Start with your goals part2, or why you need to ask yourself – what is “being healthy?”
The two most frequent questions I get when people talk to me about health and fitness are variations on:
- How can I lose weight?
- How can I get healthier?
It’s interesting to note that I don’t usually get questions about how to keep weight off or about what kind of healthy lifestyle will help you maintain a healthy weight.
(This is the root of yo-yo dieting; where people lose weight and then end up gaining back all the weight they lost – or sometimes even end up weighing more than they did at first.) For this reason it’s very important to think about living at a healthy body weight rather than thinking about just losing a certain amount of weight or fat.
Body composition (muscle/fat) is also very important – it’s not just about losing weight. This will be addressed in an upcoming post.
Also, I don’t usually get questions about maintaining a healthier lifestyle – the questions are usually 
about losing extra weight or losing fat and about getting “healthier” – not about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. This is the point of today’s post: you have to come up with a clear picture in your mind of what it means to have a healthier lifestyle. This means you need to define what it means to be “healthier” thinking about it in terms of a lifestyle – something that you maintain. This extends to all parts of your life: diet, activity, fitness, stress, sleep, emotions, etc.
Once you can clearly picture what a healthy lifestyle looks like, you can begin reviewing your habits, diet, and different areas of your life and put a plan in place for a healthier lifestyle. Make sure you read the upcoming posts for ways to clearly identify and define a healthy lifestyle and how to get there.
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