutrients in there. Also maybe stocking up with canned goods too. You can do canned fruit or veggies as well. Even canned proteins like chicken, fish tuna, sardines, if you're into sardines. They're very healthy. They have a lot of omega threes, vitamin D calcium. So if you like sardines, definitely consume them. But I know it's not the most popular.

Michael Cupps:

What are you mentioned families, what, so the easy thing to do is grab, what they advertise, snack packs and things like that, and throw that in the bag for your kid and send 'em off to school. Are there realistic, healthy choices that they can make instead of just the pure processed chips and stuff like that?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah, definitely. There are a lot of processed snacks out there that are not the most nutrient dense, but there are also options that do provide. Good nutrition. Just to name a couple examples. There is what's the name? I don't remember the name. It's a snack pack and it has like grapes and cheese and crackers in it. That's one that you can grab off the shelf and throw it in. A lunchbox sun chips are actually made out of whole grains, the, those sun chips. So that could be a nice crunch or. A healthy alternative chip. Even tortilla chips too. Tostitos has those wheat chips. Those could be a little bit of a healthier option. Maybe pack them salsa. With within their lunch, they dip it at salsa or hummus or guacamole if they like that. So there are options.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. Yeah.'cause I guess you want your kid not to feel left out either chips or chips and but yeah, it's, I think it's a challenging thing. I frankly get overwhelmed when I go in a grocery store and I listened to a podcast a few weeks ago and it was a nutritionist or something that, and he was talking about the labels on. Packaged goods now it's, they don't get it. They can put healthy choice on there, even though what's in the bag may not be healthy. But they don't have any restrictions on really some of that. Certainly on the ingredients they have to be honest, but on the front they can say it's for good sports or it's healthy living, or whatever,

Marissa Dankosky:

yeah. there may be labels that are a little bit misleading. Yeah. So for that, I would encourage to turn the package over and read the nutrition label. For packaged foods, one of my biggest concerns, I would say, is definitely salt. Usually processed packaged foods have a lot of salt in there, either as a preservative, a way to preserve it so it lasts longer on the shelves or in your pantry or just to make it taste better. So I would look at the salt. Anything that is 140 milligrams or less per serving would be considered low sodium.

Michael Cupps:

Okay. Low sodium. I, and that's a good question. So what are we looking for? Because I, I read this to you and it had. Sugar alcohols, are those good or bad or what's the I, because I don't even know what a sugar alcohol is. I know what sugar is, but I don't know what sugar alcohol is.

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. It is a it's a type of artificial sweetener. So it's not gonna impact our blood sugar like regular white cane sugar would. It's going to impact our blood sugar by half, if that makes sense. So if how many sugar alcohols are in that

Michael Cupps:

five.

Marissa Dankosky:

Five. Okay. So half of that would actually impact our bloodstream. A little bit of those sugar alcohols impact their bloodstream, but not all of it. So that's why it may be a better option than something that has five grams of added sugar. So sugar alcohols are okay. It has been studied a little bit. There are some studies out there on sugar alcohols. There's more studies done on other non-nutritive sweeteners such as Splenda equal aspartame. Yeah, because there are some of the popular ones.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. Yeah. It's good. And this, the, so sodium is the salt, right? So when we, when you say, look for salt, it's sodium. And this is 105gr I don't know if that's good or bad for such a small portion, but yeah, Reading labels is something We really ought to teach our children sooner because I didn't read a label until I was well into my high twenties, I think. And maybe because you also feel invincible at that age too. You can you go through life oblivious to some of those things. But let's talk about the food industry in general. You and I were talking earlier before we turned on and Florencia, our producer, had mentioned the cottage core fantasy thing. But I think it's in, it's a broader feeling that. There's influencers in social media that say it's easy to make your own sourdough bread, or you should make everything fresh and, you should never eat processed. And I think that's great, but it feels a little bit like a trap because I do know one thing about habit formation because that's what I teach, but . If it becomes too difficult, you drop the habit pretty quick. And so it just feels to me, that's almost a trap because, they're sitting in front of a camera, so they might have a crew whatever. What do you think of this?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah you mentioned a good point. If it's not something we can sustain it, we're not gonna continue doing it, it's gonna drop off. So yeah. Would it be extremely healthy and advantageous for us to cook everything ourselves at home? Sure, yeah. Yeah. The less process the better. However, that's not realistic or sustainable. We all have lives we have families, we have jobs, we have friends, other obligations. So that's not gonna be sustainable or realistic for the average person, I would say. Do we wanna cook food? Is it recommended to cook food as much as we can at home? Yes. But it's because we can control the ingredients. So we can limit the salt, we can limit the sugar, we can limit the unhealthy fat. However, we can't always cook at home. And it's okay to consume pro processed foods, ideally in moderation. Not every day, but ideally in moderation. That's okay. It's what we're doing on a consistent basis is what Will impact our health, what we're doing consistently. So we wanna choose habits and we wanna do habits and do whatever's gonna be sustainable and realistic for us. That's what we're gonna do consistently. That's ideally what we want.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's exactly it. So we, when you see an influencer telling you that you need to make this amazing marinara sauce from scratch. It. What you don't see is it may take an hour, two hours, or whatever it may take to make whatever they're advertising. And if that's not gonna fit into your lifestyle, you need to find a healthy alternative as opposed to just giving up on it.

