Drop the Weight with EJ: Forget Doing It All With Healthy Living, Focus On What Matters

If you let Google tell it, you’ll hear a million things you can do to get healthy. But if you have goals like building a thriving career, a great family life, and wide-spreading impact to show for it, you don’t have time for a million things.

What this sometimes means is that you put your desire to be healthier, fitter, leaner, or simply to feel better, on the back burner while you push forward on your grind.

Let me, instead, show you how focusing on what matters in your healthy lifestyle journey can work just as well as it does for the rest of your life.

First, forget the fancy programs, the basics are what matter
You can go on a fancy diet or start with a workout that requires fancy equipment if you have the time and energy to make that work for you. But chances are, if you’re reading this, you don’t have that kind of extra time, or you’d just rather spend that time moving your life forward in other ways.

Here’s the good news: you don’t need fancy.

Consistency is what gets you results. So if all you can do right now is be consistent with drinking 2 litres of water a day or take a 30-minute walk during your break in the day at work, you’ll get better results from that than any inconsistent fancy actions you take.

Calories matter, but getting enough sleep also does
Regardless of whether your goal is weight loss related or not, complicated calorie (or carb) math isn’t the only thing that’ll help you get the glow up you’re after. Calories matter, but your body has to be functioning at an optimum level to be able to produce the results you want.

If you’re not getting enough sleep, drinking enough water, or minimizing your stress, a lot of these strategies won’t give you the level of results you’re expecting. And that’s why the basics matter.

There’s so much to healthy living than the calorie deficit you create with healthy eating and exercise. There’s the quality of the food you eat, how it makes you feel, and the other ways like sleeping good and drinking water.

There’s an awesome quote I picked up when I got my coach training: ”Don’t mow the lawn while the house is on fire.” Focusing on complicated calorie math is the equivalent of keeping your yard trimmed while your house burns.

Skip the overwhelming million-things strategy and start with these core actions
Before you decide that you need to detox your body or start counting macros, there are some core actions you need to be consistent with. These are the actions that’ll help you make sure your proverbial house (body) is in order before you dive into clearing your yard.

I wrote about them in more detail here, but here’s the basic gist:

1. Eat only when you’re hungry
2. Eat healthy at least 80% of the time (PS: this isn’t code for go on a diet)
3. Eat enough to make sure you’re satisfied but not full
4. Make sure you’re drinking enough water
5. Get enough exercise
6. Get enough laughter in your life
7. Live consistently with your values
8. Get enough sleep

Doing all these things consistently will help you get healthy and feel great in your body. If you want to get even leaner after you’ve gotten consistent with each and every one of them, then you can consider more complex strategies.

It’s time to take action
Now that you know you don’t have to do all the things and start counting macros or going keto to get results, my invitation to you is to choose one action. Look through the list of the eight basic actions you need to have on a lock to get results (weight loss, high energy, lower health care costs). Cross out the things you’re already doing and pick one action from what’s left on the list.

If you want to set yourself up for even more success, start with the easiest thing you can do because you’ll be consistent, boost your confidence that you can indeed add healthy living to your long list of to-dos, and gear up to handle the harder actions.

PPS: Still need convincing that you don’t need a diet or complicated strategies? Then you’ll want to get the free eBook You Don’t Need a Diet!

In the eBook, I break down:

1. Why dieting is the problem, not the solution.
2. The simple systems to have in place to help you get results without dieting.
3. How to get started no matter how busy you are.

Click here to get your free copy of the eBook.

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