In the past year, my understanding of time has changed. Becoming a parent has a way of reorganizing your day and your priorities. Like many of my patients, I now move through mornings that feel compressed, afternoons that disappear quickly, and evenings that arrive before I’m quite ready for them.
What this has made very clear to me, both personally and in clinical practice, is that most people are not struggling because they don’t care about their health. They are struggling because their days are full, their energy is limited, and the idea of adding one more thing can feel unrealistic.
This is where routine becomes less about discipline and more about structure.
Our bodies respond to rhythm. When sleep, meals, movement, and wake times happen in a somewhat predictable pattern, the body settles. Energy becomes more stable. Hunger cues make more sense. Stress feels more manageable, to name a few. I’ve been reminded of this in a very simple way at home. With a newborn, even a small routine — a bath before bed, dimming the lights, feeding at similar times — helps regulate his entire nervous system. It doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. As humans, we don’t outgrow that need for rhythm; our lives just become more crowded.
When those patterns are constantly changing — when we skip meals, stay up late, push hard for a few days and then stop entirely — the body experiences that as stress.
The all-or-nothing approach is often the hidden barrier. There is a tendency to try to overhaul everything at once: new workouts, new meal plans, new schedules. It works for a week, sometimes two, and then life intervenes. When the plan collapses, it feels like failure, even though the real issue was that the plan never fit into real life to begin with.
Routine is different. Routine is smaller. It is quieter. It is something you return to rather than something you achieve.
This is also why motivation is not the most useful tool. Motivation is variable. It changes with sleep, stress, workload, and the general unpredictability of life. Routine does not rely on how you feel in the moment. It reduces the number of decisions you have to make and creates a default pattern that you follow even on the days you are tired or busy.
One of the most common patterns I talk about in clinic is breakfast. Skipping the first meal of the day often seems efficient, but it sends mixed signals to the body. Eating in the morning helps set the rhythm for hunger and fullness, supports more stable energy, and reduces the intensity of cravings later in the day. It gives both the gut and the brain a clear message that the day has begun.
None of this requires an hour-long routine. In fact, routines that depend on large blocks of time rarely last.
A routine can be as simple as five minutes in the morning without your phone — not checking email, not scrolling, just allowing your body to wake up before the day starts pulling at your attention. It might include ten minutes of intentional movement. For some people that is a walk, for others it is a few yoga poses, or simply laying out a mat and sitting on it for a few minutes. If movement feels like too much, stepping outside and putting your face in the light — even on a cloudy day — is enough to begin establishing a pattern.
These actions are small, but they create a signal. They tell your body: this is when we wake, this is when we move, this is when we eat, this is when the day begins — not so different from the simple patterns we create for a baby.
Over time, those signals become habits. Habits become routines. And routines make change possible, not because they are intense, but because they are repeatable.
The goal is not to do everything. The goal is to choose a few things that you can return to, even in busy seasons. Consistency is less about doing more and more about doing the same small things over and over again.
If you are trying to make a change, start by asking a different question. Not “What is the perfect plan?” but “What is something small I can do most days?”
That is where progress begins.
