S8E11: Healthy habits for MS: realistic strategies that actually stick

Amy Behimer (00:00)

If we are eating in a way that our bodies and brains love, but we’re telling ourselves it’s not enough or that something is missing, then that is going to be a disconnect. It’s going to feel terrible. I mean honestly, if we always are thinking something’s missing, then it’s gonna feel terrible. And I know it’s scary to shift that to, you know what, maybe my body has what it needs. Maybe if I just lean in and accept what is, people are scared of that because they think that means they’re giving up. And it’s not.

 

Overcoming MS (01:12)

Welcome to the latest edition of the Living Well With MS podcast. Joining me on this edition is Dr. Amy Behimer. Dr. Behimer is a pharmacist turned health coach who helps people living with MS feel more energized, more in control, and a whole lot less overwhelmed. After her own diagnosis, she became obsessed in a good way with the question, why is it so hard to do the things we know help us feel better?

That curiosity led her to habit science, where she now focuses on the head and heart skills that make lifestyle change actually stick. Through her coaching programs and her podcast, Autoimmune Health Secrets, Amy blends evidence mindset and real life doable habits to help people reduce fatigue, build consistency and create health one small step at a time. Her mission is simple, help people with MS feel better in daily life without perfection, pressure or burnout. So welcome to the podcast, Amy.

 

Amy Behimer (02:06)

Thank you so much for having me, Geoff. I’m happy to be here.

 

Overcoming MS (02:09)

So I think it’s a good mission, I think, for our audience particularly. we know what we should do and how we do what we should do is a good question. So to start off with, could you introduce yourself and your work?

 

Amy Behimer (02:25)

Absolutely. So you mentioned a few of the lenses that I see the world through. Doctor of Pharmacy for almost 20 years and that really set me up to trust and love evidence-based medicine and evidence-based lifestyle changes and really trusting that there are a lot of things that we can do that our brains and bodies will love. And the other evidence piece that I love is that we can this behavior change science in a way that overcomes why it feels so hard or why people have to feel deprived when we make changes that feed our body, not just with food, but with all of these different lifestyle habits that we can do. Then there is the MS piece. It’s been 14 years. I’ve been diagnosed with primary progressive MS. It was my fourth autoimmune diagnosis and it was the one that really shook my life in a way to say I needs something different. My body is asking for something different. And if you looked at me or if you asked my friends and family, I was probably one of the healthier people that they knew. So it wasn’t as if I was living this, you know, wildly unhealthy according to what’s normal life, but you know, through a lot of learning and going all in on food, then all in on movement, and kind of this obsessive, narrowed focus, it really was the, what I call inner habits, the more mindset, like how am I thinking and feeling from the get-go about this life with MS? And going to the root of that is a lot of where my story took a turn and where I just started, again, living life different with MS in a way more peaceful route. That brought me to coaching and wanting to go back to school and certifications, and I didn’t want to be another expert helping people. What I wanted to do wad guide and walk alongside them and really help them find their expertise within them and just have them feel less frustrated with themselves. You the number of people who I meet who just are blaming themselves for not being consistent. And again, it’s not our fault. We’re human. We have human brains that are designed to resist change and conserve energy and avoid pain and seek pleasure. So once we understand what our brains are doing to keep us stuck, then all of a sudden there’s just a lot clearer path on how to change in a way that actually feels right.

 

Overcoming MS (04:55)

So you’ve talked about sort coaching people on a personal level, but could you talk about your own MS journey, what sort of healthy habits you’ve adopted and how they’ve affected you?

 

Amy Behimer (05:05)

