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Personal trainer Jayd Harrison gives step-by-step guidance for building a body that you love.

Getting in shape can be overwhelming, but I’ve broken down the process into 3 steps that you can add to your life at your own pace:

👉 Step 1: Get More Active

👉 Step 2: Clean Up Your Diet

👉 Step 3: Work Out Effectively

I’ve used this 3-step process to help my clients over the last 10 years to make meaningful and sustainable changes to their body composition.

One of the things that makes this process so powerful is that it incorporates habit stacking. This involves attaching a new desired healthy habit to something you already do every day. Once something becomes firmly settled as a habit in your life, you “stack” another healthy habit on top of the existing one. This process repeats again and again as you build your healthy lifestyle.

This slow reshaping of your lifestyle is an effective way to change your body composition because it works with your body and brain—not against it. We humans are creatures of routine and habit. Any changes to our routines (no matter how healthy) are going to be resisted. This is why so many people struggle to lose weight and keep it off in the long run.

However, when we take the time to slowly integrate healthier behaviors into our daily routine by attaching them to already-existing habits, it makes the transition to a healthier lifestyle a lot less stressful on our systems. Although this method may be slower than the “quick fixes” that short-term diets, cleanses, and extreme workout problems may promise, in the long run, you’ll end up losing more weight, building more muscle, and maintaining your physique for a much longer time.

For this process to work most effectively, I suggest starting with the easiest-to-implement behaviors and attaching them to already-existing routines. From there, you can add on more pieces over time as your new healthy habits settle into place.

Step 1: Get More Active

One of the easiest healthy habits to start adding to your life is everyday movement. Our bodies are built for movement, and so they look and feel their best when we get up and moving frequently every day.

To stack this habit, I suggest incorporating things like going on short walks or doing some light stretches to something that you know you’re going to do on most days. For example, you could go for a 10-20 minute walk on your lunch break at work. Or add a short yoga stretch session to your bedtime routine to help you relax. Check out the list below for more “stackable” activities to increase your everyday movement:

Ways to Get More Active:

• Take the stairs

• Take the long route

• Walk or bike to work or to the store

• Desk exercises

• Active breaks

• Lunchtime walks

• Use a standing desk

• Standing meetings

If you’re a goals-driven person, you could set either a daily steps goal or a total-minute goal of activity each week.

> Daily Steps Goal: Use a pedometer, a fitness tracker, or your smartphone to track your steps every day:

• Level 1: 3,000 and 5,000 steps (for sedentary individuals)

• Level 2: 5,000 and 7,000 steps (for individuals who have some activity already)

• Level 3: 7,000 and 10,000 steps (for individuals who are already somewhat active)

> Weekly Activity Goal: The American Heart Association recommends getting a total of between 150 and 300 minutes of moderate-intensity activity each week to be healthy and maintain a healthy body weight. Moderate-intensity activity is anything that gets your heart rate elevated in a moderate-intensity zone (between 64% and 76% of your max heart rate). Wear a fitness tracker or heart rate monitor to keep an eye on your heart rate as you do your daily movement.

Step 2: Clean Up Your Diet

Another easy “stackable” healthy habit that will help you clean up your diet is to follow what I call the Healthy Plate model. This is my take on the MyPlate & Harvard Plate models for healthy eating.

Whenever you sit down to plan a meal, keep in mind the following graphic:

On half of your plate, fill it up with 1-2 servings of vegetables. On the other half of the plate, split the plate between a lean source of protein and either a grains-based food or starchy vegetable.

What I love most about the Healthy Plate model is its simplicity and adaptability. The Healthy Plate model encourages you to “plug and play,” using what you have available. Keeping the Healthy Plate graphic in mind, there are infinite combinations of healthy meals that you could create. All you have to do is know your food groups:

🍖 Protein: On at least a quarter of your plate, include a lean source of protein. Protein is both a source of energy for your body and a building block for your body tissues (like muscle). Eating a high-protein diet will help your body to more efficiently build muscle and keep your metabolism boosted (high-protein in this context means 20% of your daily calories come from protein). Prioritize lean sources of protein–items that come with little to no saturated fat like white meat (chicken breast & turkey breast), egg whites, fish, plant protein sources (tofu, tempeh, & edamame), and lean cuts of red meat. 

