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Twelve Small Steps to a Healthy Life

By Tom Aaron

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 05Sep2009
Word count: 761
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Most of us know how to live a healthy life. You may have your own definition of a healthy life. Here's our definition:

(1) Exercise at least a half hour every day

(2) Get a good night's sleep

(3) Avoid smoking and secondhand smoke

(4) Drink only occasionally

(5) Enjoy your work

(6) Enjoy the people in your life

(7) Eat fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and whole grains

(8) Eat fish two to three times a week

(9) Eat primarily organic food

(10) Eat meat and poultry occasionally, if at all

(11) Indulge yourself once in a while

(12) Laugh

Your definition of the healthy life may vary. You may not agree with eating an organic diet; you may entirely avoid meat; you may have fish once a week; you may eat meat every day. Whether or not your definition for a healthy life coincides with ours is not the focus on this article. Our focus is whether or not you live in accordance with your image of the healthy life. If you do not, we would like to suggest taking small steps to move you closer to your definition of the healthy life.

If you do live in accordance with your image of the healthy life, terrific. Good for you. We are glad for you.

If, however, you've defined a healthy life for yourself but do not live in accordance with your image of the healthy life, we hope you will read on.

You may know the changes you need to make to bring reality closer to your healthy life image. Still, you simply don't make those changes. You continue to do what you do, and you say tomorrow. You say that you'll make the changes tomorrow. The question is why we don't make changes. Even if we think we should, we may not change. Are we slackers? Are we simply incapable of change? These are not the true reasons.

Let's stop for a minute. I'd like a two-minute thought break. I'd like you to take a piece of paper. On the piece of paper, suppose you list six changes you want to make.

Why six ? That seems like a doable number.

You have a list of changes you want to make. Let's talk about how to start making changes. Which of the six changes is where you want to start? And how do you want to start? You know yourself better than anyone. You know how you operate. The questions are what you have tried, what has worked and what has not worked. Suppose you want to stop eating meat. Suppose now you eat meat almost every day. One approach would be taking small steps. That is, starting this very minute no meat on Tuesdays. Next month, no meat on Tuesdays and Sundays.

The question is whether that would that work for you. The key to changes is one change at a time. Each change can be broken into small steps.

What works for us is a plan on a piece of paper. You don't need to sketch out your entire plan if you, for example, want to stop eating meat. Suppose you just write down the first two steps you're going to take. Your first step is no meat on Tuesday. Your second step may be no meat on Sunday. When you accomplish your first step, you will want to move on to your second step. Then you'll want to think about step three.

Step three may be another small step. Suppose you're not ready to move to three meatless days each week. You could decide that step three will be small pieces of beef instead of a sirloin steak. You could have small pieces on top of pasta or rice rather than a steak with pasta or rice on the side.

Suppose you want to lose fifteen pounds. You've tried dieting; you've tried fasting; you've tried groups. You could think in terms of small steps for losing those fifteen pounds. You could simply start with Wednesday night. Your small step could be a lighter dinner on Wednesdays. You could eat a salad with oil and vinegar, chili and a bowl of fruit with raisins, nuts and yogurt on top. After dinner on Wednesday you can have an apple or banana but no non-fruit snacks. Wednesday dinner and snack might be more than you could handle as a small step. You might just want to start with the after dinner snack and skip the modest dinner.

Changing patterns is not easy. Our small step approach may help you to get closer to what you want to achieve. We hope so.

Aaron Language Services on the web at http://www.aaronlanguage.com provides translation, proofreading, and online English coaching to a primarily Japanese client base.

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