Like I said, I’ve had MS 14 years, but I didn’t know many people with MS and I wasn’t in the MS community much until I started getting into this work of coaching. And so it wasn’t until recently that I learned about Overcoming MS. And, you know, when I’m going through, I’m like, oh my God, there is so much overlap. And I love that we are saying such similar things because I think the more our message of there are things that we can do, we’re not blaming ourselves, but there are things that we can take control of once we are living with this disease. And really from that empowering stance, the more of us saying that, the better, right? And so for me, it was, it started with food. I think that a lot of us, the first thing you think of is, okay, I gotta get healthier. What is the diet? What are the things? And so, like I said, I went all in on food, really looking at, if this oil can cause inflammation, then I must never be able to have it. And what about this? I tried everything. And what ended up happening was in my world, I operate, I live, I coach around what I call the habit hub for autoimmune health. And it’s six key areas. And food is one of the areas. But I didn’t know that there was this framework going on in the background that I needed this balance in these six key areas. So when I was over obsessing on food, I was really taking a hit in the mindset side of life. The joy, the ease, the connection, the how am I showing up with other people? Am I saying no to dinner dates because you know heaven forbid that there’s oils at that restaurant. So bringing in connection is another spoke of the habit hub. A third spoke is movement. So my movement practices, which look different, they evolve. I have to bend them with my current state, with my current symptoms that want to flare up at different times and with, you know, an aging body at the same time. I’m in my 40s now. And again, finding that ability to find the balance. So we have food, we have movement, we have connection, we have mindset. So I think the thing that changed everything for me was learning that, wow, I can look at what I’m thinking and feeling and I can shift it. I can change it. It’s not that we are either born being a positive person or born being, a positive thinker or, leaning into gratitude or not. It’s that we can learn the skill of shifting our beliefs, shifting our thoughts to ones that feel a whole lot better. And so again, for me, mindset was everything. I could get really good at the outer habits, the food, the movement.

Another one, rest and relaxation. So how do we de-stress? How do we sleep well? You know, our bodies need this so bad. And the last one is what I call good stresses. So those are the challenges that we take on in the name of growth. You know, the ones that feel a little bit tougher, but we know whether it’s physically, emotionally, or metabolically that we’re going to get a bit stronger on the other side. in terms of me, just, I live this where I’m always making sure I have balance. If I am feeling, you know, can use my feelings to say where, where do I need a tune-up and where can I look at what I am thinking, feeling, doing, and make shifts to, to again, enjoy life. Because when I was first diagnosed, first thought was, my God, my life will always be worse. This is, you know, going through pharmacy school, you learn a lot about the human body and what goes right and what goes wrong. And so the negativity bias took me straight to everything that could go wrong. And I was feeling it. And it really is optional to believe that life is going to be worse with a diagnosis. And so with this mindset work and with this habitual thoughts that we turn into new beliefs, you know, I was able to start to operate from a place of maybe my life doesn’t need to be worse. What if I did this? What if I tried that? And that curiosity really led me to a whole new place.

 

Overcoming MS (09:15)

And so I think the pillars that you have and the pillars that we have are fairly similar, they’re not nowadays certainly seen as controversial. I think eating a healthy diet, doing more exercise, stress relief, good sleep, positive thinking, all those things are generally fairly standard I would say. So why is it so hard to do those healthy things, those right things we know should help not just MS but actually help people be healthy and make those lifestyle changes stick?

 

Amy Behimer (09:46)

Well, as a pharmacist, think, you know, we would send someone out with a medication and they’d come back and, you know, maybe their, let’s say blood pressure wasn’t working. It’s like, well, are you taking the medication? Well, no, or sometimes. And so just like a medication only works if you take it you can see pretty clearly a habit only works if you are able to make it. And in the news and I feel like every article, every social media bite is about a tip and a trick and a hack on something you can do to be healthier in one of these areas. But tips and tricks and hacks only work the one time that you do them. And so again, it’s deciding, which ones do I want to invest in to really make a habit to make my autopilot so that I can really see how is this going to affect me and then those habits become really just who we are. That’s how we live. It becomes our way of being. And so the thing that makes that so, so hard is I alluded to it at the beginning of the episode is our brain is evolved to do one of three things. It’s called the motivational triad and it’s what kept us alive and safe and it kept us, you know, producing into future generations. But in this modern world, it’s actually working against our best efforts. And those three things are it wants to seek pleasure. And now we have foods and concentrated connection on social media. And we have false pleasures that these bodies weren’t really even designed to process ingredients and flavorability and, you know, bliss points in foods that are being manufactured. So it’s not that our brains are like, my god, I need more of that because it wants to seek pleasure because back then we needed berries and sugar to stay alive. But now we are presented with things that are it’s just in a quantity that is more than this body can handle. So that’s the first thing seeking pleasure then avoiding pain. I mean being uncomfortable is not comfortable. And so it’s very natural that okay if I feel, you know, deprivation of the way I’m thinking about not eating this thing, we want to avoid that. And so naturally we, you know, we may go back to our old more comfortable patterns. And then the third thing our brain does is it wants to conserve energy. It wants to keep us alive and ready to move for the next, you know, tiger that’s coming at us. So it does not like change. And so really understanding how to overcome each of those in a way that, again, works with our brain, works with our body, truly is the key to change that helps us lean into what we want most in life versus what we want in the moment. And that’s what’s special about humans. We have a prefrontal cortex. We get to plan ahead. We get to say, okay, I know I want this bowl of cereal, you know, I’ll just use an example from my life growing up in the 80s and 90s. I ate a lot of processed cereal and it’s still, you know, something that my brain tells me I want, but I can see with my prefrontal cortex and with my evolved part of my brain, but what I want most is actually to feel better, to not have a stomach ache and for my mitochondria to be happier. And so we can kind of weigh what we want most versus what we want in the moment with strategies that help us lean in and kind of turn down the desire for some of these things that have hijacked our reward system.

