We’ve spent the last three posts talking about environment, diet, and lifestyle—the three big health factors over which we have a great deal of control. We’ve touched briefly on some simple first steps, but I want to focus in on basic things you can start today for this post.
Taken as a lump, making big changes in these three categories may seem totally overwhelming. In fact, it can seem like trying to change everything at once!
I’m not urging you to do that—trying to change everything at once is a recipe for failure.
But you can choose to change one thing from each category this week, and I’ll even give you a cheat: if you change some things about one thing, you can kill two birds with one stone—and get double for your energy!
Okay, step one (and two, actually): Start by taking a long, hard look at what you eat, and make a decision that you’re going to start buying more natural, fresh foods (organic is great if it’s available). Determine to make at least a two dinner meals a week from scratch, with whole, natural foods you prepare yourself instead of getting from a package.
Make them extra big, enough to eat lunch from the leftovers the following day. I love to take the lean protein used in the previous day’s dinner and use it for a salad for lunch the following day. In this way, one hard day’s cooking from fresh ingredients can actually yield two meals instead of one!
Check it out—you just hit environment and diet at once! And, you got four great meals from two meal’s worth of effort. Boom! Step one and two, done!
Next is step three: determine that you’re going to go for a 30 minute walk after those dinners. Make your family come with you! You don’t have to buy a gym membership or make it to a class; simply get out and walk.
These steps may not seem like much, but this is how behaviors change. Let this only be the start, and add more healthy meals and activity to your week. I challenge you to add one meal and a day with activity to your week each week.
These changes are not complicated or sweeping. They’re things you can actually do. Start small and basic, but don’t stop there; keep going, building week upon week. Months from now, you’ll look back and wonder why you didn’t start changing your environment, diet, and lifestyle sooner!
