113. Bare-Minimum Habits That Actually Work

December is basically a holiday obstacle course — and if you’re feeling like your routines are slipping through your fingers, this episode is your safety net. Today, we’re breaking down how to stay consistent without perfection, pressure, or pretending you suddenly have more free time than you actually do. Spoiler: you don’t.

Instead, I’m giving you The Bare-Minimum Blueprint — tiny, doable, non-negotiable habits that keep you feeling grounded and in control, even when life looks like a glitter-covered circus.

Inside the episode, we cover:
✨ Why December is exactly the time to simplify
✨ How to stop the all-or-nothing spiral before it starts
✨ Why “bare minimum” isn’t slacking — it’s strategy
✨ Six tiny habits you can pick from (choose 1–3!)
✨ Micro habits you can do even while traveling
✨ How these small actions build the identity you want for January

You’ll walk away knowing exactly what your “no matter what” habit is — the one thing you’ll do to support yourself through the rest of the year.

Want a place to track your bare-minimum blueprint? Grab my free Habit Tracker here:
 👉 www.sugarfreemd.com/habits

Free 2-Pound Plan Call!
Want to jump start your weight loss? Schedule a free call where Dr. Stacy Heimburger will work with you to create a personalized plan to lose 2 pounds in one week, factoring in your unique circumstances, challenges, and aspirations. Schedule now! www.sugarfreemd.com/2pound

This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back to Weight Loss Made Simple. I'm Dr. Stacey Heimberger. I want to talk to you today about how to set like a bare minimum. All right, I want us to be able to stay consistent. We are like in full swing here, middle of December, but we've got a couple weeks left and I don't want you to just throw in the towel and be like, I'll start in January. I'll be there for you in January, but I feel like we've got a couple weeks left and I want to help you.

like navigate this obstacle course, okay? Life might be a little bit like a circus right now, and that's okay. So we're going to just have some tiny bare minimum things that we do, the bare minimum blueprint, all right? That's going to get us through the rest of this month. So your brain might be saying like, forget it, can we just like, can I just see you in January, Stacey? Like we'll just start then, but no.

Let's just simplify and get her done, okay? You're not weak, like we don't need to start over. We can do some bare minimum things even though we feel maxed out. I promise this will feel better because it will be this little piece of control that you have and this little bit of a nice thing that you are doing for yourself to sort of get through these next couple of weeks.

So we're just going to simplify, simplify, simplify, and I'm going to teach you sort of, or give you some options for some bare minimum that we are going to do. This is not a downgrade from your routine necessarily. Think of it like a safety net, right? Instead of going just like totally off the rails, we're going to pick maybe one or two things that are just going to keep us

from totally falling, right? It's like a tightrope walker. There's a net under there. So this is just setting our net. This is not like slacking off or like giving up. Just, let's have a net there in case we fall, okay? Because there's a lot going on and it might happen. So this is like a strategy, not a slacking off, okay?

Bare minimum is a beautiful thing because as you know, if we're doing this like all or nothing swing and we have a little blip, our brain can just be like, ugh, I blew it. It's only two weeks. I'll just start in January.

or when Mercury leaves retrograde or whatever, right? But we're just going to have a safety net there, a little bit of a lower bar. I want just a way for us to say, I did not quit. I did a simple version to like help me slide through to January. So I want to give you some options of things that you can decide are your bare minimum. So this is like your non-negotiable.

This is one thing I'm going to do so that I can look back come January and be like, I did this for myself and isn't that amazing. Okay, so this needs to be something you can do even on your worst day. So I'm going to give you options. You do not need to do all of them. You can just pick one. You can, if you're like, my routine is so stable and so amazing, nothing can shake it, amazing. Do that. I'm not telling you to not do your routine.

This is if you're like feeling it, you're like it's starting to crumble away a little bit. Like there's too much going on. Like there's too many activities and you like can kind of feel it slipping through your fingers. This is the safety net, right? So we're like falling off the rope a little. These are some ideas. So we can pick what our movement or our OTM, right? What's the tiniest possible deposit into that little

ATM of OTMs that we can do, right? So what opportunity to move would be like the baseline movement? So that could be lots of things, right? We could do one flight of stairs. So when I go to the hospital, it's one flight of stairs. So I made a decision, I don't even know how many months ago, like I was done with the elevator. So maybe that, so that's like one of my bare minimums, right? I will take the stairs at work.

Maybe it's, will stretch while my coffee brews. Maybe it's, I'll do five squats while I'm brushing my teeth. Maybe it's marching in place during a Zoom call. Maybe it's a 30 second wall sit. Maybe it is a short walk, right? Like the dog needs to go out. I might as well walk the dog. If you are a walker and you take walks and you walk your dog, I know that you've got lots of routes, right? We've got like the good route.

And then we've got like, we don't have enough time, so we do this route, right? So what's the bare minimum route? What's the little route? Like where we can just do that one. We could also just set a timer for one minute and do anything. Dance, like jumping jacks, whatever you want to do. Just stretch your ankles, right? So just what is your tiniest movement baseline? That's one option.

Okay, we can do that. Be like, no matter what, I'm doing this. So I know three days a week, I'm taking one flight of stairs, that's one.

Here's another option, it's more like nutrition. What if we have something around protein? So I'm not saying we need to go for like our 100 grams a day or whatever, this is our bare minimum. So that might mean just adding protein to whatever you're eating, right? So just with this mindset of can I add a little protein to that? That's all, right? So can I...

