What is Core 5?
Core 5 is a tool to enhance clarity around improving our health. The Core 5 refer to 5 broad habit areas. By recognizing our current habits in these areas, we can find impactful changes to make. The Core 5 are:
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Eating
- Stress Management
- Hydration
Core 5 isn’t a specific school of thinking toward healthy living. It’s a very broad tool that needs to be tailored to each of us as individuals. If you find yourself thinking, “I have to do this,” or “I should do this”, it’s not Core 5. Core 5 is not “the way”. It is a simple, memorable tool to help us consider where we could make healthy change, if and only if we want to. It requires honesty with ourselves as to which area could use some work, and from there we implement tiny tweaks. The easier we can make healthy change, the better, don’t you think?
Who is Nicholas?
Not too long ago, I was waking up on a Tuesday morning, a bit nervous as I planned on giving a presentation to my team at work that day. I would be speaking to my colleagues, fellow health coaches, on practicing nonjudgement. I had prepared for weeks to speak confidently on this, which for an introvert like me is a tall task. As fate would have it, the company I had been working for made some layoffs early that afternoon and I found myself out of a job. At least I didn’t have to give a presentation – phew!
After taking a few days to be grumpy and yell out “Why me?” to the universe, I had a couple important questions to answer. “How could I now use my knowledge and experience of clinical health coaching and behavior change to be of service? And how could I do this in a robust manner so it would be practically useful for people? Not something annoying and unhelpful.” For example, I want Core 5 to be practically useful for busy students, for single, working parents, and for those with ample time and money.
My Mission
Core 5’s mission is to share knowledge and insights on how people make healthy lifestyle changes and maintain those changes for a lifetime. I want to show that improving our health is attainable for anyone who wants it, that it can be simple despite the overwhelming amount of health info out there, and to normalize struggles that we all face when making lifestyle changes.
My background is in genetics, and programming before that. Some years ago, I was leaving undergrad with plans to pursue a PhD in genetics. Around then, I received a job offer for something completely new to me at the time – health coaching. I decided I wasn’t ready for more school. I took a chance with jumping into this new field and gave it my all. What started as a scary decision resulted in my falling in love with health coaching. I found myself waking up excited and energized on Monday mornings because I knew I had a chance to make a pivotal impact on someone’s life that day.
Why I Created Core 5
According to the CDC as of 2022, more than half of adults in the United States have a chronic lifestyle disease like cancer, stroke, and heart disease. These lifestyle diseases account for upwards of 50% of the deaths in the US. They account for the majority of healthcare costs. We’re talking trillions of dollars per year. Diabetes (high blood sugar), hypertension (high blood pressure), and obesity are rising globally.
These diseases are preventable through lifestyle change. For those with them, lifestyle change can lead to a significantly healthier life. By using the Core 5 as a tool we can see where we can make impactful change in our lives. We can take control into our own hands. We can greatly cut down our risk of these diseases resulting in longer, more energized, more secure lives, not to mention the mental and physical benefits. If this sounds good, Core 5 is for you.
The US healthcare system was designed to treat severe conditions. It isn’t great at helping people build a healthy lifestyle for our whole selves. I am optimistic that prevention will become a greater focus as we move further into the 21st century, rather than just slapping on band-aids when something goes wrong. I want to show that being proactive doesn’t have to be scary, overwhelming, expensive, or time consuming. It’s within reach for everyone. Core 5 is about making a minimal, upfront investment of behavior change to gain significant benefits for the rest of our lives.
About Core 5 Health – How it Can Help
We live in a world that pushes the “more more more” philosophy right up in our faces. “Spend more, buy more, do more, work harder, sleep less,” and so on. In my opinion, we go too far and have created a profoundly sick world for those of us who subscribe too intensely to the “more more more.” I’m here to tell you that if you strive for simplicity – implement the basics of the Core 5 habit areas, making the tiniest tweaks imaginable, and let the effects compound over time – it will be enough to live an incredibly healthy, long life.
Core 5 is meant to be robust. It can be overwhelming if we try to take on more than one area at once. If we go through each of the 5 areas one at a time and are honest with ourselves, we can find what we’re happy with and what we’d like to change. This takes time. Weeks, months, years even. Working on only one of the Core 5 at a time is key. (For more, see my article on Comfortable Lifestyle Change). Motivation will never be 100% reliable, it tends to come in waves. Therefore, we must build habits that become so automatic that we do them despite what our motivation is like that day. This is not a race. In fact, those who go slower when making lifestyle changes have an easier time and end up with stronger habits.
Why I Won’t Be Telling You What to Do
Not every area of the Core 5 will be for everyone. We must pick and choose. Each of us should only work on what appeals to us. I believe that knowledge belongs to everybody so Core 5 is a free source. I want you to look into what interests you and disregard what doesn’t.
My goal is not to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. You’re the best judge of that because you know yourself best (for more, see There’s Only One True Expert on your Health). It’s often not the “what” that people need. Most are aware of changes they could make. The key is being able to do it in a manner where it is reasonably easy to make the changes and maintain them. So, Core 5 will not be a “Do this, this, and this, and you’ll be golden,” kind of approach.
In health coaching, we refer to this as honoring someone’s autonomy. Letting them always make the decisions on what they want to do. This increases peoples’ beliefs that they are capable of healthy change. They build self-confidence and can then go and make healthy change on their own for the rest of their life. I want to provide information for you to be thoughtful about, to inspire positivity, and promote the idea that we should normalize and even embrace imperfection. It’s what makes us human, beautiful, and distinguishes us from robots. I’ll leave it to you to do whatever is best for yourself.
Why Core 5 is Practically Useful
Currently, I’m studying to become certified by The National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (Update: I received my certification in April 2023). I have the privilege of working in a field I find fascinating and I hope this rubs off in my writing. My hope is that you find Core 5 interesting, enjoyable and a helpful tool for finding some clarity around improving your health. I hope it allows you to take a breath of relief. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed when thinking about taking action to improve our health. While there’s certainly value in knowledge, we need both knowledge and action to make change. If you have ideas or suggestions on topics you’d like to see a post on, please tell me.
My hard science background gives me a healthy respect for evidence-based techniques and findings supported by primary literature. It’s important that anything I write for Core 5 be shown to actually be effective (duh!) and I will strive to explain the science in a fun and digestible way.
We’re All Works in Progress – I Struggle Too
I must now confess that I too struggle. I have high cholesterol and struggle with eating too many processed foods like chips and ice cream. Living in the 21st century United States, it’s incredibly hard not to overeat nutrient depleted, processed foods. There are scientists out there whose sole mission is to make processed foods taste so good and be so addictive that we can’t help going back for more. And more. And more. It takes a courageous person to work on these areas.
I come to you with Core 5 not as someone who has mastered the habit areas, but as someone engaged in a journey to improve himself. The beauty of Core 5 is that by writing on health topics, I get to assist others and learn things that help me work on myself. For this reason, I commit to finding credible, evidence-based sources, and will only post info of a high enough quality that I use it myself. Anything less I deem to be totally irresponsible.
I’ll strive to not to drag my posts out longer than necessary. I want to respect that you have other things to do in your life. Otherwise, it would go against my message that working on our health can be attainable for anyone. I genuinely hope Core 5 gives you a sigh of relief. It can be a messy, confusing, exasperating world of health information. Core 5 shows that it doesn’t have to be. Cheers to tiny steps forward.