117. Your New Normal: Build Your Baseline Habits

Ever feel like you’re either all in… or completely off the rails?

If every stressful week turns into a full reset, this episode is for you.

In today’s episode of Weight Loss Made Simple, Dr. Stacy Heimburger breaks down why lasting change has nothing to do with motivation or willpower—and everything to do with your baseline habits.

Your baseline isn’t your perfect week.
It’s what you return to when life gets busy, stressful, or messy.

And spoiler: this is exactly how people stop starting over.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What a baseline habit actually is (and what it is not)
• Why motivation fails on hard weeks—and why baselines don’t
• The difference between trying harder and living aligned
• How baseline habits reduce decision fatigue and shame
• The 3 most powerful baselines to build: Food, Movement, Mindset
• How hitting your baseline—even on rough weeks—is success

This episode will help you stop treating every slip as a failure and start building a new normal that actually sticks.

Ready to go deeper?

If you want help building personalized, realistic baseline habits—with support, accountability, and real-life planning—Dr. Stacy’s 6-Week Small Group Coaching is now open.

This is where habits become identity—and consistency stops feeling hard.

👉 Learn more in the show notes or reach out to the team at admin@sugarfreemd.com

👉 Follow along on Instagram: @sugar_freemd

You don’t need another restart.
You need a baseline.

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 the podcast. I’m Dr. Stacy Heimburger. I want to talk about baseline habits. We’ve been working on this all month in Kickstart 2026. I want to say this: lasting change does not come from trying harder. It really comes from deciding what your baseline is and getting back to that baseline as quickly as possible if it starts to feel like it’s falling apart.

Okay, so what is a baseline? A baseline habit—these are the habits we return to no matter what kind of week we are having. Okay, so like the bottom falls out, everything that could go wrong is going wrong. What are the baseline habits that we can say, like, this has to get done because it makes me a normal person, basically, right?

There are weeks where it just really feels like everything is going wrong, and I get it because I feel like that happens more often than I care to admit. But there are some baseline things that we can set up so that we can know we are, like, bare minimum taking care of ourselves.

If we were a child that we had to take care of, we would at the bare minimum make sure they had some sort of food every day, right? We would make sure they were clothed every day, right? We would make sure they were in a clean diaper.

There are baseline things we do even when the world is upside down. Now, would that baby have a bath every day? Probably not, right? My boys—I'm trying to think—would they have a bath? They’re pretty reliant on, they really actually like their bath and they’re old enough now to do it. But at the time when they were younger, no. There are things that will slip when the world is on fire.

But what are some baseline things we can do? So I want you to think of, like, if you were taking care of a child, of a baby, there are things you would do for them, right? It’s easy for ourselves to be like, forget it. Like, it doesn’t matter what I eat. It doesn’t matter if I move. It doesn’t matter what I do about my mindset.

But if we were taking care of ourselves the way we take care of a baby, there are baseline things that we would do. And those are the things I want you to think about. Like, what are the baseline? What is the bare minimum so that my baby’s not in a dirty diaper, right?

What can we do? This analogy might not be working for you, and I apologize, but that’s what’s in my mind, so that’s what you get.

A baseline is what happens not on a perfect week. We are talking about, like, we have our perfect week plan and this is like just shit has gone wrong, okay? So this is the hardest week. This is not normal. This is not our best. This is like default. Like, what can I at least do? This is the baseline I’m talking about.

So this is not what we aspire to, but it is the plan in case it all goes wrong, okay? What I don’t want for 2026 for any of you is for when things get stressful and busy, we just completely neglect ourselves. That is not okay anymore, and so we’re going to stop.

That is my goal for you for 2026, is that we set this baseline. It’s why I did Kickstart 2026. It’s why we’re going to expand on it in the new six-week coaching program that’s starting.

We have to have this baseline so that the wheels don’t completely fall off and we just are not taking care of ourselves at all. So this could be a travel week, where, like, Lord knows all the airlines are having delays all over the place. It could be just a low-energy week. It could be somebody sick. It could be you’re sick, right?

These are not the best weeks, but we are going to have a baseline. And the reason that this matters even more than motivation is that motivation can be really inconsistent, right? Motivation on these really hard weeks is really hard to find sometimes.

And motivation is a feeling, so it’s emotionally driven. It’s a little bit unreliable, okay? Unless we are doing our mindset work, it can be sometimes difficult to produce motivation. But if we have a baseline, it’s just this identity-based, calm, grounded thing that—

— is just like, this is who I am, this is what I do, as opposed to, like, do I feel like it?

Okay, so we’re trying to take out the “do I feel like it,” because when we’re having the kind of weeks I’m thinking of, we don’t feel like any of it. So it needs to be like, is this the baseline of what I do?

So is this the baseline where, like, I’m taking care of the baby, okay? This also prevents starting over, which can feel really overwhelming.

So there’s no starting over if we just went back to our baseline. So instead of when the smoke clears thinking, oh my gosh, I had such a bad week, I was awful, I didn’t do anything, blah, blah, blah—it’s like, wow, I rocked my baseline even on a really difficult week.

So it’s easy to change that mindset, and then we’re not starting over, and then we can feel good and all the things we like, okay?

So I want to talk about the difference between trying hard to do things and being aligned with doing things. This is where that identity-based habit anchor can be really, really important.

So if we are just becoming someone who puts movement into their day, then even on a really bad day—I know one of my baselines is when I’m at the hospital, I take the stairs.