🥦 Veggies (Vegetables): On half of your plate, include 1-2 servings of veggies. Veggies (or vegetables) are plants (or parts of plants) that you can eat. Fruits and grains are also plants, but we usually reserve the term “vegetable” for specific parts of the plant like the roots (like carrots and turnips), leaves (like lettuce and spinach), stems (like celery), bulbs (like garlic and onion), and flowers (like broccoli). Veggies are a great source of carbohydrates and healthy fats (i.e., unsaturated fats).

🌽 Grains/Starches: On the remaining quarter of your plate, include a grain or starchy food. Grains are essentially seeds and include foods made from wheat (bread & pasta), rice, quinoa, and oats. Try to include whole grains as much as possible (things like brown rice, oatmeal, whole wheat, quinoa, etc) in place of refined grains (white wheat, white bread, or white rice). Whole grains are more generally more nutritious, having more vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber than refined grains.

Some vegetables (like potatoes, corn, yuca, and plantains) are high in Starches (complex carbohydrates). Starchy vegetables tend to be high-calorie, and may not be suitable for every diet (for example, people with Type II Diabetes may want to avoid them). These kinds of vegetables should be limited to no more than a quarter of your plate, especially if you are trying to burn fat. 

🍎 Fruit: Fruits are plant products that tend to be higher in sugar content, giving them a sweet taste. This group is optional and can take up 1 portion of the vegetables side of your plate. They include things like berries, cherries, apples, grapes, pears, and mangoes. The higher sugar and calorie content of fruits make them a food to be eaten in moderation–no more than a quarter of your plate at meal times. 

Give yourself time to practice and master building a Healthy Plate at every meal. If you feel overwhelmed, I suggest starting with just one meal a day. For example, you could say “At lunch time I’m going to follow the Healthy Plate model and eat like I normally do for breakfast and dinner.” Once you feel more comfortable with following the Healthy Plate at lunchtime, then you can begin to work on making your dinners follow the Healthy Plate model.

Another way to gradually “stack” this behavior is to break the Healthy Plate model down into its different food groups and work on adding just one at a time gradually to your daily diet. For example, you could say “I’m going to add a serving of vegetables at lunchtime” every day until it becomes a habit. After that, you could say, “I’m going to focus on getting a good source of protein in my lunch every day.” Once that habit is established, you could say “Now I’m going to focus on getting whole grains into my lunch every day.” So on and so forth.

The Healthy Plate model is a great place to start when it comes to cleaning up your diet. It will allow you to give your body the much-needed nutrition it needs to look and feel its best.

Many people make a ton of progress in their fat loss journeys by following the Healthy Plate model alone. However keep in mind that if you hit a plateau (i.e., stop making progress), then it may be time to consider tracking and managing your calories and macros.

When you’re ready to dive into calories and macros, you’ll need to track what you eat every day. But don’t feel like you have to track what you eat if you don’t feel ready for that yet! Just focus on the Healthy Plate model first.

If you’d like more support, check out my Healthy Diet Makeover program where I’ll walk you step-by-step through cleaning up your diet in more detail. In this program, I’ll teach you how to incorporate the Healthy Plate Model, set a calorie & macronutrient goal, and plan your meals around your goals. Click below to learn more:

Healthy Diet Makeover

Clean up your diet in 5 simple steps with nutrition coach Jayd Harrison.

Step 3: Add Workouts

Once you have a well-established routine of getting active every day, you can take your activity to the next level by turning some of that activity every week into workouts.

“Workouts” are just sessions of focused exercise. There are many different types of workouts, and some are better than others at helping your body to burn fat and build muscle.

I suggest turning 2 or 3 of your activity times each week into mobility & resistance training workouts. These workouts will help to improve your coordination, balance, and flexibility while combating the loss of lean muscle tissue that often happens when you lose weight.

Check out my series of guided workout videos on my vimeo channel if you’d like to learn how to tone your body and get strong:

Body Sculpt

Build strength and tone your body with expert-guided workouts by Jayd Harrison.

It takes a lot of brain power to incorporate new habits—so give yourself time in each step. With enough time and consistency, you’ll reach a point where you’ll be able to do each thing without having to think about it too much or push yourself to show up as much.

You’re not going to be perfect, but you don’t have to be. Just focus on doing 1% better every day 😊

And remember—I’m here to help. Come hang out with me while I’m live on my Twitch channel throughout the week. You can also connect in the Coaching Corner Discord server to find community and get your questions answered there. Check out the programs mentioned above if you’d like more help on eating better or working out.

ABOUT JAYD HARRISON

Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and content creator. She helps people to build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with her online coaching programs and social media content. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch and follow on social media:

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