Enjoyment over perfection

Enjoy your time while being healthy

When we aim for a certain goal we often forget why we are going for it. Trying to achieve a healthy lifestyle isn’t a reason to scare us from enjoying life. If we think we are perfect we aim for always being on point and refusing anything that isn’t in line with our goals.

Allthough picking the healthy option all the time may bring you faster to your goal, your enjoyment will decrease and the possibility of achieving your end goal may be at risk. In a perfect world you would never take a step back. However taking two steps forward, one backwards is still progress. No one is perfect and aiming for it is impossible. You are allowed to refuse that one ice cream, but what about the next one? If you still enjoy life this way it’s fine, however if you are sacrificing your enjoyment you might want to rethink what to refuse and how often.

Without the element of enjoyment, it is not worth trying to excel at anything. – Magnus Carlsen

Like world’s best chest player Magnus Carlsen claims trying to be your best in something is only feasable if you enjoy it. The same thing goes for becoming healthy. If you want to become healthy the best way to achieve is to enjoy the path you are taking. Agreed if you are just starting out and have to come from far you might not enjoy the start. The art is to experiment with activities and posibilities to start implementing joy on the way. This can be to search for food you enjoy, a pleasant sport or finding someone to join you on your path. If you choose the last option remember to not solely focus on them. If they quit there should be some motivation left to continue.

When people say it’s very hard to impossible to become healthy the reasoning behind this is that they, or their peers, try to force them to take a different path. For becoming healthy you have to be ready to do what is needed, yet without forgetting to live and to enjoy life. To enjoy life doesn’t mean to eat fast food 5 times a week, neither does it mean to sit in front of the television every day for 6 hours at a time. Enjoying life means to not sacrifice that much that you are no longer willing to continue your path. Find something that is enjoyable for you, yet will start to bring you to your goal.

Let health become your second nature

What do you think if you see this image? 

Many things are important in life, but something that is difficult to live without is health. A healthy life consists of many aspects, the more of these aspects that come easy to you the easier it will be to maintain it for a long time.

Think about the last time you went to a restaurant. All your friends are ordering what their heart desires, they fulfill their pleasures. Imagine sitting with them and instantly choosing a healthy meal and looking forward to it. You will not ditch your desires but they have changed. You will no longer desire that fastfood but want to taste that very healthy meal instead. If it becomes your second nature neither you, your friends or family will question your choice anymore. It will be a streamlined process that doesn’t require any willpower anymore. Instead of your friends waiting for you to see what beverage you would drink they can instantly order your healthy drink that you always pick. They will know not to buy a certain snack for you, neither will they be obliged to keep that last unhealthy snack in the bag.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you. – Joyce Meyer

Despite the initial thought of your family and friends they will no longer dislike that healthy lifestyle of yours. They can learn from and if they want to improve their health they know who they can ask for advice. If they even copy a couple of your habits their life will become so much healthier. At first they will hate the change you are implementing in your life, and undoubtly changing a part of them as well. They can choose to remain the same or try to head the same direction you are going. Change is never easy especially for friends or family who don’t want “their ways” to be changed.

In the long run the best thing your family can have is a healthy version of yourself. Instead of a short lifed sprint of pleasure you can enjoy the good things in life together. Your family will not have to battle poverty after your death but you can comfortably stay together and enjoy the company of each other. Besides food, movement is a second important part of a healthy life. Instead of forcing yourself to move find something that you can enjoy. Even just a 20 minute walk is a lot better than forcing yourself to do a hated workout for an hour. You can only force yourself to do certain things for a short time. Loving what you do will get you much further and you will continue on the same path for so much longer.

 

Living with cravings

Maintain your cravings

Cravings lay at every corner of our life and if we don’t pay attention we can be consumed by them. The first step to take control of your life is by finding out what your cravings are.

When you know what your weaknesses are you can start to find out what to do to solve it. The way most people consider to beat their cravings by fighting them. Attempting to beat them this way can be succesfull temporarily, but in the long run this is not the way to go.

