Start with One Thing: The Power of Small, Intentional Change

The crisp air and cooler mornings of the past few days have me excited about fall. It’s always been my favorite season. Hunting season begins. The leaves change into something spectacular. The weather feels just right. And for as long as I can remember, fall has marked new beginnings.

Our kids on the their 1st day of school when they all went for the 1st time!

Whether it was starting kindergarten, moving on to high school, diving into nearly 10 years of college, 6 years of grad school, or over two decades as a professor—almost every autumn has been tied to a fresh academic start. For me, fall has always been the true “New Year.” Think about it: the only thing that changes on New Year’s Eve is the number on the calendar. But in the fall, everything for a family shifts with the beginning of the new school year—schedules, sleep patterns, where you spend most of your day, who you spend it with, and even the temperature and humidity around you. Change is in the air. And that makes it the ideal time to commit to meaningful lifestyle changes—especially when it comes to food.

Because here’s the truth: trying to overhaul your diet without shifting anything else in your life is usually a recipe for failure. Food is too deeply connected to everything we are and do. Making a conscious change while your environment is already shifting creates a stronger foundation for those changes to last. So don’t think you need absolute peace and tranquility in your life to make a change—it’s more likely the exact opposite. Now is a perfect time.

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The One Thing Rule

Podcast hosts often ask me—usually at the end of an interview—what I recommend someone do first if they want to transform their health. After spending hours diving into the complexities of ancestral foodways, it’s almost impossible to boil it all down into one or two magic-bullet takeaways that will transform health overnight. So here’s my honest answer:

Pick one thing.

Not ten things. Not everything at once. Just one. And then do it consistently—over and over again—until it stops feeling like a burden and simply becomes part of who you are. Only then is it time to pick the next thing.

It almost doesn’t matter what the “thing” is—what matters is that it’s doable. It could be as simple as making yogurt once a week, trying your hand at sauerkraut, or swapping out sandwich bread for genuine sourdough. For us, sourdough was the first step. And what started as baking bread for our kids’ lunches ended up baptizing us into an entirely new way of living and nourishing our family.

Read our blog post that hits right on this topic One School Year = 180 Days, 180 Lunches, 360 Slices of Bread!

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Why One Step Matters

Taking that first small step has a ripple effect far bigger than you realize.

• You begin working with life, not against it. Making sourdough—or any ferment—means learning to harness trillions of wild bacteria and yeasts in your kitchen.

• Your kitchen comes alive. A healthy kitchen doesn’t mean sanitized, empty countertops—it means counters simply cleaned with vinegar and covered with bubbling mason jars.

• You save money while eating better. Instead of planning meals around coupons, you discover nose-to-tail cooking, fermenting, and other strategies that maximize the resources you already have and build your family’s diet around conscious choices.

• You gain knowledge and immunity. Once you understand how real food is made, the glossy marketing campaigns and billion-dollar food ads lose their power over you. You see right through them. You become immune.

• Most importantly—you gain empowerment. You stop depending on “experts” and charismatic influencers to tell you what to eat. Instead, you listen, ask questions, think critically, and decide for yourself. That’s the difference between moving in circles and walking a path directed toward real health.

A snapshot of the bubbling jars on our counter

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Community Makes It Stick

Another unexpected gift of this approach? You begin to find your people. Whether it’s a friend making yogurt, a family learning to butcher nose-to-tail, or an online group sharing ferments and experiments, you realize you’re not walking this road alone. And that support is powerful.

If you’re looking for a place to start—and a community to grow with—The Ancestral Table is designed for exactly this. It’s our online community rooted in ancestral and traditional foodways, with weekly live cooking classes, open Q&A, ongoing conversation throughout the week, and a growing archive you can revisit anytime. It’s a practical, encouraging space to pick your “one thing,” get feedback, troubleshoot, and keep moving forward—step by step.

So as fall settles in and everything around you begins to shift, take advantage of that momentum. Don’t try to change it all. Just pick one thing. Do it, and do it again until it becomes a habit. Then move to the next. Step by step, day by day, those small changes add up to the most meaningful transformations of all.

Dr. Bill and Christina sharing real talk during the weekly Q&A part of the Ancestral Table classes