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Todays show is number 2/6 in my: 6 Step System To Becoming Vegan and Living A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle Long Term series.

It’s a “veganising” of the system I designed many years ago to effectively lose fat (and GAIN a fit, strong, healthy body) by getting your mind working for you and making your best eating and exercising actions simple and sustainable.

To recap, those 6 steps are: Define. Align. Eliminate. Educate. Strategise. Prioritise… and we covered “Define” in show E601.

Today I’m going to focus on:

How To Align Your Goal To Live A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle Long Term.

Creating a fit, healthy #plantstrong body can be an exhausting roller-coaster right?

It’s potentially frustrating and disheartening. An unsustainable willpower battle focused on deprivation with your food, punishment with your exercise and even conflict or at the very least awkward, uncomfortable conversations with loved ones.

Today I will show you how to eliminate the decision making process. You simply do the do because that gets you the result. I call it the “Stop Fighting YOU!” part of the process.

What we’re going to do is ensure living a healthy vegan lifestyle is congruent with everything you are naturally and undeniable drawn to.

Your values, your beliefs and everything you believe to be true about yourself.

Why is aligning this goal absolutely vital?

In any area of your life that you’re not yet experiencing the results you would love there is an in-congruency between what you say you want and the actions you take on a day to day basis.

More-so the beliefs you entertain which lead to the thoughts you have which lead to the decisions you make which lead to (eventually and often subconsciously) the actions you take.

Once living a healthy vegan lifestyle and your values and beliefs… most importantly YOUR IDENTITY BELIEFS are in alignment, taking the actions that will get you (and the planet and the animals) awesome results becomes easy.

There is no more: “Will I, or won’t I?” 

You’re no longer wasting energy on guilt and self-loathing questioning: “Why can’t I be more disciplined?” or berating yourself: “I just need to glue my mouth closed.”

I’ve absolutely been there.

When I first made a habit of regularly getting to the gym I hadn’t taken the time to align my goal with anything.

I was likely just subscribing to ‘society’s ideal’ and wanting to look like one of those super-lean-yet-toned-chicks. Fairly UN-compelling right?

As a result, I’d do the time, sweating out 2 hours a day at the gym and I looked ok however I never managed to achieve the consistency with my food that would allow me to really achieve my goal.

I’d fall for the energy in verses energy out trap.

You know, when you binge on say an entire box of Crunch Nut Cornflakes (that was my Go 2 break-up remedy in my early 20’s and there were a few break-ups to be eaten my way through!) And then hit the gym for death by excruciatingly boring cardio machines for a couple of hours. AND then drag yourself back to the couch with some more cereal or ice-cream or chocolate… it’s a vicIous cycle.

Equally, I see the same disappointing results in the realm of adopting a vegan lifestyle. As much as everything counts for the animals – every meal you’re not eating them or their excretions counts – a wishy washy goal that is not aligned will get you wishy washy inconsistent results.

In Part 1 we defined exactly what living a healthy vegan lifestyle looks like for you. Now we start to make the goal stick by ensuring the actions you need to take it achieve it are non-negotiably aligned with everything you believe to be true about you.

How to Align Your Goal To Live A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle Long Term.

Step 1: Elicit your Values.

Your VALUES are those emotional states or qualities you value before anything else. They determine all of your decision making and therefore your destiny.

What has been of most importance in your life? Not the emotional states you would like to think are your priority – the emotions that have until now been those you have sought out.

=> Think about what truly makes you happy?

=> What gives you a sense of achievement or purpose?

=> Consider where you spend your time and also your money?

Take as long as you need to make a thorough list and then reduce it to just 5-7 values. Now order these top values. Place them in a sentence to test how you feel about them – for example: “What in my life has been more important to me Health or Family?”

Once you have you top values in order it will become clear why you find it so easy to excel in some areas and not in others.

Here are some examples of values though there are 100’s more:

Love  Freedom  Security  Safety  Health  Passion  Vitality  Adventure  Honesty  Integrity  Respect  Growth  Wisdom  Gratitude  Generosity  Playfulness  Uniqueness  Creativity  Happiness  Contribution  Intelligence  Connection  Compassion  Friendship  Trust  Fun.

Step 2: Elicit your Identity Beliefs.

The beliefs you have about yourself also guide the decisions you make. So far as achieving your goal, they can be a massive ally or a ball and chain around your ankle.

Your beliefs are possibility filters, in that you will filter in evidence to support what you believe… and the reverse is just as true.

This is a congruency check where you check in to ensure that the achievement of your specific goal can compliment your best version of you and your ideal lifestyle.

First. This truly is as simple as asking yourself what comes up when I say “I am…” ?

Next. Clarify in what ways these beliefs are serving you and also in what ways they are limiting you (for now just in relation to your goal to Live A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle).

For example: “I am by nature a people pleaser and hate the thought of drawing attention to myself in social occasions.” is NOT doing you any favours. Alternatively: “I am a person of moral integrity who aligns my daily actions with my beliefs whether it’s convenient or not.” IS.

Finally, In the situations where you’ve created rules or habits to support your identity belief that are in conflict with the actions you need to take to achieve your goal… MAKE UP NEW RULES and create new habits!

For example, the people pleaser may be subscribing to the rule: a meal at a friends house means you eat animal products rather than risk causing your host any level of discomfort / inconvenience. Conversely the person who always follows through on their commitments to them-self: is going to politely give the host a heads up and an offer to bring an indulgent vegan meal to share. No excuses!

Step 3: Draw the connection between the achievement of your goal to Live A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle and your most compelling values AND your non-negotiable identity beliefs.

Caveat a) With this part of the process all you’re looking for is what works. Not scientifically proven stats.

It’s basically playing mind games with yourself – for your benefit.