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah definitely. Time, like time is definitely a huge constraint as well. So we don't have time after work. If it's already, let's say six o'clock after work, we're not gonna have one to two hours just to cook a marinara sauce that's not, yeah, we have things to do. So maybe we can look for a jarred marinara sauce. We can look at the nutrition label. Is it a lower sodium sauce? Is it lower in sugar?'cause there are options out there that are. Could be good option for us to, to use. And then all we would have to do is, let's say we're doing spaghetti and meatballs, just cook the spaghetti and cook meatballs or whatever. And that would cut the time.. Significantly

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. And and I didn't give you this question ahead of time, but what is a meal that you talked about? We talked about having meals earlier. What is a good balance? Because when I grew up, they had this food pyramid with everything on it and I don't even know if that's still taught in schools. I heard it's not, but so what is a healthy meal just in general, protein. Et cetera.

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. To touch on the food pyramid, I also learned about the food pyramid, but it is not they haven't used that in a little bit. Now they use something called MyPlate. And it's actually, I think it's a lot better. It's a better representation because you can really implement it in your every day. I think the food pyramid was a little bit harder to actually implement. It's a nice, it was a nice visual, but it hard to actually follow through with. Anyway. So now they use MyPlate and they encourage lots of fruits and vegetables. So they want about half of your plate to be a low carbohydrate vegetable or also called non starchy vegetable. So that could be something like spinach or broccoli or carrots, mushrooms, there's a bunch out there. But they want half your plate or majority of your plate to be. That low carbohydrate vegetable. Why? Because it's super high in fiber, vitamins and minerals. Low calorie to help with weight management. Then they want about a quarter of your plate to be some type of lean protein. This might be something like baked or roasted chicken, maybe Turkey, 90% lean ground beef pork tenderloins, fairly lean. Fish, oh fish is a great one for the omega threes and vitamin D. They do recommend fish about twice a week. If you could do more. So fish shellfish are great, even eggs and plant-based protein sources like beans, lentils, peas and the last piece of that plate is some type of a healthy carbohydrate because we do need carbohydrates for energy and to sustain us throughout our day. So we do need carbohydrates just in an adequate portion size. So the last quarter of the plate, they want to be a healthy carbohydrate. What could that be? Something such as fruit. Could be milk or yogurt.'cause they have some carbohydrates in there Could be a starchy vegetable. Potatoes, peas, corn, for example. Or some type of a grain. Ideally a whole grain for more fiber. So maybe brown rice, wheat, pasta, whole grain bread.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. And what about, you mentioned yogurt there. What about I know that they sell yogurt that has a ton of sugar in it, but if you just get the whole yogurt off, off that dinner plate, but on the breakfast,'cause I worked out this morning and I was really hungry, so I just had some yogurt and I threw up a scoop of. Powder in it. Is that still good? Is that, do I, am I getting protein in a healthy way there or should it be in the form of meat?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah no, that's an excellent source of protein. Did you have a plain or regular yogurt or Greek yogurt or.

Michael Cupps:

It was Greek yogurt.

Marissa Dankosky:

Okay, awesome. either yogurt is great. The reason I was asking about Greek yogurt is it is higher in protein for the same amount. So I would encourage Greek yogurt, so just to get more protein.

Michael Cupps:

Yep.

Marissa Dankosky:

But if you prefer regular yogurt over Greek yogurt, some people have that preference, it's totally fine as well. But you will get more protein with Greek yogurt. Got it. And you boosted the protein with the protein powder. Yeah. So that's great tho those are great sources of protein.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. And for me it adds a little flavor to it. It's, vanilla flavored protein powder. Now the problem with a lot of, at least my I'll put it in my perspective, is when I eat poorly or more poorly, I would say it's because I don't plan ahead. Is that a lot of it? Do you see that a lot in people's kind of habits?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yes. Yes. If we don't meal plan, then We last minute are thinking to ourselves, what am I going to eat? A lot of the times we have to go out and get food, fast food. Yeah. So yeah, if we don't plan, then we're not gonna have anything at home typically. Some people might, but typically we won't. And then we will eat whatever's in the fridge. It might not be the healthiest. Maybe it's, I have frozen pizza, that's what I'm going to go to. I don't have any vegetables, so I'm not gonna eat veggies. Things like that.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. And what, there's a big conversation now it's been on for forever, probably is food is medicine, right? A better diet could translate into less other pharmaceuticals going into your body when, as you age and things like that. Do you have any guidance or feelings on that?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. Actually at Food Smart, our we are a food as medicine. Company, and we do try to promote that. Because I do believe in that whatever we eat, we're gonna break down. Our body's gonna use. So if we're eating nutrient dense foods, it's gonna help to sustain us throughout the day, improve our cognition. Just give us our body, the vitamins and minerals it needs to function and function optimally. You can function, but it might not be optimal. Yes I do believe food as medicine is a great approach.

