Is Healthy Living All or Nothing?

Books, magazines and social media always have some handy, easy-to-follow advice to keep you healthy. “Just 5 minutes face yoga per day prevents wrinkles”, “get a flat tummy in just 10 minutes a day” or “a simple 30-minute morning walk ensures better sleep at night” … That’s 45 minutes before you have even started looking after the rest of your life or even cooked a meal. Needless to say, it can be difficult to find the time. 

Add to that the restrictiveness of advice – like “avoid carbs”, “don’t eat sugar”, “don’t snack”, “avoid alcohol”, “count calories”-, which can seem impossible to stick to at all times, and you may feel inclined to not even start. Being healthy can seem like an impossible task. 

But does it always have to be all or nothing? Can you, perhaps, be “healthy in the middle”? 

We know what is and isn’t good for us, and having a healthy, real food diet, cooking from scratch, putting in some regular exercise, getting out into fresh air, taking time for meditation or other relaxation, scheduling me-time does increase your chances of living a long and healthy life. 

Having said that, you can also benefit from – even small – diet and lifestyle changes if you are not able to stick to all of the above at all times. And here’s why.

Small changes, or even a single one, can have a significant impact. If you are a smoker, just giving up smoking would greatly impact your health, your sense of smell, and your physical stamina, not to mention your finances. 

If you drink alcohol most days and too much of it on many of those days, cutting back or – ideally – going sober could make a difference in how well you sleep, how much energy you have and how likely you are to suffer from heart disease or liver disease later in life. 

If your life revolves around sugar, removing just that one substance from your diet could reduce inflammation, put an end to cravings and binges, improve your mood and protect you from type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and dementia. 

It’s not to say that those changes would be easy, but you don’t have to turn your whole life around to be healthier in the future than you are now. If you decided today to change all of your unhealthy habits and were actually able to do that, then, yes, you may become even healthier. But how realistic is that? 

So, pick the one thing that bothers you the most, the one thing that you suspect has the strongest impact on your wellbeing and focus on that for now. It’s a place to start. Once you have truly conquered that, you can, if you want, move on and tackle the next thing – one step at a time. 

Know yourself

How many times has a friend, or your partner shared a health tip with you that worked for them? Maybe your husband feels like a new man since he took up running. Maybe your friend swears by her early morning swim because it helped her start her days more energised, lose weight and be happier. But is this for you? If you don’t like running or if swimming isn’t your thing, it probably isn’t, never mind how much good these activities do for other people.

If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you are unlikely to stick to it. Simple as that. Finding something that YOU will enjoy is key.

Some people decide to cut out sugar and stop eating it there and then, either because they are the kind of person that will stick to resolutions or … because they know that having ONE biscuit will open the floodgates and they are not going to stop until they have demolished the entire packet. Others can’t face the thought of never having another biscuit – but they CAN stop after having just one every now and then. Which kind of person are you? Once you have established that, you can plan your strategy. 

Set Goals

Research has found that people who have goals – particularly if they are hard goals – are considerably more likely to succeed than people who do not (1). Ideally, those goals should be SMART: 

Specific – be clear about EXACTLY what you want to achieve. “I will cook from scratch 5 times per week” is specific. “I will eat more home-cooked food” is not.

Measurable – You can easily count the times you have cooked from scratch. You could even track it with a tick list. 

Attainable – If you’re working 10-hour days and have a two-hour commute, it may not be feasible to cook five times a week. But batch-cooking five meals on a weekend might be. 

Relevant – Is this goal relevant for you? Does it match your values? Why is it important to you?

Timely – When do you want to achieve this by? 

Now, you could write down a list of goals, every single one of them SMART. But is it feasible to reach them all at once? Consider whether it might not be better to pick one – the one that will have the most impact – and focus on that.

Much better to reach one goal than to abandon five because you are overwhelmed. And once you achieve that one goal, you’ll have the confidence to know you can achieve another.

80/20 Rule

One of the first things I tell my clients about when they start working with me is the 80/20 rule: “If you eat healthily 80 per cent of the time, you can afford to go off track 20 per cent of the time.” Note that “healthily” means in the way that we just discussed, which can be different for each person. 

