I have been asking myself the last few days, what keeps me from living Healthy. By Healthy I mean, physically, emotionally, and socially. A few months ago I was ignorant of what healthy living might look like and entail. However, waking up, looking in the mirror, and being dissatisfied, I decided to start educating myself. There is a wealth of knowledge out there in books and on the web. The trick I've found is sifting through it and determining what applies to you and your life style, as opposed to just adopting whatever someone else says. So...... back to what keeps me from living healthy.
- It takes work to live healthy - The planning of meals, the buying of good food, making time to work out and then actually doing it. I come home after working all day and am tired, now I need to work again?
- I have to think - What is the Healthy choice? Should I really have another drink? Do I want to think this way? Is this something I should go to the doctor for? - When I get home from work I want to go mindless, not make more decisions.
- It will cost me relationally - My friends are going out to eat? If I make time to exercise I won't have time for my friends/family? Why should everyone else have to make sacrifices for me to eat what I need to, exercise when I need to, etc...
- I don't see immediate results - I want instant success that the world can see, not a slow over time change in my life.
- If I go to the Doctor, he is going to tell me what I don't want to hear -
Of course my thinking is flawed, I see it in every line I write, but it is this very thinking that keeps me from living healthy. It is my thought process and way of thinking that is my biggest obstacle to living healthy. For most healthy living needs to start with changing the way we think and view life, work, relationships, happiness, success, etc.... It starts with facing the reality of "Who I am, Where I am at, and Where or Who I want to be." Seems so easy to say, but tough to do. For me I have 43 years of habits and faulty thinking to undo, if I am ever to have
a chance at living healthy. Educating my self has been the starting point and a way to see what must change in my life.
There are lots of inspiring Blogs on healthy living a great way to find a few is on the search directories like Blog Top List - Heath, or, Blog Top Sites. And there is no end to the books on Healthy Living. Each of us needs to decide what place Healthy Living will play in our lives, and then we need to decide what we are willing to do to get there. Again, I say it is worth the battle if the outcome is a happier, healthier, better, me.
2 comments:
Rick,
Thank you for your comment on my blog. You are right, living healthy takes commitment, effort, and planning.
However, it is information overload that also makes it hard. A lot of nutrition 'advice' is really masked advertising.
Continue to seek out knowledge and always ask who, what, and why.
http://smallbitesnutrition.blogspot.com
Living healthy definitely takes a lot of effort in this world, by nature living "healthy" is a slight form of starvation, which these days can be best seen in traditional monks. Our world is so overly dominated by food these days we can easily eat too much.
Also exercise needs have been completely reduced to zero and our only alternative to this for many people is sport, something completely unnatural to the human race.
But the good thing about it though is that with pretty much any type of sport you will burn calories, so there's a wide variety of things you could check out. On that aspect there's a lot more to do than what usually is just given the advice to walk, which when people hate walking will simply quit doing so. A fatal flaw which even dietitians don't always keep in mind.
But if you simply stick to a plan and combine that with a form of exercise which you like doing yourself living healthy will suddenly not be so problematic at all anymore.
There is one important thing you should keep in mind though and that is not to listen too much to advices when it comes to food by people around you and what is said on the net. A lot of people hear stories from how certain things make someone they know lose weight, then coming up with a fraction of a diet whilst for you it'd barely help at all. Or people coming with stories as to how certain products should be completely avoided because they would be bread, in the end if you conclude all products to leave out together leaving you with water and crackers.
Whilst in reality, if you would go to a dietitian you will see that in example things like cream and oil aren't left out of the diet but used. Rather than cream with tons of sugar in it though you might be using a low fat cream with no sugar added to it and the oil won't be coming from animal fats but olive oil, but as it comes to taste, it hardly matters.
When prepared good you'll probably only find it tasting better than what the average person eats these days in the western world anyways.
And once you get on track, get your weight back to a healthy number and manage to keep it steady your blood values will most likely normalize again as well. Once you have managed to achieve that and stick to the pattern there's nothing wrong with every now and then taking a drink with colleagues and such either.
The essential part to living healthy simply is the first 3~12 months, changing your pattern of lifestyle a bit and doing it in such a way you can manage to stick to it.
Just a general word of advice in the end, if when it comes to exercise or food you are being overloaded with "helpful" tips from others and you simply can't figure out what to do with it, ask a professional like your doctor or a dietitian. They can quickly and easily tell you what the best would be for you to do in your position, help from random bystanders is nice but you don't call your secretary either in example when your house is being robbed when there are professionals to help you out :).
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