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Living a Healthier Lifestyle
I spent a lot of years growing up being uncomfortable with who I was. I've never bought into the notion that if you "look good, you feel good" - but at the same time, that's no reason to be flat-out stupid about one's personal habits.
At various points I've tried dieting and throwing fad ideas at the wall in order to feel better about who I was, but that was never the answer, and never worked in the long run. We foster a profoundly unproductive connection in the minds of our western society between looking well and being arrogant, shallow or conceded. However, living a healthy lifestyle, to me, has nothing to do with weight or cosmetics. It's about finding a positive routine for body and mind that leaves you and you alone comfortable with who you are and how you feel.
People powerfully under-estimate how big a difference simple things like eating, sleeping and exercize habits can make on their whole lives, and how easy they can be to change if they are approached the right way. Don't aim for a waist-size or weight target - they only make changes skin-deep, and aren't the solution to poor self-image. If you find that your weight has you down, that's a whole other problem, because weight doesn't make one more or less smart, kind or successful than anyone else.
I want to make it clear that I am in no way a professional health planner; and I always found them to be entirely useless, because living a healthy lifestyle isn't about sacrifice. The quality of your life isn't measured by your waist size, it's by who you are and what makes you personally happy. If someone else doesn't like it, to heck with 'em, because they've got their own life to worry about.
The first rule that I've found to exist is simple; so important that I'm going to repeat it.
Healthy living is not a sacrifice.
If eating doughnuts makes you feel good - and you don't feel guilty - well, eat doughnuts. If you're not worried about your weight, that's pretty sweet, especially if you're one of those people who can get away with eating junk and still look and feel good. Every magazine on the shelf wants us to believe that if you "look good, you feel good." Truth is, looking good is exuding positive energy with a smile upon your face; so find what makes you smile and go for it. There are too many manic-depressive, suicidal thin people out there to make me believe otherwise.
Every great rule has an exception, however, and this is it; more often than not, eating junk food and not having the energy to walk to the store isn't the "niche" one needs to achieve self-fulfilment, physical and emotional wellbeing. Our family brings us joy, our football team winning the game brings us joy... sugar and fat usually just deal with cravings, and in the majority of us, causes serious guilt attacks and, at the very least, diminished health.
A healthy lifestyle will not only make you feel better about yourself, but gives a feeling of positive empowerment that comes with feeding your body well and working with it. It's not a matter of how many hours you run or how much food you eat, it's a matter of finding your personal, comfortable balance and being happy; it's as simple as that.
Exersize
This is a key stumbling block for a lot of us looking to change our lifestyles, I know it certainly was for me for many years. The perception I always had of "exersize" was of arrogant, musclebound guys dripping in sweat, wasting hours a day standing in one place pushing weights to satisfy their own ego. I always pictured "these type of people" as being the same who bullied me back in school. It wasn't until I dabbled in fitness a little when I returned to college that I realized that this is really a very unfair and one-dimensional generalization. If you're one of the millions who shares it, take a deep breath and ask yourself how you, like me, could make such a damning and sweeping generalization with so little practical experience on which to base it.
Mind open? Good stuff.
Our bodies are capable of tremendous physical feats, and designed and conditioned from hundreds of years of agricultural labour to be exercised regularly. The problem is, we also fall into routines and habits very easily. It's ever so easy to maintain a very unchallenging lifestyle and think you feel "normal," when you're really missing out on so much more. When I lived in San Francisco, I worked twelve hours a day, drove to and from work, and ate mostly delivery food with McDonalds in between. It wasn't until I started turning my habits around - admittedly after seeing a video of my mammoth, whale-like figure - that I realized how much better I could feel in the morning, noon and night, and how much more energy I enjoyed during every part of the day while consuming far less food. All it took was shifting around my meals with a bit of common sense to fresher, home cooked food, and starting to walk journeys a mile or less. I'll be darned if it didn't catch on. It's good stuff, people.
One of the most useful pieces of advice to those starting out is simply take your time. The vast majority of crash diets and exersize plans fail simply because people go so far out of their natural rhythm so quickly that within a couple of days, they're just so uncomfortable with this lifestyle that is alien to them that it causes panic, and then they slip go right back to square one, often with a good ol' binge meal for compensation. Start slow. Do what's within your grasp. Start by walking instead of driving during some of your daily travel. There's no need to run or rush it; catch a bus half-way of a two-mile journey instead of the whole way. Go for goals that are reasonably within reach, which start as nothing more but a mild inconvenience, and within weeks you'll find yourself "warming up" and actually wanting to do more as your body gets used to it. Add a little bit at a time. You've got the time to do it.
The same applies to diet. If your habits of physical activity change, so will your appetite, if you listen to your own body. If you're on a good energy kick after a walk, fries are a come-down. A piece of fruit keeps that positive vibe going, not because of the calorie content, but because your body is digging what it's getting and not having to shut down to deal with the heavy grease. Don't count the calories or stress out about the number of meals. Just use a little common sense.
Addictions & Intolerances
The number of undiagnosed intolerances and addictions people have to different foods and substances is astonishing. Ultimately, the list is essentially endless; while each food has a finite set list of nutritional properties, a each individual's lifestyle, diet, and more importantly, their body's unique physeology means that every food has a different effect on everyone who eats it.
Below is a seven-day detox diet that is excellent for clearing out the system of, well, junk. One is least likely to be allergic to unprocessed, organic fruit and vegetables; and that's where this diet starts. While the seven-day diet does shed weight, the point isn't to change your poundage. The point is to re-set your system, and wake up your body to the fact of what foods really do make you feel good and feel bad. There's not much use in dropping a few pounds if you're just going to put them back on again within a week - changing your habits and point of view is far more productive in the long run. Modern diets of junk and refined, reprocessed foods often lead to a diet of living from sugar & grease fix to sugar & grease fix. Like a smoker lighting up a cigarette, there is a sense of relief, but that's not a "good" feeling - it's simply temporarily putting off a bad one.
