"It's funny how day by day, nothing changes. But when you look back, everything is different."
I read this quote and it really made me think how powerful small changes to your daily lifestyle can be to your overall health, and how quickly people forget this.
I preach this religiously to my clients everyday. I post it all over social media and I have even written blog posts about it but it seems that everyone needs reminders of this powerful step. Realizing that every small change you make over time can create huge and lasting results and there is no such thing as instant healing.
Health takes time to repair and those little steps we take to get us there all add up over time.
We are all guilty of expecting instant gratification at times. It's hard not to in the age we live in. We live in a time where everything is quick moving and results are instantaneous.
No longer do we need to wait to see friends and family when we can hop on Skype and see them instantly from far away or even easier shoot them a quick text with an instant reply received. We no longer have to wait for the mail to arrive now that everything is sent instantly over email. We no longer have to cook all day for our families when we can just go through a drive thru for some "fast food" or better yet, have it delivered right to our doorstep.
We have instant access to almost everything through the use of our internet capable cell phones, laptops, tablets, home computers, work computer, school computers, and even our televisions are interactive now.. Theres an app for just about everything. Remember the old days of dial up internet and how frustrating that would be to have to deal with that today? Now we have instant access to the world wide web at the click of a button. Anything our little hearts desire. We've become a society of impatient individuals that have an expanding degree of demand for instant results in every aspect of our lives including our health.
No longer do we wait out our body's innate healing ability but we override this with pharmaceutical drugs that cause an instant suppression of our undesirable symptoms no matter how extreme or trivial. Your child has a fever give them tylenol, you have high blood pressure then take medications to lower it, you have inflammation take an anti-inflammatory.
That priceless magic pill!
Everyone wants that priceless magic cure-all pill. We all want to lose weight today, eliminate our disease today, have energy today but we forget that it took a very long time for us to get this way. We didn't just wake up one day overweight or with burned out adrenals and hormone imbalance. