Want To Be Healthier & Live Longer? Make This Small Change

Want to lose weight? Want to know how to fail miserably at it? That’s easy. Try and start a new exercise routine and diet at the same time. It’s the surest recipe for super-fast results. It’s also the best way to all but guarantee you’ll fail. The training will make you ridiculously hungry. Sadly, the diet won’t allow you enough food to satisfy those ravenous hunger pangs. You’ll have no energy. You’ll feel sore. You won’t sleep well and will return to your old friends – inactivity and junk food – for an emotional cuddle. It’s a script that plays out every single day, all over the world. Sadly, it’s why there’s an obesity crisis, which is something that doesn’t need to be there. All that needs to change is one single thing.

The new tactic

Being told you need to change too much is overwhelming. It’s like erasing a part of the person who you used to like hanging around. Fortunately, you can keep the parts of you that you like while getting better at sticking to your diet, A new study in the journal iScience says you can lose weight by taking a new approach that doesn’t demand as much change. These researchers found if your goal is to get healthy and live longer it’s better to focus your attention on getting fitter, instead of trying to change your diet to lose the body fat. This means that rather than trying to overhaul your diet, you can just start moving a little more. Go for a light walk each day that lasts no more than 5 minutes but increase that walk time by 30 seconds each day. Soon you’ll be walking a long way and be feeling a lot fitter as a result.

It’s not how you look

It’s hard to deny that you live in an appearance obsessed culture. Trying to lose weight falls in line with this and makes your motivations external to you. You want other people to think a certain way about you. This is why focusing on food can be tricky because it takes a long time for its effects to show up. If you flip the script and focus your motivations on wanting your own body to feel better, then this becomes an internal driver. You love how fit you feel. You love how your knees work so well. You enjoy the high of finishing a good workout. You lap up that high quality sleep that training delivers. All these rewards mean nothing to anybody else because they can’t even see them. They’re specific to you. Best of all, they’re all there for the taking regardless of how fit you are.

The knock-on effect

What will the result look like? Well, you’ll feel more energized, healthier, and happier by creating a small daily exercise habit. This will give you the motivation to stick to it because you’ll get an intense sense of self satisfaction, but you will reach a point where you feel like making a positive change to your diet. It may not be a drastic one. You might just choose the apple over the Cinnabon roll. It was easy. It will get even easier if you fill your cupboards with delicious foods that are also healthy. With the right ammunition in your home, you’ll organically make healthier food choices without even realizing it. All you need to do is get moving. Start small. You’ll hardly notice it, but it will soon deliver big results. That’s the secret to lasting change.