Like I'm packing a snack or I'm grabbing a snack. Can I like have a cheese stick with that? I don't know. Can I add chicken to my dinner? Can I add chicken to my salad? Can I add collagen to my coffee? Can I, you know, I love those protein, like the perfect amino or these protein tablets. Like, can I just maybe take those in the morning, right? If nothing else, I'll take and I'll have a little. But maybe just adding protein. So can I just add? Can I just do a little?

add a little something something, okay? So maybe that's one. Maybe we just want to like go down the mindfulness route, right? You see how I'm giving you like one from everything I teach. So mindful, maybe we're just going to pause before we eat. Maybe we're just going to do a check-in. Maybe that's the best we can do right now. And this is actually amazing. So this is not a little thing. But before I take my first bite, how am I feeling? What do I need? Which F am I eating for?

like fuel, feelings or flavor. That's it, no judgment, no changing the plan or anything like that, just this little 30 seconds of awareness. Maybe we want to do that with a couple of rounds of our box breathing, our little mini meditation, and that's amazing. What, like a minute of mindfulness before we eat. Awesome. So maybe that's it. Water, maybe.

We, while we're Christmas shopping, I did this, honestly. While we're Christmas shopping, we get ourselves a new water cup, right? And we carry that around with us because it's new and it's fun and we take some extra sips. So maybe that's your bare minimum. I'm going to bring my new water cup wherever I go and every time I change position, I'm going to take a sip of water. So if I'm sitting in my car and I'm getting out of the car, I'm going to take a sip before that happens. When I get in the car and I go from standing to sit, I'm going to take a sip. When I go...

sit at my desk, standing to sitting, I'll take a sip. Okay, that's kind of like a fun little water one, okay?

Maybe we want to just like, we are feeling super anxious. So we know we need to be more on like the mindfulness side. Maybe we just ground a little bit, right? Put our feet on the ground, sit down and just get out of our head for one minute, right? Do any of the mini meditations that if you listened to last week, I gave you a bunch. So maybe just do one of those. Okay, here's another one. What if we just tidy up a little bit?

Right? All of the stuff can be very anxiety driven, driving, I guess. All the things around our house are asking for something to be done for them or with them, right? And so maybe we just need a little bit less. So maybe it's, take two minutes to like clear some clutter, clear one counter, throw out one old item, right? If you get a really good feeling from purging stuff, like,

Maybe you throw away one thing every day in December or whenever you're feeling that anxiousness, like go to the closet, get rid of something, okay? I actually love making the kids do this about this time, one or two or even three, four weeks before the holidays, have them purge stuff too. And then I put it on Facebook and that way people who are having a tough time can get those toys, right? So they don't have to worry about not having toys for Christmas. So this...

is going to air like middle of December, perfect time. Okay, so maybe you go do that and it's like you get rid of some stuff and declutter a little bit, somebody gets to have some stuff for Christmas they wouldn't normally get to have and everybody wins. Okay, so maybe it's just a clean or a reset or just one thing, okay?

Let's say we're traveling. A lot of us are traveling, right? So maybe we just think of one thing to do while we're traveling. So that is either like maybe we stretch before we get on the plane. Maybe we take a lap before we get on the plane. Maybe we protein ourselves before we get on the plane, right? We bring something with us. We can still do the pausing. We can still do the water reset, right? So all those little...

bare minimum things we talked about, we can do even while we're traveling, right? So we can do that movement, OTM, we can do that protein anchor, we can do that pause before eating, we can do the water reset, we can do all those things even if we're traveling. So these are very, very easy, okay? These habits are not like our big, bold goals for 2026. These are like, what can I still do to take care of me?

during these final weeks of the year when things are a little bit busy. So we can just remind ourselves like, I'm someone who takes care of me, right? I'm someone who can be consistent even when life is crazy. I'm someone who can adapt. I don't need to quit, right? Aren't these wonderful things to be able to think about ourselves come January. So that's why I wanted to talk to you guys about this today. I wanted to give you some ideas, short little episode today, but I just want to...

introduce you to the idea that it is not all or nothing. Like we can do just these bare minimum just to stay consistent so that we can have that identity come January that I didn't quit on myself. Like I kept doing these things even when things were really, really, really crazy. So again, if you want to track things, I've got the habit tracker for you. You can go download that.

it's sugarfreeMD.com forward slash habits and you can use that for your bare minimum blueprint. But I really encourage you just to take maybe two minutes and think about this today. Maybe it already popped for you while I was talking, you're like, yes, I'm definitely going to do that thing. And it doesn't need to be anything that I talked about. Maybe it's something else, just something that you're like, this is happening, this is happening.

No matter what I can do this no matter what this feels so easy I can do it no matter what and if you are feeling like it's hard Make it smaller Okay, so if taking three sips of water All day long feels too much Maybe like I'll just take an extra sip when I take my medicine or I'll try and drink some water before my coffee Right, just one small tiny thing so we can put that in any realm

If you're really feeling ambitious, you can do one in every realm. But remember, it can be anything with movement, anything with nutrition, anything with mindfulness, anything with sort of water, sleep. I didn't even give you an option for sleep, but we could do one like, I'm going to make sure I go to bed on time, right? Maybe that's our bare minimum. Like, I'm not going to stay up all night wrapping presents or whatever it is. I'm going to go to bed on time. All right, I hope this was helpful. As always, feel free to tag me on Instagram. Tell me.

what your bare minimum was, what you've set up and is working for you. And if it's not, reach out, I'm happy to help. All right, until then, I will see you next week, guys. Bye.