Health As Habit: Nutrition, Exercise, And Weight Loss

Habits are really hard to break. It doesn't matter if they are bad habits or good habits. They CAN be tough to break. This is terrible if it is a bad habit, but it can be a major asset if it is a good habit. Once something good for you becomes a habitual part of your daily existence, and you regularly and willingly do it without prompting, you may begin to recognize the value of this new habit of yours.

The good side of a GOOD habit is that it is hard to break. The bad side of a BAD habit is...well, you guessed it...it is also hard to break. The good news is that habits are pretty easy to establish...even the good ones! While a bad habit might be hard to break, it is often fairly easy to create a good habit that replaces it.

One area where a few good habits could do a lot for you is in the area or health. If we look at nutrition, exercise, and weight loss, we might be able to come up with a few good habits it would be nice to have, and we might even figure out how to build these habits into our lives.

HABITS

First things first. The creation of a habit usually depends on two things, repetition and time. If you decide to make a serious lifestyle change, it may be hard to do for several different reasons. One reason is impetus vs. inertia. Often, the initial decision to make a major lifestyle change is caused by some force...a friend dies of a heart attack, the doctor gives you a stern warning, your twentieth high school reunion is coming up, a new book on weight loss comes out, or a new exciting diet plan hits the market. Maybe it's internal. You just get tired of things being the way they've always been and you decide to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

So now you have impetus, and it is enough to carry you over the next few hours or days. After a while, however, that initial burst of motivation tends to fade, and eventually you stop showing up at the gym, you go back to eating pie ala mode, or you drop out of the local community college because all the changes you have made are just too hard to keep going.

Therefore, my initial suggestion is that you try to break your lifestyle changes (i.e. new habits) into bite-size chunks, carefully chewing, swallowing, and digesting each one before beginning the next. I suggest you pick up a book on the subject of Kaizen.

NUTRITION

For example: Let's say you want to eat a diet which is more healthy than the diet you eat now.

NOTE: When I use the word "diet" in this article, I simply mean the things you eat. That's what a "diet" actually is. It is a list of things you eat. In the last few years, many people have forgotten that original meaning of the word, and, when they hear "diet" want to know, "Which diet?" We're just using it to refer to what you eat.

In the interest of improving your health, you have decided to make some changes to your diet. Which of these would seem to be the most effective plan? By effective, I mean the one you think you could stay with.

* Go into your cupboard, pantry, and fridge and throw out all the food you have and then go to the grocery store and stock up on tofu, bean curds, and beverages made from green persimmons, or whatever.

* Pick one thing that you know is not good for you and drop it from your diet or find a substitute for it. Let yourself get used to the change and then move on to something else.

You know, I love popcorn and ice cream. As I grew older and began to discover fat on my body in places where there hadn't even been places before, I made a momentous decision. I would have to cut out popcorn and ice cream. You know how long that lasted! In fact, literally within seconds, a part of me began to feel depressed, I felt like I was being punished for something I hadn't done, and then I began to come up with arguments that ice cream and popcorn weren't really the problem. There must be something I wasn't doing right, but it wasn't the popcorn and ice cream....Really!

Taking my own advice, I did two things:

1. I bought ice cream in the form of small ice cream sandwiches and cups of ice cream. Rather than denying myself ice cream completely, I allowed myself to have one of these servings (smaller than the bowl of ice cream I would normally have eaten) a day.

2. I also bought popcorn in single serving bags. Previously, I would have popped a regular size bag and eaten it all myself.

Not a perfect or final answer to the problem, of course, but a step towards a solution. Interestingly enough, after I had been having my popcorn and ice cream in these reduced sizes, I eventually began to feel a little put off by the thought of eating as much as I used to.

I used the same small-step process to move from sugar to artificial sweetener, and eventually to stevia. I went from several cups of coffee a day to several fewer cups of green tea.

Do you want to improve the overall quality of your health? Why not start by simply creating a habit of taking one multivitamin daily? Then, start making some other changes. Maybe you can get an idea from what I did, or come up with your own small steps. Don't try to do it all at once, and realize that small steps mean small outcomes, but a lot of small steps will mean a large result eventually.

EXERCISE

Just like the goals in your nutrition plan were not intended to make you dread eating or make you eat foods you detested, your exercise experience should be founded on a desire to find things you like to do that also provide the benefits of a formal exercise program.

You do not want to jump in with both feet and start exercising for long periods every day until you cannot stand the thought of ever exercising again. If you have not been exercising regularly recently (high school doesn't count) you need to start ANY exercise at an easy level and very gradually ease into more difficult activities or levels.

NOTE: One reason people give up on exercise programs is because they don't seem to be seeing any results. If you have begun exercising regularly and are gradually increasing the demands of your exercise program, rest assured that things are happening. Your body is making adjustments to your circulation, respiration, heart, lungs, liver, blood vessels, hormones, glands, immune system...even the blood supply itself. Things ARE happening, even if you cannot see or measure them. Just like a steady drip of water can eventually erode a solid rock, exercise will improve your physical and mental health in a multitude of ways.

Many articles in popular magazines recommend incorporating exercise into daily activities such as taking stairs instead of using elevators, parking farther out in the parking lot, and so on. While I wouldn't recommend these as exercise programs in themselves, these might very well be ways to ease into an exercise program or begin building the basics of an exercise habit.

You might want to try out different activities to see what you really enjoy, and what will fit into your life style and schedule. Someone who travels a great deal, for example, may want to focus on yoga or walking, while someone who has more free time and access to a pool may choose swimming. In fact, doing yoga while traveling, swimming while at home, and walking while at home or away, would be a great way of incorporating a little variety into your program. You don't have to do the same exercise every day to get the health benefits.

Whatever you choose, ease into it. There's no hurry! Even with a small beginning and small incremental increases in duration or intensity, you will soon see and feel positive results. Once the activities you choose become a habit, you will hate to miss your "workout" even if it's gardening or playing with the grandkids. Then you will be on a solid pathway to health.

WEIGHT LOSS

This final section will be the shortest and the easiest to write...and for you to read, for that matter. If you skimmed down to the bottom of the page, skipping over the sections above, go back and read them now.

Effective, permanent weight loss means changing the things that got you to where you are now. You will have to make changes to take the weight off and keep it off. There are a lot of things that can take the weight off of you, but only lifestyle changes will keep it off. There is an old saying, "If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will keep getting what you have been getting." Changing your nutritional habits for better health, and getting the exercise you also need for health, will result in genuine, permanent weight loss in addition to increased health and a greater enjoyment of life.

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