You will be better protected against cravings if you eat enough and/or drink enough water so that you are filled and don’t feel the need of giving in to the craving. The next thing and not less important is how to still enjoy food that are not necessarily the best choices. It’s not forbidden to enjoy a pizza or some beer here and there. As long as you moderate your intake you can still enjoy it and don’t have to feel guilty.  If you eat your prefered snack now and then you will be more likely to maintain your routine without having too big of cravings.

There is no end of craving. Hence contentment alone is the best way to happiness. Therefore acquire contentment. – Swami Sivananda

Feeling happy and satisfied are the only way defending yourself against cravings. If you feel satisfied with your food intake and your little snacks you have eaten you will be protected better against possible temptation.

Cravings can also be held under control if you allow yourself a pleasure, but keep it small. You are learning to eat that tasty pizza, but it isn’t that entire pizza you want. When you start eating it you start to realise that you weren’t craving the full one, just wanted a taste of it. That is how you can slowly reduce your cravings. Give yourself what you want from time to time but limit it to a certain amount to replenish your defence levels.

The better you are able to notice with how little amount you will be satisfied the better you will get at it. You will be able to share a pizza with a friend or eating just drink half a bottle of coca and keep the rest for later.

 

 

Enjoying your weekend without sacrificing your health

Have you studied or worked long and hard in the week? Friday it’s time to trasition into your weekend and to have a relaxing time. What is the cost for having a nice time?

The thing that receives the least amount of attention in the weekend is how you continue your healthy choices from during the week. If you are serious about maintaining your health benefits it’s certainly something to keep in mind. The important decision lies in your hand. Do you want to have a flexible weekend to keep your sanity following your healthy week? There is no doubt that the stressfull week can have it’s influence on the end of your week.

When I eat with my friends, it is a moment of real pleasure, when I really enjoy my life. – Monica Bellucci

If a slightly loose weekend helps you preparing for next week than that is what you have to do. Turning your life into a healthy one is more important than just having one entire week to be healthy including the weekend. Having a friday night with your friends will improve how easy you will have nice healthy week starting from monday. It certainly does add some pleasure to your lifestyle enjoying an evening with your friends.

An alternative way of taking on the weekend challenge is by not having every weekend completely the same. Some weekend go out and eat anything you want. Othertimes just go eat some pizza slices, other weekends stay home and cook a nice healthy meal. How much you enjoy a healthy meal will determine how often you can step away from the traditional ‘eat-all-out weekends’.

Everyone needs a replenishing moment where they can sometimes eat whatever they want. If you decide to plan that into every weekend then you know you will be capable of sustaining your new lifestyle for longer. The changes don’t have to deprive you of everything you liked before, it only changes your ways slightly.

Make wise daily decisions

What route are you taking?

Do you know someone who takes the day as it goes? Those are the people who frequently say not to sweat the small stuff. Life is too hard to be worrying about the small decisions. However tiny changes in your decision making can make a big difference in the bigger picture of your life.

Drinking a glass of water instead of a beer at a party isn’t going to make your life change around. Taking this decision once in a while will positively influence your life. Benefit upon benefit improves your quality of life. The same thing goes for working out. One additional rest day isn’t going to hurt you. But if you plan on working out 3 times a week, and skip one workout every week you are going to notice the difference.

All of us start from zero. We take the right decision and become a hero. – Govinda

Everyone has the same amount of time in a day or a week. But how you fill those hours determine how succesfull you will be. If you take good decision all day you will reap the benefits of them later on. You don’t need to reward yourself with tasty unhealthy foods for every small win you obtain. Delay your gratification and you be rewarded a lot more in the future. Instead of going to drink a lot alcohol, laying in your couch watching TV do something usefull that improves your life.

The more often you go and do some work instead of pleasure the better your freedom will be in the future. Instead of laying in a couch for 4 hours straight binge watching TV spend just 15 mins of learning a language. Then go read a book for 30 minutes and fill the rest of your time watching TV. Making a simple change like this really helps you to improve your capabilities.