So, using myself to illustrate, if my #1 value is Freedom and I believe I am a person of Integrity then I can choose to believe that being fit and healthy, while living a vegan lifestyle and being able to wear whatever I like, having the energy for everything that is most important to me – IS FREEDOM. Also that as I am both a vegan health coach committed to helping other achieve their best health and their best bodies AND an animal rights activist fighting for a vegan world then to demonstrate INTEGRITY I absolutely have to walk the talk. In addition, I have the belief that one of the more powerful yet unobtrusive forms of animals rights activism is being the picture of fit, strong, happy vegan health. 

Those beliefs are going to get me the result I want.

It takes away the decision making process because when push comes to shove there is way too much pain involved for me even thinking about personally contributing to the exploitation of animals in any way that I can possibly avoid or being trapped in a body I’m not happy with. Also I hate hypocrites.

When I introduce myself as a vegan health coach and people give me the obvious up and down look – as they do, every single time I would be mortified if I didn’t see the (maybe surprised at my lack of protein deficiency!) “yeah, you pass” look on their face. Again, this is a belief that lets me keep the results I want – it really doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, just if it works.

Caveat b) Make it easy for you to succeed.

So you’ve aligned your #1 Value of Love with the attainment of your goal and it also sits congruently with your Identity Belief that: “I am a loving parent who puts my kids first.” This example could be aligned in any way, as long as it resonates with you.

For the purpose of this exercise let’s say you see your ability to be a fit, healthy role model with the energy to spend quality time with your kids and the knowledge to share with them the benefits of compassion for all living beings, real food and regular exercise as limitless fuel to incentivise you to achieve and maintain your goal.

Making it easy for you means: real food like primarily whole foods plant based is what you feed your kids 80% of the time. Organic, raw, oil-free, salt-free superfoods 100% of the time is setting yourself up to fail. Vegan junk food has it’s delicious place – just not at every meal.

Making it easy for you also means: fit and healthy is fitting into your fav jeans and jogging around the park. It’s not run-way skinny or a marathon a week.

Do you know, I’d also say make it easy for you to succeed in your advocacy too. The most exhausting part of maintaining a healthy vegan lifestyle for me has never been the food or the exercise. It’s not even the make-up, clothing or accessories. It’s the conversations with non-vegans and knowing when and how to advocate and when and how to take a break. For the sake of both your relationships and your sanity / happiness and faith in other humans!

Because negotiating relationships with loved ones has been such a steep learning curve for me I’ve both written and podcasted about it a lot and also sought out experts to interview. These are a few previous shows I’ll link to in the show notes:

E538: Vegan Psychologist Clare Mann and Vystopia: the anguish of being vegan in a non-vegan world. iTunes link:

E552: Dr Melanie Joy, Carnism and Creating Effective Communication Between Vegans and Non-vegans. iTunes link:

E595: John Oberg and Effectively Harnessing The Power Of Social Media To Make The World A Kinder Place For Animals. iTunes link:

E501: When Vegans and Non-Vegans Collide. (how to have a positive conversation)

E526: Lessons From Conversations With Carnivores.

E530: Vystopia: Do you struggle with being vegan in a non-vegan world?

What next?

It’s action taking time. To get actionable today I have 3 steps for you:

First to elicit your Values.

Second, to elicit your Identity Beliefs and create rules / habits to support the actions you need to take to achieve your goal.

Thirdly, to draw the connection between GOAL : VALUES : BELIEFS that will make those habits easy and sustainable.

In show 605 I’ll be back with Part 3 of my 6 Step System To Becoming Vegan and Living A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle Long Term. We’ll cover: How To Eliminate Limiting Beliefs and Live A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle Long Term.

This is the part of the process that I really let held me back. I still feel guilty and angry at myself even though I know there’s no value in that. For whatever reason, I didn’t do my due diligence and I believed the propaganda fed to us by animal agriculture, mainstream media and government.

I thought “free range organic” meant something to the chickens whose egg’s I greedily demolished because I thought “the more the better with protein” because I thought “being fit and lean” was a measure of success and I thought you couldn’t get “fit and lean with muscle via a vegan lifestyle.”

I bought into all that crap-o-la.

If you have too – well firstly in E604: Journalist and Media Coach Katrina Fox Chats Mainstream Media Spin On Animals Rights Actions And Activists we discuss just how much money and effort is funnelled into keeping consumers in the dark.

Katrina Fox was a joy to chat to and I’m excited to share our conversation with you in just a few days.

Secondly so far as escaping the crap-o-la and doing your due diligence there’s an abundance of evidence available to help you eliminate any limiting beliefs and lock and load all the supportive beliefs you need to live a healthy vegan lifestyle and we’re going to dig in with it in show 605.

I look forward to hanging with you then.

That’s it for today in Healthification. Huge thanks to YOU for sharing this week with me. You rock and I appreciate your support!

The Healthification podcast is proudly bought to you by my FREE ‘Easy Vegan’ plan. It took me 25 years to transition from a meat eater to a happy, healthy Vegan! You can do it in just 3 days with  my simplified ‘easy vegan’ plan!  Get the fit, strong, and healthy plant based body you deserve… while avoiding ALL the mistakes I made along the way!

Till next time, remember Creating a body and life you love is Freedom. (If this ex-carb queen, non genetically gifted, naturally uncoordinated vegan chick can do it – so can YOU!!!)

If you liked “How To Align Your Goal To Live A Healthy Vegan Lifestyle Long Term” you’ll also like: Creating The Most Effective Fat Loss Mindset For Vegans PLUS Month In Review

If you’re yet to share the Healthification love – just click here to zip over to iTunes and leave an honest rating and review. It’d help me out big time. With gratitude, Kate.