 

Overcoming MS (13:17)

So that’s, I think, applies to people whether they’ve got MS or not to live a healthier life. when you’ve got MS, it can be a bit more complicated. So how can people with MS build habits when they’ve got fatigue or they’ve got MS symptoms that are unpredictable and so it’s difficult to build a habit when you haven’t got a stable lifestyle, if you like.

 

Amy Behimer (13:38)

Yeah, that’s a great question and a reality that I live with and I’m guessing you live with as well. There, again, there’s a lot of really good researchers out there that are making books and producing the information. So Atomic Habits by James Clear, Tiny Habits, you know, The Power of Habit. And that research, I know that we’re special because we have MS, but the same research is going to apply. It’s just finding a way, again, speak to us and our unique needs. And so I use something called the ABC Habit Playbook and it boils down all of the research to these 20 strategies or these 20 plays. So when you ask that question, I’m immediately thinking of what are the few plays that would be worth mentioning right now and you mentioned energy and there is something I kind of talked about how when we set a plan and we’re planning ahead, that’s when

 

we likely make the best decision right like okay in the future this is what I want but in reality that time may come and our energy may be not great or our symptoms or my leg may not want to do what I thought that it maybe could do back then. And so with that, this plan, this strategy of setting a plan, we just have to get creative. We have to say, okay, that was plan A. Now, what about plan B if I end up that, you know, my child needs me, I don’t have kids, but a lot of people have kids, my child needs me and to do homework and I end up with half the time I needed or that I thought I had. So plan B could be, oh okay I do half of it or I pivot to this form of exercise. Well what about plan C? I actually just don’t have the energy. Okay what if plan C is I still stick that I want to move my body but instead it turns into moving my breath or it turns into a gentle stretch. You know having different options where we don’t just throw the plan out the window but instead we develop plans that help us meet all of our different versions and different situations that we could possibly have.

 

Overcoming MS (15:50)

You’ve touched on a mindset. So how do you think that your mindset and your emotions as well affect MS Lifestyle Change?

 

Amy Behimer (16:03)

You know, if we look at, I love alliteration, so if we look at habits in whether it’s movement, exercise, getting sleep, that’s hands is how we can think of it. That’s the outer things that we want to be doing. Behind everything we want to be doing, our head and our heart are in action. And so if we are thinking that this is going to be hard or I don’t have the energy or this is restrictive, then we are gonna feel deprived, we’re gonna feel unmotivated and we’re gonna feel dread. And so our hands don’t lie. If we are not thinking and feeling in alignment with the things we wanna be doing, then likely it’s gonna feel hard and we have to muscle through it and we may fall off after 30 days or another, a set amount of time. Or, you know, we’re just gonna revert back to what our head and our heart think what we need or what we want.

