Happy 2013!
I know I have already posted a couple of recipes this New Year but I haven’t officially wished everyone a wonderful and blessed start to the New Year. With the New Year comes Resolutions. I am not a huge resolution fan but I am a fan of goal setting. In doing some reading they say up to 88% of people fail at following through with their New Years Resolutions. That’s a huge number and is very discouraging to look at it that way.
Now I’m really not negative when it comes to the New Year, trust me! I think the New Year gives us time to reflect on the past year and cultivate a heart of thankfulness and look at areas of our lives that need work or refinement. I think from that we can start the New Year with a plan in place to develop new habits in our lives. The vehicle of change is inspiration. Motivation only lasts for about 10 days but inspiration can last forever. And example is weight loss. Motivation would be looking at weight loss from an angle of just looking better and buying a smaller size of clothing. Inspiration would be weight loss to build muscle mass because muscle is a healthy metabolic tissue. Or weight loss to be able to keep up with your children. Or weight loss because you have learned so about eating healthy foods you can’t go back to the Standard American Diet (SAD).
I have made a list of 7 steps to help you create some goals for this year so that you can achieve them. Let’s decide together to implement these things and when we look back at 2013 you can smile at how much change you have achieved.
- Start small! We all want to be perfect in our eating, exercising, health yesterday. But real change comes from taking baby steps.
- Celebrate your baby steps. It’s easy to get discouraged because the steps you seem to be making are so small. But don’t allow your mind to go there. If your ultimate goal is to make your own yogurt, celebrate the steps that you’ve changed from a traditional brand full of high fructose corn syrup and now buy plain organic greek yogurt that you sweeten yourself with stevia and berries. That’s an amazing thing! If you need help, write down the little changes you are making. That also helps to cultivate that heart of thankfulness.
- Get Inspired. What inspires you? For me it is listening to other health care practitioners and reading research (yes, I do read research) about health. Foods, exercise, children’s health, supplements and many more. They help me remember why I do what I do. My brain likes the little details and they remind me over and over again the importance of how I live my life. One newsletter I recommend is from Dr. Mercola. I have been following him for 10 years and have learned a lot from this doctor. www.mercola.com
- Get Peace. Learn to be at peace with the road you are traveling on your journey to health. There may be some bumps in the road along the way. And I want to warn you, you are going to look different than the rest of the country. People may question you, they may even talk down to you. But if you are at peace with what you are doing (and stay inspired) you are going to not listen to their negative talk. For me, peace is achieved through a lot of prayer. Decide to believe that your body is a temple used to glorify God and you have the choice about how healthy that temple is.
- Persevere. Guess what, you will have bad days. I still have those from time to time. They are getting less and less as I continue on, but there are days when I’m in the grocery store and all I want to buy is a glazed donut or eat an entire baguette with butter. But then I calm my mind and remember that I am choosing to live my life in a different way. Could I have a piece of bread? Yes, and please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want you to think it’s all about rules. But my heart has overgone a change about how I view foods and healthy living so for me I realize that there will be consequences to eating that. I’ll feel tired and definitely get a stomach ache. And that can last up to 3 days for me. I’d rather choose to get excited about the amazing “treats” that I have made up and are sitting in my freezer waiting for me to eat for a time like this. They taste great and keep me feeling great too. On a side note, bake in bulk and freeze some so you will always have food available.
- Plan Ahead. This statement immediately brings be back to orchestra class in high school where my teacher would say plan ahead, think where the music is going or else you are going to run out of bow and be stuck. It’s the same thing with food. Are any of us surprised that around 12:00 we get hungry everyday? No, it’s lunch time. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Pack a lunch and pack some snacks when you are running errands or at work. Have some healthy treats frozen in the freezer or have some pre-cut veggies and hummus in your fridge. One of the biggest mistakes people make is to not plan. When we forget to plan we resort to fast food, vending machine food, pre-packaged processed foods? Here are a couple of things that will help with planning. Do like to plan meals for a week ahead or a month? Do you like to pack your lunch and snacks the night before work so you are ready in the morning? Do you spend half a day on the weekends preparing foods for your week? Find a system that works for you and refine it throughout the year if you need to.
- Don’t compare. Please, don’t compare yourself to others. Comparisson is a robber of joy. There should be joy that comes from making healthy decisions. I used to compare myself, what I ate, how I exercised to everyone many many years ago. Let me tell you, that’s not a fun way to live. Now I realize that I do things that work best for me. It took me a long time to break the sugar habit. I used to walk into Starbuck’s to get a cup of coffee and hear the scones and muffins calling my name. I had to pay and run out of there just to not cave in and buy one. But now (after a few years) those don’t even appeal to me. That’s something to celebrate in. You and your friend may start this journey together and it seems she can follow a “diet” plan perfectly while you seem to keep slipping up. Don’t compare, ask her if she can keep you accountable or give you some tips and tricks that helped her. We are all in this together!
This year, 2013, I challenge you to eat healthier. The Standard American Diet is just SAD! I challenge you to push yourself (even if it’s just a step out of your comfort zone). I challenge you to take baby steps. I challenge you to keep learning. I challenge you to get healthier! Who’s with me? Let’s get healthier together. This year I am committed to give you recipes and resources to do just that… get healthier.
I have a lot of amazing things in the works for Just Enjoy Food ( It includes a new look) and throughout all of this I have YOU in mind. So please, join me in the journey and ENJOY the journey with me.
Dr. Meghan
P.S. The picture above is part of my New Years goals of improving my picture taking skills in 2013. These are a bunch of my new props that I am going to use for photography. There are a lot of visual inspiration I am getting and articles I am reading on how to set up a shot. I’m so excited!
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