Its All About the Lifestyle

The biggest misconceptions I hear from people wanting to eat healthy are people simply trying to eliminate calories from their diets. Sure drinking diet pop may help you lose a bit of weight, but its not really the calories that are the problem, its the fact that you drink 4 cans of pop a day! Diet or not, its still not healthy. The other option is people who severely limit their calories, but what they do eat is garbage. Health isn't about losing weight (although this is often a byproduct) it is about learning to eat foods that are good for your body, and incorporating activity into your lifestyle. I recently read a really great book called "The Cure for Everything" by Timothy Caulfield. For me it was a lot of common sense, and things I already knew, but it changed my perspective on how the average person thinks about food. One take away I got from this book was about weight loss & dieting. His message was that being healthy is a lifestyle choice, not a diet. Anyone can lose weight short term by limiting caloric intake, however maintaining a weight is a completely different story. This is where lifestyle choices come in. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about healthy lifestyles. And at the risk of my mother-in-law being disappointed, I urge you to check it out from a library rather than buy it.

The first step is activity. A great YouTube video 23 and 1/2 Hours: What is the Single Best Thing we can do for our Health is a good place to start. If you haven't seen it, I'd say this video is worth the 9 minutes. It talks about just moving. Taking the stairs, walking to work, mowing the lawn. Healthy lifestyles are all about the numbers. In our fast-paced lives, we often get in our car in our garage, drive to a parkade, take an elevator up, sit at a desk all day, and do the same thing in reverse at the end of the day. Many of us spend our whole days not moving, and its super unhealthy. (I can attest to this, I've spent the last 4 weeks sitting on my couch recovering from surgery, and I feel unhealthy). Although not all of us have time to fit in an hour long workout every day, how about taking the stairs to the 5th floor two or three times a day? Or walking 20 minutes to school or work?

The second step is paying attention to what you eat. I mean really paying attention. I thought I was a relatively healthy eater, and once I started paying attention, I realized how much idle snacking I really did. A handful of candied nuts from someone desks, three candies while waiting in line at the bank, a cupcake from a fundraiser, some free samples of cookies at the grocery store, and the list goes on. Just because we don't really bring junk food into our home doesn't mean we aren't exposed to it. When I started tracking my food diligently, I was amazed at how often little things snuck into my diet (and by diet I just mean everything I eat, not some fancy pants no carb only berries thing).  I started using a free online webtool (with a handy iPhone app...no they don't pay me to say these things, I only wish). I found this to be a great way to think about what I was eating. For me it was as much about tracking calories as it was about becoming more cognizant about what I was eating. When you are tracking your food, you start to think about whether you really need to eat those little food spoilers that you find everywhere. 

Here are a few tips that I have come up with to add into your life to help create a healthy lifestyle:

• Take the stairs. I know it may sound cliche, but I never take the elevator unless I am going up more than 6 floors. This is just my rule of thumb. I've (non-scientifically) tested this, and up to about 6 floors, it takes about the same time whether you walk or ride. 
• Start tracking what you eat. Whether you use the webtool I recommended, or just write it down in a book, tracking what you eat allows you to be more aware of what you putting into your body. Write down everything including water intake, juice, samples etc.
• Put the fruits/veggies on your plate first. This way there is less room for grains, meats and fats. 
• Only have one plate. Unless you are STARVING (aka you just ran a marathon) most people don't need more than one plateful of food in a single sitting.
• Snack! This may sound counter-intuitive, but a million studies have shown that people who eat small portions often are in better shape than people who gorge three times a day. With snacking though, be conscious of what you are eating.