Hello! I’m Caitlin Burke, an editor and writer based in Baltimore, MD, and I produce Starter Steps. After 20 years in healthcare communications and various starts and restarts with exercise, I want to share some of the ideas and resources I’ve liked most about forming habits and thinking about food, exercise, and having a balanced life.
This is my philosophy:
- The best way to make a positive change in habit is to make adjustments in your environment that make it easier to do the desired behavior.
- Willpower is great but can be exhausted; it’s best reserved for unpleasant stuff.
- Exercise and good basic nutrition are too important to make them unpleasant.
Posts on Starter Steps appear in the following categories:
- Eating: Strategies and tips around eating patterns, information about diets, nutrition
- Exercise: Strategies and tips around getting and staying active, what to expect in a gym, some skills information about particular exercises
- Food: Information about foods, strategies for handling food, cooking tips
- Fun: Comics and other fun approaches to food and exercise
- Habits: Getting them, keeping them, information about how the brain helps (or not)
- Mindset: Why are we doing any of this, whatever “this” is — getting beyond “inspiration” soundbites
- Skills: Information about accounting for what you eat and about exercise burn, ideas and frameworks for incorporating new habits, how-to info
Most of us could stand to eat less and move more, but there’s thousands of ways to make that work. I hope I can help you find the ways that work best for you.
Starter Steps 