First Blog for My WA Website
Wrote my first blog post today utilizing Jaaxy for my keyword/phrase search. I found an awesome keyword/phrase that returned a whopping 6462 ave hits and 1099 traffic with a QSR of only 55 today that fit my blog perfectly. Can you guess what it is?
What is a healthy lifestyle? If you do a Google search on the question, the first hit, from Wikipedia, tells us "A healthy lifestyle is one which helps to keep and improve people's health and well-being. [1]" A couple hits down, the World Health Organization tells us "A healthy lifestyle is a way of living that lowers the risk of being seriously ill or dying early.[2]"
I think we can all agree there is so much more to it than that.
If we dig a little deeper, we find a healthy lifestyle consists of personal choices that promote:
- physical well-being through proper nutrition, exercise and rest,
- mental well-being though coping with stress and realizing our potential,
- emotional well-being through positive thought, and
- spiritual well-being through our values, beliefs, and finding inner calmness.
Many call these the 4-pillars of health. When we make the right choices in these areas they lead to a balanced lifestyle and greatly reduce our chances of becoming seriously ill or dying early.
My primary purpose for this website, as the blog posts grow, is to provide insights and actionable items for healthy living. Especially in the area of physical health for those on a busy schedule. This includes:
- Eating sensibly, including juicing and smoothies to get our raw vegetables and fruits
- Getting adequate exercise and rest, even when there is no apparent time to do it
- Attaining psychological well-being and resilience through coping with stress and achieving our potential
- Developing a positive state-of-mind, a positive self-image, and sense of connectedness
- Finding our relationship with our creator, nature, other people and self through mindfulness and meditation
And since it is nearly impossible to get proper nutrition from the foods we eat today, we will also delve into supplements as a way to provide our body the building blocks it needs to heal itself for a healthy physical balance.
Why Don't We Live a Healthy Lifestyle?
The short reasons we always get, or give ourselves, is "I don't have enough time," or "My schedule's too busy," or maybe "I'm worn out today and just not mentally into it." Attending to our health is nearly always at the bottom of our list of things to do.
These feelings of not having enough time, energy, or mental/emotional strength are what lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. And an unhealthy lifestyle is kind of self-perpetuating; over time our choices make it harder and harder to exercise, prepare real food and eat right, or make other healthy choices.
We would rather spend the 30 minutes it takes to work out or to prepare a real meal surfing the web, watching TV or Netflix, stalking on Facebook and eating McBurgers or other highly processed fast food. This is the crux of the vicious cycle that eventually leads to declining health, serious illness, or ultimately, an untimely death.
If you don't think you have enough time today to eat right or exercise, ponder this; Doctors appointments due to obesity and type II diabetes, a sedentary lifestyle leading to chronic pain, and getting sick more often will all take up way more time than a daily workout or preparing a meal out of real food.
Our health is so important to everything we do. And you cannot buy it with money. Change just one thing today. Live a healthy life beginning now. An unhealthy lifestyle will cost you way more than time.
Can I Start a Healthy Lifestyle?
How do we break the cycle of poor choices? The only way is to resolve to make more healthy choices, one at a time, step-by-step. No matter how simple. There is no other magical, wave your hands way. And it doesn't happen overnight.
We need a long-term plan, a blueprint to incorporate healthy changes into our daily living and make them stick.
Our blueprint will provide the framework to incorporate all the healthy information we learn into our life. I suggest you keep a diary or Word document. We will add topics to it as we go. And you can always refer back to it if you find yourself off-track at any time.
Our plan starts with this blog by addressing Time Management and Making Healthy Changes in Small Bites. These are going to be the foundation for our long-term success.
By now, I know you're thinking "I can't do this, it's not that easy." That's where this website comes in. Through the blog we're going to break it down, provide you the latest scientific information, insights and actionable items to help you achieve and live a healthy lifestyle, step-by-step, day-by-day.
Painless Time Management
I waste time. Everyone wastes time. It is one of those facts of life that we don't think about often. If we are going to overcome the notion that "we don't have enough time" to make healthy choices, we are going to have to incorporate some type of time management. This begins with figuring out how and where we waste time. The simplest approach is to keep a diary of your time over a few days or even a week.
Keep track of all the time you watch TV, Netflix or You-Tube videos. Track the time you spend mindlessly surfing the web and peeking in on social media. And don't forget to track the time you casually pick up your phone and twitter or surf the web. You're going to be surprised to find how many hours are wasted each week on mindless activities you probably don't enjoy that much and surely don't have to do.
This is where you can implement your "time management." Identify the wasted time each day when you can do a short workout, cook a simple meal or do something else healthy. Budget this time accordingly. Make a to-do list or set goals in your diary.
Don't set broad goals, they must specific, and achievable; cook a real meal, make my green smoothies for the week, meditate, take a short walk or do a short workout. Mix it up to keep things interesting. We're not running a sprint, we're in it for the long-haul.
These are called actionable items. By focusing on your to-do list and working these items into your daily routine, you have painlessly freed up the time in your busy schedule to make healthy choices. And by making the items achievable there is a much greater chance you will actually stick with them for the long-term.
Make Healthy Changes in Small Bites
Healthy change is all about maintaining balance. To achieve a healthy lifestyle you must make changes in small bites to ensure you maintain physical, mental, emotional and spiritual balance. This also includes work-life balance and all the other areas of your life.
All the basic areas of our life overlap and effect each other. You don't want to overload yourself by making wholesale changes too fast. This is too much change and all too often will lead to confusion and guilt when you are doing one thing but feeling like you should be doing another. I've been there. It's not pretty and the change usually doesn't stick.
Making small changes one at a time allows us to more easily incorporate and cement the healthy change in our daily routine without upsetting the balance in other areas of our life. This creates satisfaction and maximizes the chance you will stick with the changes over time.
Unless we can create satisfaction out of each and every change while maintaining balance in our lives, we will never truly be fulfilled, or be able to live a contented, healthy life. Make the healthy changes in small bites.
Conclusion
What is a healthy lifestyle? It is making the right choices to maintain a healthy balance in the 4-pillars of life that greatly reduces our chances of becoming seriously ill or dying early.
Why don't most people live a healthy lifestyle? In a nutshell they feel they don't have the time. Our health is nearly always at the bottom of our list of things to do.
Can I start a healthy lifestyle? Yes, but you must resolve to make healthy changes step-by-step, over time. And you must incorporate them into your daily routine for the long-term. There is no other magical way.
Finding time in our busy schedule and making healthy changes in small bites are the foundation of healthy living for the long-haul. We have presented a way to easily accomplish both, creating satisfaction and maximize the chance you will stick with the change over time.
Healthy choices allow us to be fulfilled, and to be able to live a contented, healthy life.
References
1. Participants at the 6th Global Conference on Health Promotion. The Bangkok Charter for health promotion in a globalized world. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2005 Aug 11. Accessed 2009 Feb 4.
2. World Health Organization, "Healthy Living; What Is a Healthy Lifestyle?," Regional Office for Europe, Copehagen, 1999, EURO;HQ, EUR/ICP/LVNG 01 07 02, 19p.
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