So getting our head and heart on board is the smartest play, the smartest move that we can do, because if we rewire our thinking and our habitual thoughts to put us in that state where we’re feeling curious and confident in even that plan C that we had, or you know we’re finding ways to see the benefits in even modified versions of the things we want to do, then our thoughts and feelings, I mean, they drive everything that we’re doing, whether we realize it or not. And so it’s the difference between muscling your way through 30 days of a certain diet, but then going right back to where you were before. If we go to the root and if we’re working on how we’re thinking and feeling about these things, you if you look at someone who is, let’s say to you, like, wow, you really seem to be following all those pillars so perfectly. If you ask them what they’re thinking and feeling about them, you’re gonna get some pretty good insight into thoughts that you may want to start practicing. know, like if I ask you, Geoff, like, well, why do you avoid that Chicago style pizza or those Chicago dogs? Like, why is that?

And you may say, my, well, I don’t think it, I don’t feel great after, or I know those aren’t great for myself. Any, those thoughts are available to any of us. We just need to make them habitual.

 

Overcoming MS (18:10)

Yeah. So you have a thing, I believe a phrase called the best cast, sorry, the best kept secret to living well with MS. So can you reveal what is the best kept secret?

 

Amy Behimer (18:29)

I think that I’m always talking about habits, right? I I just presented at a medical conference and it was the fifth time they invited me back. And I was putting together my presentation based on the keynote speaker. And I’m like, this is the fifth time I’m talking about habits. Like, are they not tired of it yet? And then I realized, no, none of us are tired of it yet because we know that better habits can help us feel better, can help us function better. That’s not the seat. I mean, that’s the worst kept secret.

The best kept secret is that changing them, being intentional about them, figuring out how to kind of master them in a way that feels really good and can change your health and your life, that is the best kept secret. All this that we’re talking about, the skill of habit change, the skill of consistency that does not buckle in the face of whatever obstacles are being thrown our way.

Because when we set a goal, a lot of us, you know, I’ll meet people they’re like, I don’t know what my goal is. And it’s like, we need a good goal to be working towards. And if you don’t like the word goal, you can use aim, you can use, you know, vision. But when we set a goal, it could be even be as simple as I want to feel better, or I want my MS not to progress. I mean, that’s a huge goal for me. When we set a goal, life is going to give you all the reasons you can’t get it. It’s going to tell you, well, you don’t have the energy, you don’t have the time, or that that’s just not possible with my form of MS, or it’s gonna give us all these reasons. Those obstacles, instead of being frustrated with them, let’s welcome them. We take each one of those obstacles that we think are between us and our goal, and then we strategize around them. You know, we have this playbook of strategies where we say, how do we get around this one? How do we create creatively and strategically use what we have, what we know to find a different way to get to our goal. You know, if you’re using GPS and there’s a roadblock, it doesn’t just say, okay, turn around and go home. It just says rerouting, rerouting. So it’s, you know, kind of this willingness to say, if I want to feel joy, if I want to feel connection with my family, if I want to feel purpose,

 

and MS is saying, okay, you can’t do it how you thought you could. You can’t, you know, go play kickball or maybe your work looks different or maybe you don’t get joy from the same things. Being willing to reroute, being willing to say, I still want to get to this feeling and I’m willing to do it by finding other ways to get there is just a skill that we all as humans can benefit from.

 

Overcoming MS (21:14)

It’s not too late to start lifestyle changes to improve your mental and physical health this year. The new version of our free six months to Overcoming MS course has launched in the Live Well Hub. You can join today. Adopt the full Overcoming MS program or opt for individual pillars, diet and vitamin D, physical activity or stress management at your own pace. Visit hub.overcomingms.org to find out more.

 

Overcoming MS (21:42)

So you’ve mentioned that different pillars and they’re quite similar to what we talk about diet, exercise, mindfulness. Some of them are quite involved. So diet, there’s lots of different factors to the diet. Exercise, there’s lots of different ways you can exercise. And you do get some people who are very, very good at this. So there’s people I’ve spoken to are marathon runners, doing huge amounts of exercise. There are people who are literally growing their own food and everything is perfectly unprocessed. So how can you avoid falling into a perfectionist level? There’s consistency and there’s maybe unachievable perfectionism. How do you avoid that sort of trap?

