Recipe for Healthy Living - The "WHAT"

Welcome to the first of my three-part easy-to-follow recipe for getting started on the healthy lifestyle you so desire.

All great recipes have three things in common, they clearly describe WHAT ingredients to use, WHEN to add or combine ingredients together, and HOW to prepare and cook the ingredients. When the recipe is followed you know, without a doubt, your efforts will consistently produce the delicious food item you are expecting. If even one of these directional cues is off, skipped or neglected you can be left with a less than desirable outcome, and feel frustrated that the time you invested was wasted.

Healthy living or leading a healthy lifestyle is no different than following a well thought out recipe. Like a good recipe, leading a healthy lifestyle has its own set of WHAT, WHEN and HOW directional cues that each require your attention. The WHAT represents the type and quality of the diet, sleep, and exercise practices you are selecting, the WHEN represents the timing or rhythm you keep with your eating, sleep, and exercise habits, and the HOW represents the quantity, frequency, and effort you put forth engaging in your diet, sleep and exercise practices. Following this recipe without equal attention to all three WHEN, WHAT & HOW directional cues is the most common mistake made and leading reason for recipe failure.

Think about the last time you decided to make a positive health shift in your life. Whether it was improving you eating, sleep or exercise habits the first things you probably thought about were the WHATs; WHAT type of food you should eat, WHAT type of exercise would be best, or WHAT type of sleep aids, products, or techniques to follow.

While the WHAT is important and should be something you think about, you need to equally consider WHEN you are doing these activities as well as HOW you are doing them. A growing amount of research supports the idea that eating, sleeping, or exercising at the wrong time of day or with the wrong amount of effort or intensity for your situation could be what is holding you back from successfully reaching your desired health goals.

Shifting your attention to include the WHEN and HOW in relation to your diet, sleep and exercise practices is critical for sustaining a healthy lifestyle. In the next couple of posts, I will dive a little deeper into why you don’t want to leave either of these ingredients out of your healthy living recipe.

Daily Challenge:

Without judgement observe WHAT diet, sleep and exercise habits you are currently following, WHEN you are practicing them and HOW you are doing them.

Cheryl Block, Director & Founder of Healthy Inputs is a Holistic Health Nurse, Ayurvedic Practitioner & Yoga Teacher that offers healthy lifestyle consults, counseling and coaching to help people optimize their health & well-being