If you’re hoping this is another post about cutting carbs or the five workouts that will finally change everything—take a breath. This is different.

At The Living Well and inside the Nourished Planner community, we don’t chase health. We live it. We believe health isn’t found in a number, a magic pill, or a perfectly tracked macro. It’s created through small, daily choices that either nourish your life or drain it.

Instead of obsessing over calories or rules, let’s look at the 10 common mistakes that might be quietly sabotaging your health, even if you’re “doing everything right.”

1. Believing It’s All About the Numbers

If your mood rises and falls based on the scale or your calorie tracker, it may be time to rethink your approach. Numbers can inform, but they can also imprison. When we obsess over measurements, we lose sight of quality, nourishment, enjoyment, and how food and movement actually make us feel. Which is the metric we actually want to change.

New mindset: Stop focusing so much on the metric and balance that with how you feel. Choose ingredients with life in them. Choose meals that give you energy. Choose habits you actually want to live with.

2. Avoiding deep and meaningful connections.

Connection is what provides value and meaning to life. Research repeatedly shows that those with strong social ties are healthier and live longer.

It’s time to get relational. It’s time to go deep, get intimate, and close to friends and family. Choose to live life with others rather than alone. Light a spark in your marriage, schedule coffee with a friend, or host that dinner party you’ve always dreamed of. Whoever comes to mind, invest in that relationship.

Remind yourself that health is relational.

3. Living an over-scheduled life.

From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, do you ever take a moment to just breathe? Society has tied busyness to success, but we know differently. It’s often the opposite because stress and overcommitment silently drain your health, moving you away from your outcomes, not toward them.

Go back and re-evaluate your schedule, knowing slow is fast and fast is slow. Remove the obligations that don’t matter. Protect space to just be. Trust that creating margin isn’t lazy, it’s life-giving.

4. Living outside of your values.

Do your days align with what truly matters to you? Or are you living by someone else’s expectations? When your work, your routines, and your health choices don’t reflect your core beliefs, you not only feel stuck, unsatisfied, and heavy, but you are.

Your life should be a reflection of your values. Instead of living based on someone else’s design, know your own. Clarify what matters. Let your beliefs drive your choices and watch how it shifts your energy.

Health isn’t just a habit. It’s a reflection of your values.

5. Getting stuck in a routine.

Routines can be a really great asset in life. They can support you and your movement towards your goals. But they can also hold you back, especially if your routine is not leading you in the direction you desire.

You can’t do the same thing every day and expect different results. That’s the definition of insanity. Instead, evaluate your routine to understand whether it is helping or hurting you. If it’s helping, keep going. But if it’s not creating forward movement and growth, it’s time to make a change.

It doesn’t have to be a big shift. Try a small switch. Adjust your morning, workout, or how you plan meals. You don’t need a drastic change. A simple change can provide just enough energy to ignite momentum.

6. Spending Time Consuming Rather Than Contributing

We live in a world designed to keep us consuming. Whether that’s content, information, or entertainment, we tend to take in more than we need or even should. It’s not to say that consuming is wrong, but it needs to be balanced with contribution.

Instead of consuming all the time, try using your skills, giving to others, and creating. The balance of both is what energizes your mind, body, and soul.

Try this: Play the game instead of watching. Journal instead of bingeing another podcast. Cook for friends and family. Contribution is often a hidden shortcut to health and purpose.

7. Chasing the Life You Wish For Instead of Creating It

We’re taught to chase, using speed as a means to find health, happiness, even the “ideal” life. But chasing is exhausting. Not to mention, it’s often done out of alignment with your values. Truth be told, it’s not even possible.

Most of the things you chase are meant to be caught, creating an impossible run.

Health, happiness, and meaning exist right here, right now. You don’t have to chase it. You just have to create it. Choosing to show up and live life right here in this moment.

8. Confining Yourself to the Indoors

Fresh air, sunlight, and movement outdoors are some of the simplest yet most powerful tools for health. Yet most of us stay inside, buried in chores or screens. Getting outside should be one of the most important elements of your daily life. Research indicates that even 10 minutes of daily sunlight can change the way you show up in life.

Step outside. Walk. Feel the sun. Let your mind reset. Your body and soul will thank you.

9. Eating on the Go or Alone

It’s easy to do, especially when the life you’re attempting to live is outpacing how you want to live. Eating on the go or alone seems to be the norm. But it misses the meaning of why we eat. Food is not just fuel. It’s relational. Who you eat with, if anyone, can change how you digest it.

Food is meant to connect us to a place, each other, and even ourselves. Not to mention, eating at your desk, in your car, or standing over the sink keeps your body in stress mode and disrupts digestion.

Allow yourself to slow down. To sit. Share a meal. Enjoy conversation. Eating with presence changes how food nourishes you, physically and emotionally.

10. Believing You Are Unworthy of Health

Your beliefs about yourself shape your reality. That’s why it’s critical to pay attention and re-address your beliefs. If you secretly think you’re undeserving of care, wellness, or energy, you’ll unconsciously sabotage your own health.

As Brené Brown says: “People who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of it.”

Health begins with permission. Decide today: you are worthy. You are deserving. You can show yourself love. Use that to propel you to live out your God-given dreams and purpose.

Live Health, every day

Health is more than diet and exercise. It’s a lifestyle, a choice, a daily practice of honoring your mind, body, and soul. You are unique. Your health should reflect that.

The Nourished Planner isn’t just a calendar. It’s a tool to help you make these choices tangible. To protect space, clarify values, track intentions, and live in health without chasing it.

Choose today to stop chasing health and start living it.

Join the Nourished Planner community and begin your journey toward a life that truly nourishes you every day.