Michael Cupps:

Yep. So let me ask you this on that front, one of the challenges that we have in America, probably globally, but it's certainly in America, we have this immediate gratification need, right? And nutrition is not something if you eat well today. Everything changes tomorrow. It's one of those things that, it's about consistency. I think you've mentioned that to me before, so how would you advise somebody just to stay on the pan, play on, stay on the plan, because it's going to pay off, right? How do you do that when you're coaching your individ individuals?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. That is an excellent point.'Cause if we don't see change or improvement in a day nowadays, it's okay, I'm done. Hey, good.

Michael Cupps:

Yesterday. I'm done.

Marissa Dankosky:

Yes. Yeah. So a hundred percent. I see that all the time. Yeah. I think what we need to think about is Focusing on small goals, choosing a very specific area you wanna work on. So maybe you're thinking to yourself, my vegetable intake could be better. Okay, great. So you're gonna work on. Maybe increasing your vegetable intake. You narrowed it down from I'm going to eat healthier. This huge, broad, wide goal to, let's start focusing on increasing veggie intake. And maybe that's not what you wanna work on, but just choosing an area. Maybe you wanna focus on more protein, focus on more whole grains, whatever you want. But focus on one area. Let's make this the goal, small and specific so we know exactly what we have to do. And it can hold us accountable as well if we specifically say exactly what we're gonna do. And these are, this is something we do teach as well as dieticians is creating smart goals. There's specific goals that are very, that are measurable. We can monitor our progress. So even further, okay, I'm gonna increase my intake of vegetables. How am I gonna do that? Okay. I'm I enjoy baby carrots and ranch. Great. So for the next week, I'm going to have baby carrots and ranch as a side at my lunch or maybe wanna choose a PM snack whenever days, three days in the next week. So you can directly measure that. Did I do that?

Michael Cupps:

Yep.

Marissa Dankosky:

Yes or no. It's not. There's no wiggle room. We don't want that wiggle room or else we're probably not gonna do it.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. I think you just described what about what habits that stick is. You're just trying to get 1% better. Along the way and just sticking to it will get you where you want to go. And before long it becomes a habit where you're not thinking about doing it, you just do it. And I wonder if people come on with you and say, yes, I'm gonna eat those carrots three times a week. And then they forget to, so the day before they eat. Three servings of carrots the day before so they can check the box.

Marissa Dankosky:

My patients yeah, sometimes they don't follow through with the goals and I, life is busy. I understand. But I think another aspect too that I wanted to throw in there is remembering your reason for motivation and why you're working on that goal. Continuing to tell yourself I'm increasing my vegetable intake too. Whatever benefit sounds the best to you. Really, like I'm increasing my vegetable intake because I know if I eat more vegetables, I'm going to maybe improve my eyesight. I don't know. Or maybe I'm increasing my vegetable intake because I know it can help with weight management. I am overweight or obese. That can increase my risk for early death, and I wanna live longer with my family.

Michael Cupps:

Yep.

Marissa Dankosky:

And my grandkids. I hear that a lot. Like I wanna be able to have more energy to play with my grandkids. Maybe that's gonna help with weight loss. Maybe weight loss is gonna help with being able to pay your grandkids more, have more energy. So thinking about what really matters to you and how it's gonna benefit you to eat, for example, those baby carrots. How it's gonna benefit you and why you're. What's your motivation for doing it? We're not gonna do things that don't benefit us. So we have to think about what those benefits will be and really also believing in the fact that I will see these benefits if I continue doing right. If I continue working on these habits, these benefits will come.

Michael Cupps:

Yes. Yes. I agree with you there. I think it is a long game sometimes, and it feels like it's longer than it should be, but it's how you, really, if you wanna have a. Play with your grandkids kind of retirement, from 65 to 75 to 80, then you know, it has to start today because you can't get to 65 and then start, you can, but you might as well have a running start at it. So

Marissa Dankosky:

yeah, the earlier you start changing your eating habits for the better the more likely you'll stick with it and then it'll be more of a breeze when you get older.'cause you already started that habit. That's

Michael Cupps:

right. Yeah. There you go. Tell me a little bit more about Food Smart. Just so our audience knows and if it's a service that they may be interested in or may help somebody they know.