 

Amy Behimer (22:25)

From my own personal experience, I couldn’t avoid it. I had to fall into it to know that this doesn’t feel good. And so for a lot of people, when they reach out because they want to try something different, a lot of times that’s the case. I’ve tried this perfect path and it’s not working. And it may be that they don’t fully realize there are all these other areas that if we shift our attention to some of these other areas, that doesn’t mean that the one that we’ve been hyper focusing on trying to be perfect is gonna fall by the wayside, it’s probably more likely that it’s going to be enhanced and be better because we’re more balanced. And so a lot of people, like you mentioned, they’ll, maybe I attract people who are like me, know, attracts like, but they are doing well with food. They are doing really well with movement. They’re doing everything they should. And in that case, oftentimes the blind spot is our mindset. How are we thinking about it? If we are eating in a way that our bodies and brains love, but we’re telling ourselves it’s not enough or that something is missing, then that is going to be a disconnect. It’s going to feel terrible. I mean honestly, if we always are thinking something’s missing, then it’s gonna feel terrible. And I know it’s scary to shift that to, you know what, maybe my body has what it needs. Maybe if I just lean in and accept what is, people are scared of that because they think that means they’re giving up. And it’s not. Two truths can exist at the same time. We can be doing everything we can to prevent progression, to feel our best, and we can love what is. We can love what is without saying, then I’m just accepting what this is accepting what is the most peaceful feeling, and again, it doesn’t mean that we’re not doing what we can. And a lot of times it’s the missing piece to allow the things that we’re doing to take hold, to allow our body to accept them.

 

There’s a Carl Jung quote and he says, you cannot change something you don’t love. And if we don’t love our body as it is, if we don’t love our health as it is with all of its warts and all of its flaws, then it’s gonna be hard for us to ask it to change. And so again, this is more of the mindset inner work behind it, but I know for me, it’s the thing that shifted everything. And so I’m just so passionate about that.

 

Again, helping people do it in a tangible way. It’s not just, Amy says this and so I guess I need to believe that. No, we find where are some beliefs that may be holding you back and then we apply habit change in the same way where we really say, that’s just a habitual thought. So let’s put these strategies to work and let’s try to shift it.

 

Overcoming MS (25:16)

One of the things that was said to me a long time ago is that a lot of the changes we make They’re slow moving things. We’re trying to turn around a massive ship. It’s not gonna happen It’s not like taking a painkiller that happens 10 minutes later. It’s gonna be it’s a long-term thing. But do you think that there are things with self-talk and inner habits that could shift your day-to-day energy and symptoms?

 

Amy Behimer (25:25)

Yes, immediately, yes, absolutely. I mean, there’s fatigue and there’s tiredness that is at like a cellular level, right? There’s the true medical things that are happening in our body. But we add a layer when we are constantly talking about how tired we are or constantly looking at the negative or what’s missing. Like we add a layer of suffering with how we think and feel. And so we can change a feeling in an instant.

You know, there for me when I was diagnosed, I think I mentioned I had this thought, my life will always be worse. The thought that I ended up that I started practicing was Amy, it’s possible your life doesn’t need to be worse.

And like when I, because you have to make it believable, right? If we want to shift our feeling, our body has to be on board. Our body has to buy into it. And so you can’t go to, my God, life is great. I’m so grateful for MS because my body would be like that. I don’t believe you. And so, you know, for anything, just finding an emotion that when you when you think a certain thing, your body kind of lets down that relief can be instant.

You know, for a lot of my clients, one of the beliefs we build early on is that I can trust in the tiny and going back to when things feel overwhelming, when we have symptoms, but if we believe that doing five minutes of our PT routine instead of the 20 that somebody wants us to do, when we believe I can trust that this five minutes is gonna help me, like you can take a deep breath and you’re like, you get done with that five minutes and you maybe even feel proud because you trust that. But it takes, learning and repeating it and practicing and getting the reps and because imagine finishing that five minutes you’re feeling proud your body is actually being bathed in nourishing chemicals because pride and trust are really healing emotions versus we stopped at five because we were too tired we’re just thinking about how we were wanting to do 20 and we’re feeling disappointed and frustrated that is going to be inflammatory chemicals that’s not going to help anything. And so I love your question of can these things be immediate? How we feel can be immediate because it’s based on what we’re thinking in that moment. And I tell people it starts when we start they’ll leave our calls because we have live calls every week. They’ll leave all our calls feeling so much hope and empowerment and excitement. And at first you know you may get back into life and quickly life pulls you back down. But those moments that you’re able to feel that, your body starts to like them. And then the next time you do it, your body may say, I like this. Maybe I’ll stay here. Maybe I’ll make this the habit. And so like we string together moments where we’re able to feel better about our life and our health and our future. And over time, those just start to again be strung together where, wow, we could have a whole day where we feel pretty good and I’m not promising we ever won’t have downs because we’re human. I mean there’s up, there’s down, there’s positive, there’s negative. That’s how it’s designed and so I have negative emotion every single day. It would be weird if I didn’t but it’s how it’s how long I stay there. It’s what I make it mean. It’s kind of how I balance that with the positive.

