When I think about health the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition comes into my head every time.
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease.”
Read that again!!
It’s not just having a few vitamins and eating a salad. It’s how you feel, your relationships, your stress levels, your sleep, your energy and so much more. I think of this often because every change I make to my programme should be trying to benefit one of these and trying my best not to harm one of the others.
I can’t go and put someone on a diet which causes them to have to be scared of having a burger at a BBQ or having a few strawberry daiquiris with friends – that negatively impacts their social well being. A massive reason why most diets fail isn’t because of lack of will power or motivation, it’s because the diet you are doing is negatively impacting your social and mental wellbeing. Most diets also end up leaving the person low on energy and hungry all the time, therefore negatively impacting your physical wellbeing as well.
I like to keep things simple here and look for small changes to your diet which will create the biggest health benefits.
73% of adults don’t eat the recommended amount fruit and veg daily and 62% of the UK population don’t drink enough water.
Sometimes focusing on something like that makes a lot of sense as it “corrects” a lot of your diet without you noticing. What I mean by that is…
Increased fruit and veg will reduce snacking on higher calorie “unhealthy” snacks as they are high in volume, meaning they will fill you up more.
Increased water consumption will give you more energy, often when we are dehydrated we reach for sugary foods to give us a boost of energy. It’s not that we are mistaking thirst for hunger, it’s more than we are feeling lethargic so we chase an energy boost.
I can’t give someone loads of exercise that they can barely fit into their lifestyle and have them marching up and down their living room at 10pm to hit a certain amount of steps. That negatively impacts their mental health and their social wellbeing.
Fitting exercise into your lifestyle can be tricky and it’s just sooooo hard when we start, so we need to ease into it. Often when someone is on a wee health kick they start trying to exercise everyday, going to classes they don’t enjoy or start going running even though they hate it. So in order for us to improve your physical, mental and social wellbeing we need to find a method of exercise you enjoy (or at least can maintain) and we need to build you up slowly.
There are so many different variables within each persons life that directly impacts their health. My job is to help you with yours so we can create what YOUR healthy lifestyle is. You can’t copy that from someone else because everyone has such different lives.
Stress isn’t the same everyday. Sleep isn’t the same every night. Energy isn’t the same everyday. What you have on isn’t the same everyday. Your interactions aren’t the same everyday.
We need to look at ways to manage these. It’s not what you do when you’re stress free and having a great day that brings results.
It’s how you react when stress is high, energy is low that brings results.
That’s what I’m here to help with.
2.1 billion people in the world are currently overweight or obese. Meaning most likely 2.1 billion people probably want to lose weight. The majority of those will go for the quick fix or try to find the “easiest” way. Which makes sense, why wouldn’t you want it quick and easy (there is a joke there somewhere).
We can’t take the quick way with health and there is no easy way with weight loss.
Big grand gestures of cutting out every food you think is unhealthy and seeing how long you lost doesn’t work for health – because it goes against the 3 main principles of health.
You don’t need a big grand gesture. You need a few small ones done consistently.
Being organised with food, planning ahead, introducing some fruit and veg, drinking sufficient water, learning about yourself and your reactions to food, trying to get 3 exercise sessions a week and most importantly – NOT feeling guilty if one day one of the former do not go to plan.
Do that for a while and see where you land up. You’ll be surprised.
