Accepting the Idea that We CAN Change
One of the common complaints about exercise and weight loss research is that the test subjects are usually college males and that the results of exercise or nutrition interventions will always work on boys that age. They have lots of hormones, they handle stress, and their physiology isn’t complicated by estrogen or periods or age.
This is true, in fact. Women don’t make great research subjects with weight loss because of our hormone variability. But that doesn’t mean we can’t lose weight. In fact, ANYONE can lose weight. There’s a thousand different ways to do it. What we struggle with is that 95% of most weight loss strategies fail. Then we take that baggage with us to the next diet and exercise plan, believing before we even begin that it won’t last.
I’m here to tell you that you absolutely CAN CHANGE. You may be thinking, “Well, I don’t want to change the creamer in my coffee, or wine, or bread, or cheese, or have to exercise everyday or sweat…” or whatever your thing is. But what if you were given these choices:
Follow a plan and live a long, healthy life
OR
Keep doing what you’re doing until you need medicine and then take that for the rest of your life until you get too sick to live.
Those are really our only two choices when we’re breaking down the excuses and barriers to healthy change.
If I were to give you $1 million if you would do what I asked you to do for 30 days, you would find a way to do it. No matter what. You would rearrange your schedule, cancel appointments or give up commitments in order to do what you were asked so that you would get paid. So…
Now that you know you can change, here’s how to do it. We know that almost every current chronic disease is lifestyle related. Clearly, not all of them, but most disease is related to HOW we live. If we can change that, we can be less sick and tired and die early. That’s the change we all need.
I’m always so intrigued when listening to behavior change experts because they always seem to have a clever answer for every enigma. “If this is your problem, then do this, and you’ll be fixed.” I’m drawn to that simplicity and knowledge because if we KNOW we can DO something and it will end well for us, THEN all we have is execution to get the result we need.
What encourages me with the recent uptick of attention to lifestyle behaviors when it comes to our long-term health, is that these are all things we are in COMPLETE control of. There’s nothing like the frustration of having to live through a situation that continues to decline and about which we have no influence. This health situation is completely the opposite.
Now, before you start running through your reasons for why things are different for you and that the commonsense behaviors won’t help your situation, you MUST TRY THEM. Just because they seem simple, doesn’t mean they don’t work incredibly well!
let’s start with sleep, again. I’ve written gobs about how sleep affects our health, especially our attempts to lose weight.
There was a time not long ago when I would routinely sleep 5-6 hours at night and then nap for 30-60 minutes in the afternoon. In my mind, that combination equalled 7 hours. But once I started sleeping 7-9 hours all at once, there was an incredible difference. Try it out and see if you don’t notice the benefits right away.
I know we aren’t always able to get perfect sleep or exercise or meals or fasting or stress relief or hydration levels. But that doesn’t change the fact that working on these lifestyle behaviors that affect our quality of life should be in the forefront of our minds and consistently practiced habits.
Try the simple things before deciding you can’t change:
sleep 7-9 hours/night
drink lotsa water
eat only real food
exercise daily
manage stress without food or drugs
Here’s what’s to love about simple behavior change: we can ALL do it. There is nothing stopping you from bettering your behaviors except the decision that you’re going to. If you find that even after the decision you don’t execute, you have the wrong behavior.
Make your change so easy that EVEN YOU will do it! 😂 Scale back the difficulty to increase your achievement. Then do it again. And again. And again. I’ll see you on the other side of your change!
