Nutrition, like exercise, is
considered by many as a lifestyle, not a task to an end. What’s great about, Lifestyle is it can
shift, but only in small increments. The human body craves nutritious
and healthy food and good quality exercise. Yet because the way we have evolved, it is easy to be self-destructive
with the foods and activity patterns of modern society. I
would like you as the reader, not to be defensive towards the ideas listed
here. Read them, learn them, and even
apply them if you wish.
I have been living a low
sugar/carb, natural diet for a few years now.
I stay away from most processed and high sugar foods. Though last week I visited my Aunt’s house in
long island and fell away from my normal diet.
She makes the Greatest chocolate chip cookies known to man and just like
Crack-Cocaine, the high of getting one, is all about getting more. After eating about 12 cookies, I became nauseous (like I usually do) and felt sluggish for the next 2
days. It's easy to realize how un-healthy certain
things are when you don’t have them often.
But how can you move to a healthier lifestyle? It’s not as easy as a magical transformation or going cold
turkey from all un-healthy foods… It’s about small lifestyle changes.
Below is a screen shot of a
healthy lifestyle presentation I made for increasing athletic performance. The graph stresses the importance of taking
small steps to change your lifestyle.
While, you will notice you become stressed when your lifestyle shifts to an
“un-healthier” state, you also become stressed (temporarily) when your
lifestyle shifts to a healthier state.
Only when this new stress disappates and becomes part of your normal
lifestyle should you include another healthy habit and stress the lifestyle
again. (Athletes, does this sound familiar?
Stress the body, rest, stress the body, rest)
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How to: Try using the following steps to make small lifestyle changes healthier and happier living!
The LAME Method
Limit
– Every 2-3 weeks, Limit intakes of damaging nutrition. Find one “un-healthy” staple of your diet and
greatly limit your intake. Some examples
would be Soda, Fast-food, or other processed foods such as high added sugars,
hydrogenated, or partially hydrogenated oils.
This goes for activity as well, possibly limit TV to two hours instead of
three.
Add
– Every 2-3 weeks, add intakes of healthy nutrition. Find a healthier food to try to regularly add
to your diet. These can include fresh
vegetables, fresh fruits, olive oil, eggs, or even daily goals. Goals could be shown as “eating a fresh
vegetable/fruit at every meal,” or eating a healthy non-sugar/carb breakfast every
day. You can devote to add a 15-30 minute
slow walk around the neighborhood after meals.
These smalls decisions will add up over the weeks and months and slowly
develop your lifestyle without stress.
Maintain
– After 2-3 weeks ends and a new cycle begins, try to continue with the small
lifestyle changes you had made recently and try to incorporate
another cycles of changes with those. If you haven’t
become completely accustomed to the new changes that were made, don’t
incorporate anything new but take another week or two and get used to what you
changed. It’s not perfect, but what
lifestyle is?
Enjoy
– You may find that over time you can’t imagine how you lived without
the new changes. Your changes hopefully become
routine and easy to remember over time.
Just remember, it’s just a series of small, slow steps to healthier
living. But the most important factor is
to ENJOY what you are doing. If you
don’t like tofu, try eggs, if you don’t like zucchini, try a cucumber
instead. Tastes, preferences, and
abilities all vary and there are endless possibilities to living healthy! Eat, Exercise, Enjoy!
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