When you first make changes to your diet, it can feel like you are “on a diet”. You’re not. You’re learning to eat differently for life in order to benefit from your new way of eating for life. 

If, after four weeks or so, you were to go back to the way you were eating before – as happens with a lot of diets  – you will get the same results as before and perhaps feel sluggish, tired, and overweight again, as the case may be. So, you’ll want to change your diet forever, but “forever” seems like a very, very long time. 

Does that mean that you’ll never have another slice of cake? Never another pizza? No more Chinese takeaways? Ever? With that prospect, you may never start. 

This is where the 80/20 rule comes in. A little of those foods now and again are perfectly fine if the rest of your diet is healthy. If you are out for dinner, and you fancy those chips, by all means, have them. 

This does NOT mean that you have fallen off the wagon and might as well not bother anymore. It means that you ate away from home and chose something you fancied. Move on and eat according to your new way of eating again tomorrow. 

There is just one caveat to this, which goes back to what I said above: Know yourself! If you are an all-or-nothing person, if you know that having had chips once, you may never be able to get off them again, then perhaps don’t tempt fate. 

Once you have followed your new way of eating for some time, once you have seen and felt the benefits, once your tastebuds have adapted, you may find that you no longer like the foods you couldn’t resist in the past. Cravings subside and processed, sweet or junk foods become a lot less appealing. When you get there, you may not even need the 80/20 rule anymore. 

Create new habits

Allegedly, the average adult makes around 35,000 conscious decisions a day (2), 221 of which are just about food (3). It’s hard to imagine it could be so many, but we don’t need an accurate figure to understand how exhausting it is to make decisions all the time: 

• What shall I wear? 
• Do I fancy eggs or porridge today?
• If eggs, should they be boiled, poached, scrambled or fried? 
• In butter, olive oil or coconut oil?
• Will I go for a run or not? 
• If I’m running, how far? How long for? Which route? Alone or in company? 

It is easy to see how all those decisions mount up.

However, we do not (usually) debate with ourselves whether we should brush our teeth today or have a shower. There is no debate about whether we should put our bra or our socks on first. That’s because these things are habits. They run on autopilot. You may not even know which item of clothing you put on your body first in the morning because it just happens. It’s a habit. You do not need to think about it. 

Habits take away the need to make a decision. We once decided that this is how we will do something and then do it repeatedly until it happens almost by itself. Habits may make life more predictable, but also easier. Habits are efficient. They free up your brain to busy itself with more important questions.

Forming a new habit takes anything between 18 and 254 days, on average 66. (4) Whether it takes someone closer to 18 or closer to 254 depends to some extent on the type of person you are, but what researchers say is most important when trying to form a new habit is consistency. Do that thing you want to get into every day, and you are much more likely to make it a habit. 

Baby Steps

If you can’t do it every day, perhaps you’ve bitten off more than you can chew at once. Did you plan on going for a 30-minute run every day, but find it is not happening? Then how about a 10-minute run? Or even a 10-minute walk? Chances are that, once you’re out there, you’ll walk or run for longer, now that you’ve put your running gear and your shoes on and got yourself out of the house, you might as well. But if 10 minutes each day seems a lot more feasible than 30, start there. Or if every day is unrealistic alongside the other commitments you have in your life, perhaps a 30-minute run three times a week would be better.

Do you want to cut back on carbs from your diet? Depending on where you are in the process, you could start by switching from refined (white) starchy carbohydrates to unrefined (wholegrain) versions: steelcut, rolled oats instead of instant, brown rice instead of white, wholegrain bread instead of white. Next, you could reduce portion sizes. Or, if you are feeling up to it, you could start by just quitting sugar, leaving the other starchy carbs alone for now. 

Any step – even a baby step – will take you in the right direction and closer to where you want to be. But only if you take it. 

If you would like to make healthy lifestyle changes as you transition through perimenopause, why not sign up below for my free ‘6 Secrets to a Healthy Happy Menopause’ guide to help you decide which step to take and get into action.

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