 

Overcoming MS (29:09)

So there was going to be a question about how you help people create routines to support good days and bad days. Is that connected to what you were just saying then?

 

Amy Behimer (29:18)

Of each of these six areas, you know, I encourage people, because most people are overwhelmed when they come to me. I mean, they’re just, there’s so much information. And so I like to take it a spoke or a pillar at a time and finding one or two things to work on and we give ourselves the whole month, right? It’s what is the goal? How are we going to do it? We follow through, you know, we see how it’s doing and then the next month we kind of get to shift to another area and then another area. again, it’s not necessarily this flashy, drastic overnight, my lifestyle is perfect, but instead it’s this confidence that I know I have a system to look at these different areas and ask myself what do I want to change, start to change it and start to just have this snowball effect of better thoughts, better feelings, better habits, better thoughts, better feelings, better habits. And again, we do it in a way that is science-backed, it’s enjoyable, it’s not overwhelming, you know, it’s supportive and you are always the master of your plan, right? So I call them feel-good habit protocols because what feels good for me may feel very different for you, Geoff. So it’s like, we use the science as a basis, but again, you have to get them out in your real life, experiment with them and see what feels good for you.

 

Overcoming MS (30:43)

What are some of the problems people have, or the traps people fall into when trying to adopt good habits, and are they avoidable?

 

Amy Behimer (30:53)

Absolutely waiting on willpower is one or waiting on motivation is definitely one. There’s an old Latin proverb that says if there’s no wind you have to row and so, you know you likely feel a time when you’re like that was so easy. I did it. Maybe it was when you were first starting a new diet there’s a lot of wind or motivation that comes when we’re trying something new but it’s at month two three year two three when the wind has died down and you know, we may need to learn how to row. And so that is what I’m talking about of building this belief of building this desire for the habits that we want to be doing. Another one again is overwhelm. People thinking that you need to do it all at once or that there’s a perfect diet out there or there’s a perfect movement or something you’re just missing and instead of calming that overwhelm by saying this is what I’m working on right now and all of a sudden when we give ourselves one or two things that time and we trust again that changing this one or two things right now is the way to get to all the other things later. people get excited like wait if I’m only thinking about this you know, and this is enough. Like if we believe that this is enough, the cool thing is, is when you’re learning back to the best kept secret, when you’re learning the skill of how to change habits, it doesn’t matter which one you work on first because you’re building the skill that let’s say you’re working on cutting out sugar or minimizing sugar that makes you feel terrible, you know your cells don’t like, when you go to then try to stick to an exercise routine, it’s not like you’re starting over. You now are someone who has learned some strategies, learned about your brain and what’s going on, learning the skill of changing that works on the next habit and the next habit and the next habit. And it’s, really is this upward spiral where you start to gain this sense of control of how you think, feel, and act that is just empowering.

 

Overcoming MS (32:54)

And with a condition like MS where you can’t control your diagnosis, it’s not consistent, they call it a snowflake condition because everyone’s a bit different to everyone else. What does creating health look like when you can’t control your diagnosis?

 

Amy Behimer (33:10)

When I started working with people and I realized that Okay, I want to help people get healthy. Well, if you look up healthy, the definition is absence of symptoms or disease So I’m like well crap then none of us are healthy and so very quickly I’m like we need to rewrite this definition to one that serves us so one of the first things that we do together and anybody can do is Okay, what is my definition of health if I want to?

Say I am a healthy 41 year old woman living with MS. What does that mean? And there’s been iterations over the past 14 years, but my current definition of health is the pride that I feel when I know that I’m doing what I can to live a really good life with MS and be there for the ones I love. Now nobody can argue with me. That’s my definition of health.

