There is no ONE singular path to a healthier lifestyle. Everyone must find their own personal combination of guidelines and habits that help them achieve their goals without great pain or hardship. It’s not that simple.
Living a healthier lifestyle isn’t something that you do for a short period of time, like a “diet”. Diet has become one of the most misunderstood and often mis-used words in English today. Diet is not a strict set of rules that keep you in an uncomfortable position until you give up or reach a temporary goal.
A diet goal will always be temporary if you’ve taken extraordinary steps to get there. Extraordinary or extreme is not sustainable. You’ll eventually return to the habits and ideas that you’ve consistently held. THIS is actually your “diet”.
A diet is what you do, day in and day out. You may have a diet of watching the evening news on TV. You do it consistently. You may have a steady diet of friends you visit and people you interact with. It happens daily. If you used the word diet incorrectly in this analogy, that means you’d spend 4 weeks with people you really didn’t like and watched cartoons at 6:30 until you could return to what you really wanted to do.
Diet and fitness are close cousins. A healthier lifestyle must include cooperation between both to be successful. You can’t achieve wellness goals by being a great cook who’s sedentary. Nor can you be a fitness fanatic that eats fast food every meal.
However, fitness and cooking don’t have to be the temporary and uncomfortable “diet” toward a better living. You can make these two components harmonious with the rest of your life by developing better habits and making them stick.
The first step is to remove the reluctance to change because it might be difficult. I’ve heard it said that “your comfort zone equals your interest zone”. The things you are comfortable with, you’ll be interested in. You can only be successful in things that you’re interested in.
That’s why I’ve partnered with Donavon Israel of BodyByDonavon to make it easy for you to find the benefits of combining effective and enjoyable exercise with fun and fulfilling cooking. You’ll be well fit and fed with just a few tips from both of us.
Donavon and I solve problems for our clients and followers. Donavon is keenly aware of the role that wholesome foods and good cooking play in a healthier lifestyle, so he’s developed 5 tips for success.
Donavon says:
1) Don’t take-away foods for a “diet”, ADD healthier foods
2) Don’t skip Breakfast. It starts your metabolism
3) Read Labels – avoid high sugar and salt foods
4) More food per calorie – find largest portions per calorie
5) 90% rule – allow yourself 10% treats
I love these ideas because they are consistent with my philosophy of eating better quality food so that you won’t have to eat more quantity of food. Wholesome foods TASTE better. They don’t need a lot of salt, sugar and fat to satisfy you.
The easiest way to cook healthy foods quickly and perfectly is with the basic sauté method. If you can duplicate these steps over-and-over, it doesn’t matter what the ingredients are, and it doesn’t matter what the recipe is commanding you.
A healthier lifestyle can be achieved through many different strategies, but food and fitness are necessary elements. You must eat better and move better to be better.
Do you agree with Donavon’s 5 Tips? What would you add? What would you omit?
Please leave your comment below; I’d love to debate it with you.