Changing your lifestyle, to move to healthy habits instead of digging your grave with your teeth, fits this analogy perfectly; like Superman, you can save a life - yours. How much time you can take and how many years you can add depend on when you start, but it's never too late to begin. To make changes successfully, without the impetus of a life-threatening illness, do what you did when you learned to walk - take baby steps. Just like learning to walk, making small, permanent changes in your habits will move you from your poor eating habits and couch-potato ways. If you have the time, you will eventually become a healthy, vibrant person without stressing out about it, and not look back. If you have the impetus of a life-threatening illness, you'll make the changes faster and more painfully, but make them you will, given the alternative. Here are some suggestions to start you on your path to a healthy you:
Educate Yourself
This may sound simple, but it's not; everybody in the world has an opinion on what a healthy lifestyle is, and they're all different. Realize that humans are truly individual and unique and it's not hard to understand why thousands or millions of people swear one way is best and an equal number swear they're wrong. You need to understand how to become healthy and find the changes that work for you; most likely they won't be in the diet of the week, but unique to your metabolism. How to separate the good science from the bad is a challenge; the people who are supposed to be 'experts' in the field are operating off of a false model, and the people who are supposed to be unhealthy weirdoes - the naturalists - actually have a good, solid understanding of how your body works and what foods you should actually be eating to be healthy. You'll have to read as much as you can from both sides and assimilate the information to forge your own path.
Start with the Little Things
Without the impetus of a life-threatening illness, your journey should begin with small changes having long-lasting effects. Changing the ingredients you cook with is a good example; change your cooking oil from unhealthy hydrogenated oils, and from the so-called 'healthy' oils like canola or soybean, to unrefined coconut oil. You can use coconut oil as a solid shortening at temperatures below 76°, and you can melt it to use it in the liquid form, for sautéing or frying. You can also use it as a health supplement - two tablespoons a day makes a huge difference. Once you've mastered this change, pick another little one with big benefits and make it. Your lifestyle will change and you'll be living healthy without realizing it. You will need to be aware of how others cook, such as restaurants, to choose healthy when you eat out, but you can still eat out with your friends as you take these steps down the road to long-lasting health.
Cut Yourself Some Slack
You will, inevitably, fall off the wagon, so to speak, as you change your habits. Don't beat yourself up and stay off the wagon just because of one little goof. Recovering alcoholics and drug addicts learn this lesson the hard way; falling off the wagon for them is a big deal, but to stay clean and sober they have to learn to forgive themselves when they stray from the path. You need to learn how to forgive yourself as well; one mistake is not the end of your journey.
Pat Yourself on the Back
Once you've made a change and kept to it long enough to make it a habit, it's perfectly OK for you to pat yourself on the back a bit; you've made a lasting change to better your life, so be proud of it. However, don't be a prig about it, or you'll lose a lot of friends!
Keep it up
The biggest challenge in moving to a healthy lifestyle is keeping it up. By changing one thing at a time and making it a habit before moving to the next one, you've made it easier to stay on the path, but life happens, and when it does you'll be tempted to go back to the easy way of eating; unfortunately, the easy way is also the unhealthy one. The good part, though, is since you've become used to healthy foods, the unhealthy way will make you feel really bad, really quick. Stay with it, and it will become a way of life.
Moving to a healthy way of eating is hard; if you take the journey one small step at a time, it will take a while but the results are well worth it.
Hulusy Kagan was born and educated in New York, USA. He is a good cook and writes about various nutritious salad recipes. He believes in healthy lifestyle so in his writing he always focus on healthy salad recipes. http://ift.tt/1LJlsxh
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