It’s the new year and gym memberships will rocket, slimming clubs will be inundated and biscuit sales will be temporarily down. We are so predictable that it probably features in McVitie’s sales forecast.
Yet this potentially ‘healthy’ trend is not going to revolutionise public health because by the second quarter of the year, gym attendance is down and many slimmers are struggling to maintain their diets.
The reason I believe many people find it difficult to stick to a healthy lifestyle is easily summarised in 2 points:
- They don’t know understand why it’s so important for their longer term health
- The method they are using is not personalised to their lifestyle, family dynamics and changing needs and therefore only sustainable for short periods of time.
Why it’s so important
We need to dramatically re-think how we are looking at our health. A child born today should expect to live a longer, healthier life than ever before, yet a Government report, Living Well for Longer (PDF, 1.6Mb), blames the top five killers for more than 150,000 premature deaths a year and estimates that ⅔ of these are entirely avoidable by dietary and lifestyle choices.
Whilst this number can be daunting it can also be incredibly liberating – we have all felt the increase in these tragic diseases and now we can actively do something to improve our health and protect against our risk of developing them.
If you are the primary home-keeper then you also have a significant influence over the health of your family.
Choosing the method for you
If you are looking to make changes to your diet and lifestyle it is important that you recognise the physical and psychological elements to the change.
In many cases, it is the most educated in our society that engage in some of the unhealthiest of habits, such as doctors who smoke or busy professionals who don’t have time to cook.
For these people, education on healthy living alone is not going to liberate them to change.
We need to work on the triggers that make us eat, to identify the root cause and to find different solutions. Sometimes that takes time that we do not allocate in our daily lives.
Your healthy new year
When you start to make your choices for 2017, ask yourself if you can imagine doing it for the whole year, not just for a 3 day detox or a 3 month diet.
Set yourself up to succeed by choosing one thing to change and sticking to it before you conquer the next.
A healthy lifestyle can absolutely be enjoyable, sustainable and satisfying if you make it realistic and personal to you.
If you are interested in learning more about nutrition and life coaching please do not hesitate to call me for a free 15 minute assessment or like my facebook page for more posts and recipes: https://www.facebook.com/radianthealthnutritionist/#
Wishing you all a healthy and happy new year. xx
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