And that’s, if you notice, every single one of those things is in my control. How proud I feel, I’m doing what I can, I’m being there for the people I love, because you know, there are things we can’t control. We can’t control this diagnosis. We can’t control our genes. There are some symptoms that we cannot control. But one of the things we always can control is how we’re thinking about it, how we respond to it versus react to it, and who we are with it. So a lot of it is, who do I want to be with this diagnosis? We have people watching us. have, you know, I have nephews and a niece people have children, grandchildren, and they don’t care that much about my MS. All they care about is who I am with MS. And so thinking about those things we can control is everything.

 

Overcoming MS (34:46)

And so if someone’s being inspired by this and they want to feel more in control of their MS starting right now, where should their starting point be? Where should they begin?

 

Amy Behimer (34:58)

To prevent overwhelm, because like I said, I’ve never met someone who’s not overwhelmed, I would ask yourself, what is one change I want to make? That I have a pretty good idea would help me feel better. Not every single change, but what is one change? If we’re willing to share a link, I did create a quiz that is seven questions. takes about three minutes and it uses what we know about the science to help you identify which area of those six areas could be a good starting point for you. But a lot of it comes down to where do you want to start and trusting that that’s the right thing. So do you want to make a little change to your diet? Do you want to move more? Do you need better sleep or to de-stress? Do you need some work in your mindset? Starting with just one and starting there and not giving up on the goal if it doesn’t go right at first. We just change the plan, right? We just have to find a different strategy. There are ways to get there. It’s just finding and sticking with keeping that goal as long as it takes. You know, it’s so many of us if it doesn’t happen perfectly how we thought we just kind of ditched the plan. I call it quitting on accident. It’s like where did that goal even go? You know and that’s one of the reasons goals fails is we kind of just forget about them. And so again if you take the quiz and you get the area that that is a good place for you to start based on what you want, then yeah, that’s a place to go all in. I share resources as well. And I’m also a reply away on any email. You hit reply, it’s just me. And I respond. I can help point you to a good podcast episode or explore what it looks like to work together or give you some sort of direction based on you. think the other problem that a lot of us have  that advice is not individualized. And so we can see a program or we can see something, a lot of information coming at us that’s not customized to us. So sometimes we just need to be heard. Like, I hear what you’re saying, Amy, but this is my life. This is my situation. This is my problem. And that’s why I will never take away human, know, personalized coaching. Cause it’s like, we need to be heard. That’s something that we need as humans.

 

and something that AI is never gonna be able to do and that customized piece of, yes, this sounds great in theory, but what about my real life? Yeah, let’s talk about that because you’re right. Your real life is gonna give obstacles that you get to find solutions for that work for you.

 

Overcoming MS (37:34)

And firstly, there is ⁓ in the show notes, check out the show notes because there’ll be links to the quiz and other resources. But before we finish, we often ask if there’s anything else or if there’s any tips for someone who was newly diagnosed with MS or they’re new to lifestyle change. So is there any tips you’d give to people new to this?

 

Amy Behimer (37:57)

I think that setting up a date with yourself every day is a really neat idea for a few reasons. When you go to, make different habit changes, whether it’s exercise, whether it’s meditate, whether it’s, you know, change something with your food and you need to prep lunches. Having a time in your day that is protected and set up just for you is something that will always be available to you to be able to insert whatever you’re working on at that time. And so my time in the morning, it’s when I wake up and, you know, nine and a half times out of 10, I use it for a good stretch because my body just functions better when I get some deep breathing and some stretching. But let’s say I want a journal, I have that time protected. Let’s say I want to ship something with how I’m eating, I have that time protected. Let’s say I want to hop on a coaching call, I have that time protected. That, you know just getting in the habit of taking time for you to do something meaningful so that I don’t have the time, doesn’t have to be your go-to for any time you want to make a change.

 

Overcoming MS (39:06)

Okay, thank you very much for that. Thank you very much for joining us. And again, I’d just say check out the show notes. There’ll be links to all of Amy’s resources down there. But thank you very much for joining us, Amy Behimer.

 

Amy Behimer (39:18)

Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate you.