It’s just like, that’s the identity. That’s the baseline, no matter what’s going on. I think the only day that I have missed that in the last year was the day I came back after having the flu, where I literally hadn’t gotten out of bed in three days.

So I did let myself take the elevator up, but I still walked the stairs down, right? So I still could hit that baseline. And so that’s what I’m talking about. It’s this, I am a person who does this now.

And this is easy and this is calm and this is just the plan. This is what I do, as opposed to this very frantic, like, I don’t feel good, but I have to do these things.

So it’s take care of myself in this way, this is my normal—not I have to do this, right? There’s no restriction or punishment or brow beating or willpower, any of that involved.

So it’s this identity-based baseline, and that’s what we need. So I recommend having three baselines.

Okay, and you can tell me no, and that’s fine too. So if your big goal for 2026 is a movement goal, and that’s the one you want to work on, then just have a movement baseline, and that’s fine.

If you want to kind of have the three I’m talking about, it’s going to be a food baseline, a movement baseline, and a mindset baseline.

Those are the three I want to talk about today. If you just want one, that’s fine. There’s no rules to it, except I just don’t want you to just be like, F it, nothing happens.

So this is some baseline of self-care, of caring for ourselves so that we don’t just not make it.

So a food baseline would not be like a meal plan or tracking or anything like that, but it would be like, what does minimum nourishment look like for me? So even when life is so busy, but I still want to feel good, right?

Because we’ve all had those weeks where life is so busy and then we eat like garbage and then we feel terrible, right? So let’s not add misery on top of a bad week already by making ourselves feel gross and bad because we’ve eaten garbage.

So what does bare minimum nourishment look like?

For me, my bare minimum food baseline—and my husband makes fun of me—is I always have nuts in the car. It is a healthy fat, protein. It stops me.

So even if the world is falling apart, like I got stuck at work, I didn’t eat my lunch, I have to run, go get the kids, whatever, I have that there so that I can have a handful of nuts and be satisfied enough to get somewhere that has better options than running through fast food.

So something like that, right? I’m going to have some protein available to me. I’m going to have something squirreled away.

And I’ve talked about having my squirrel foods before. Like, I have a packet of tuna in the desk at work in case I forget my lunch.

So this is kind of those safety net baselines. They’re very similar.

So what is that going to be for you? Is it going to be some sort of protein? Is it going to be having something real? Is it going to be having these things available to you in case you are stuck and can’t get somewhere?

For me, that’s eating enough to avoid chaos later. So I have these little squirrel snacks so that at least I can have that, and then I can make a good decision later. I’m not in the moment just losing my mind.

The baseline is there to prevent extremes. We want to have baselines so that we don’t feel ten times worse later, or we don’t get so hungry that we really can’t make good food decisions later.

So whether that’s squirreling things away, whether that’s having protein, one of the ones I’ve set up unintentionally for the kids is when they’re still hungry at night before bed, they can have a cheese stick.

I don’t want them eating sugar before bed, so they can have that little bit of fat and protein. And so that’s their baseline.

So same way we set that up for our kids, we’re going to set that up for ourselves.

My food baseline really is just having that jar of nuts in the car. Not only has that saved me, it’s actually saved my youngest many times.

Okay, so food baseline.

Second one, movement baseline. So I told you, even on my worst day, I’m going to walk up the stairs at work.

So what movement do you do even when you don’t feel like it? Maybe you’re going to get into a habit in 2026 where you park far away. Maybe you do squats while brushing your teeth.

One of my clients, when she goes to the bathroom, she’ll do a lap around the floor or walk the stairs.

So her bare minimum baseline, even on a bad day, is that when she gets up to use the restroom, she walks.

So some sort of opportunity to move that feels easy and that we can do even when we don’t feel like it.

If you’re on the first or second floor, one flight of stairs—you can do it. I know you can.

So build the habit of, I don’t use the elevator anymore. That’s our identity.

Or we do something while brushing our teeth, or while waiting for coffee to brew, or we park far away.

Maybe aspirational Stacy does yoga every day. I’m not there yet.

But maybe you are. Maybe you can do one sun salutation, one vinyasa, something that feels good.

Mindset baseline—this one is really big and usually the first one to fall away.

Think about how you talk to yourself when things go wrong and what thoughts you practice on purpose.

If there is a thought you’re working on, especially an identity thought, put it on a Post-it on your mirror.

Maybe your mindset baseline is reading it three times every morning.

Resetting without shame could be a great mindset baseline.

I remember one of my coaches saying she just woke up one day and said, I don’t talk mean to myself anymore.

If you do nothing else in 2026 but stop saying mean shit to yourself, your life will be totally different.

Your mindset baseline determines whether one day turns into one month.

So mindset baselines could be gratitude, meditation, deep breaths—some mental reset.

When we set these baselines, we reduce decision fatigue.

Instead of freaking out, we say, today’s a baseline day—and that’s okay.

Mission accomplished.

It prevents emotional spiraling and creates safety.

I’m okay. I hit my baseline today. Tomorrow is a new day.

So if you need help with any of this, my six-week coaching program is starting. You can jump right in.

We’re going to have four seasonal challenges leading into these small, intimate, six-week coaching groups.

Come find me on Instagram or email my team at admin@sugarfreemd.com if you’re ready to jump into coaching.

If not, I’ll talk to you next week.

All right, everybody—have a wonderful, wonderful week.