I guarantee* that if you make it through the week, you'll find yourself enjoying more energy, better focus and concentration and happier in yourself than you can remember (*not a guarantee). it flushes out all the toxins and junk that we grow accustomed to having in our bodies from all the manufactured candies, deep-fried crud and chemical colors and preservatives that we are so used to.
For instance, chocolate makes me moody, depressive and short-tempered. Like clockwork, if I break down and have some chocolate, within literally five minutes I'll find myself uncontrollably angry; the first inconvenience to cross my lap of even the smallest nature sets me off. Sound familiar? If you find yourself being an irrational asshole from time to time, with sharp moodswings, ask yourself what you were eating in the hours before it took place. We come to believe that we're just short-tempered or short-fused, but often it is simply a chemical intolerance we have to a certain substance which enters our body, changing our whole demeanor.
The Power Of Habit
It's amazing how much one can underestimate the power of habit; if you go to McDonalds for lunch, or eat fried food for breakfast, or get a doughnut on the way home from work every day, it's incredibly hard not to, isn't it? Come that time of day, you NEED your fix, and there isn't a person on earth that can get between you and your hook-up.
The key I've found to dealing with bad habits is to keep in mind that good habits, when formed, are just as strong - that simple knowledge makes changing your habits easier. The first couple of days of trying to start a better lifestyle are by far the hardest; but if you gut it out and "break the back" of the bad habit, replacing it with a good one, you'll find you have the momentum squarely in your corner. Don't set out to NEVER have another doughnut for breakfast - just try it for a week, and see if you feel differently about it at the end than you did at the beginning.
Another good tip is to take baby steps. For example, I weight train in the gym four days a week. But I spent two years building up to that point; first I started one day with limited exercise, and every few months when I felt hungary for more, I'd increase what I was doing a little bit until I wound up where I wanted to be. If you jump right into the fire and try to change your whole lifestyle overnight, the chances are your body won't be able to cope, and you'll fold faster than Superman on laundry day. That'll only make you feel worse!
Ultimately, if you were to change your habit from a McDonalds Fries on your break to a piece of fruit and orange juice, you may or may not notice the gradual change you feel over the first few days, particularly if you're craving those fries. But two weeks later, if you try going back to the fries again, you'll find that you're far more aware of the negative side-effects now that your body is used to having something much better for it.
Fear of eating the wrong thing
The worst thing you can do when working to change to a healthier lifestyle is worry. Take it from a person who dealt with the depression incurred by the fear of getting fat by eating junk food for comfort for years. If you find yourself becoming anxious about your diet, it's gone too far. Don't stress yourself. the point is to feel better, not under a gun. Even if you binge all day and all night it doesn't make you any less or any worse a person. Again, leading a healthier life isn't about sacrifice, it's not about pain for gain; it's about feeling better and happier about one's self.
The best ways I've found of dealing with this particular problem are first of all, repeat that last few lines of the last paragraph. Remind yourself that it's okay to eat bad stuff; and anyone who tells you different is far more paranoid and frightened than you are.
Second, I've found that getting my system going will work my head through situations like this. Drink some boiled water and go for a walk. Much the way the water washes the gunk out of your system, getting out of the house and going for a walk, freshening up the senses and feeling the wind blow gets the blood moving in your body and washes the gunk through your mind.
Starting On The Right Foot
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A lot of us - at one time me - either have bad breakfast habits or skip it all together. Skipping it is ill-advised, because if you skip breakfast, your stomach doesn't get woken up. It's actually quite easy to go most of the day without eating after the first hour or two, but the problem is that when you do eat then, your system is in shock and you'll find yourself binging like crazy to compensate, which is horrible for your body and bloats you up.
Breakfast sets you up for the day; if you eat fresh fruit, juices, wholesome cereals and avoid sugars, it will set your system up to look for that kind of food during the day. Conversely, if you eat fatty fried food, sugary cereals, pop tarts or doughnuts, the cravings that come along with processed, high-fat foods will smack you around all day long, making it extremely hard to function no matter how strong your willpower may be.
Quite simply, use breakfast to set an example for your body of how you'd like to live; and it will then be a template for the day, and make everything easier on you.
Fat Is Not Your Enemy
The body wants and needs fat to live; and taking all the fat out of your diet is no healthier than having too much. What people get confused on often is that your body makes its own fat when one eats too much food. Sugar is the worst for this; junk food labelled "99% fat free" is a favorite of people worried about gaining weight. The problem is, if you eat a sugary treat, and don't burn it off during the day, it turns to fat later on. To be honest, the label isn't being entirely fortcoming with you.
There are also many different types of fats with varying nutritional values. Fries have fat; boiled, saturated fats which go straight to your ass and arteries. But nuts, for instance, and Olive oil, are bursting with nutrition and fats that are good for your body and improve your health and heart. If you cut fat completely from your diet, your body will simply screw you up by making fats out of other foods you eat; and oftentimes, you won't lose weight by cutting fat completely because your body will realize that it's not getting what it wants and therefore will refuse to burn off what you already have. The body needs a certain amoutn of fat for insulation and protection. Contrary to popular belief, it's not just God's way of screwing with us, nor his way of making millionaires out of the bastards at "Weight Watchers."
Those are a couple of ideas which have helped me along the road at various points, and if you're in any way concerned about your lifestyle, I hope it helps you out, too. I'm not Mr. Universe yet, but I do have a lot of energy, a good life, and a pretty good grip on what does and doesn't work for me. It took a lot of years to figure out just how big a difference the simple things in every day life can have on who we are and our happiness.