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah, absolutely. So Food Smart is, we're a virtual nutrition counseling. Company. And we're partnered with various health insurance companies throughout America and different states. So to see if you're eligible if your health insurance covers visits, I would go to food smart.com and you could check eligibility there. We mostly do work with Medicaid health insurance, however, that's not always the case. I have seen patients in my home state of New Jersey like Cigna Insurance. So it's not always. But yeah, if you want nutrition counseling, you wanna, you're looking to improve your health with diet and lifestyle changes, we can absolutely help you out. And we love doing it.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. And what's the frequency if somebody is signed up for your service? Is are they meeting weekly? Are they monthly? What kind of cadence is this?

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah. that's a great question. It's really patient dependent. Okay. I would say typically for a newer patient, I do weekly to start maybe weekly for a month, and then spreading it out to maybe two times a month. And then once we start seeing positive changes And whatnot and you and the patient feels like they have a good idea, a good grip on what they gotta do and continue to do, then spread it out more. But yeah, usually once a week to start, but if you've had nutrition education before and you're like, I just wanna get on track and I just want someone kind of monitoring me, motivating me, then maybe starting out a little bit more, spread out.

Michael Cupps:

That's great. That's good to know. And if you any, anything I didn't ask you or anything you want to add to the conversation that maybe we should have covered?

Marissa Dankosky:

Anything else I wanna add in there? I would say just start small. Give yourself grace as well. Yes. A lot of times people may start changing their eating habits, lifestyle, even exercising more, which is awesome. And then maybe we have a bad week and bad, I don't mean to say bad week. Maybe we have a week that we don't, we're not exercising as much as we wanted. Yeah, don't beat yourself up. Just keep going, just keep continuing with what your plan is. It's okay. Everybody has setbacks and that's fine. Just keep going. It's not, it's again about consistency. It's not about what happened one week. It's about what did I do in the last three to six months to the last year? That's what's gonna make the changes.

Michael Cupps:

That is fantastic advice, Marissa.'cause I, time Bandit has a habit tracker in there and people love the streaks. Right? And when you get a streak going, it's fun to keep it going. But just because you missed a day on that streak doesn't mean you stop. Just get back on it tomorrow because that's that start a new streak or it just, I think there is something about just. Don't beat yourself up. When you said that is the biggest thing that stops people from achieving where they want to go with habits in particular, is because they just get frustrated and stop. And if they just take a pause, breathe, and then start again, they're gonna feel better for it. And that resiliency builds up. And then that's just gonna become, like I said, part of your lifestyle. So that's great advice. Thank you for doing that. It fits in well with everything I try to teach people, so Very good. Final question. If someone is listening and wants to make a shift, not a new diet, but a new habit, where should they start?

Marissa Dankosky:

Ooh. A new habit. I would say, again, I pick an area you wanna focus on. I wouldn't focus on a million things at once because it's gonna be overwhelming. We're most likely not gonna follow through with that. Pick an area you wanna focus on that. That's the first thing. What do you wanna focus on? Drinking more water, exercising more, eating healthier? What do you wanna do? So choose that. Pick one. That's the first thing. And think of your motivation, why you wanna do it, how it's gonna benefit you and make a smart goal. Make a really small goal that's specific and work on it.

Michael Cupps:

That's fantastic. Thank you so much for the insights and I took away look at the sodium number on everything that we're doing. Plan ahead I think is a good piece of advice and just make small changes until you get where you want to go. it doesn't have to be a major overhaul or you can't achieve it. Just keep at it. Keep consistently consistency.

Marissa Dankosky:

Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Cupps:

Excellent. Thank you so much for joining. Everybody I just encourage what Marissa said. Just check, pick one thing, just one small thing and give it a try and just give it a go. Try it for five days and then on the sixth day and the seventh day, it may just kick in. We do have, I do have a training bundle that you can go to it. It has, three modules in it that you can learn about habit formation, tying habits to your values, and also priority management. So for those bad days that set you off track how to get back on track and you get one year of the mobile app, you get my book, and you get a lot of worksheets and access to our habit coach, which is something that can really help you with a diet if you. It's an AI based thing where you can say, is this good for me or I wanna take in more protein, how can I do that? And this coach will help you along the way. But if you're looking for nutrition advice, please look up Food Smart. And Marissa is on LinkedIn. You can find her there. So thank you so much Marissa, and thank you everybody for attending. We'll see you next time.

Marissa Dankosky:

Thank you. Bye.

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Michael Cupps

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