Health coach shares creative 'menu hack' that helps sustain healthy habits throughout the day

Mornings can be challenging, particularly if you're not naturally inclined to be a morning person. On top of that, dealing with mood swings, rough days, and inclement weather can make you want to stay in bed instead of facing the day ahead. That's when a healthy energy boost becomes essential to help you rise and shine every day. Whether you're an early riser due to work commitments or prefer a more leisurely start, these innovative and distinctive menu hacks are designed to invigorate your mornings and get you moving. Valerie Ribon—who goes by @valerieribon on TikTok—is a certified holistic health coach who posted a video on TikTok on how to give your mornings a calm yet energetic healthy boost.

The clip was a short one briefly explaining how she composed her morning routine that helps her feel more cheerful and refreshed after waking up at 6:30 a.m. She began by mentioning that she is also in the process of developing healthy routines and sticking to them and that she had just started with menus. The video captured four colorful menus that were designed for a fresh and pleasant start. The four menus included a morning and night menu and a menu for cleaning and hobbies. The whole idea of the menu was to list items that are necessary and pleasing to do and to be able to choose from them every day.

Ribon gave a gist of how this works. She recommended starting with the morning menu if you wake up in the mornings to go to work. For the morning and night menu, she explained, “Add 5 things that you enjoy doing and 5 things that the best version of you does.” Her morning menu included items like, "making a nourishing breakfast, gym" and her night menu included "read kindle, plan for next day, face mask" and so on. She proceeded to say, “Each time you use the menu, pick 3-5 things that you want to do.”

The other two menus were cleaning and hobbies. In these menus, she included all the cleaning that she needed to do and all the things she liked to do. For example, the cleaning menu included deep cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, laundry and daily chores like dishes. The hobbies menu included sourdough, water coloring and other things Ribon is fond of. Again, her method is to pick any one thing to do for the cleaning menu and 3-5 for the hobbies menu. The breakfast and dinner menus are more concrete ones that we can make ourselves and practice for enhanced mornings and a delightful end to the day respectively.

The video also had a text overlay that mentioned ‘phoneless mornings and nights’ which aided in a calmer and more relaxed start. Ribon mentioned, “I highly recommend water coloring them instead of just keeping them in your notes app.” The text overlay also mentioned the drinks section in the morning and night menus which included healthy drinks like smoothies, tea and so on. She concluded the video mentioning, ‘You can switch them up.” Several people in the comment section were grateful for this hack that will get them going. @dej_onstage said, “The cleaning one is a genius.” @le.volgss commented, “Consider me influenced.” @dej_onstage shared, "The cleaning one is genius. I cannot stick to a schedule."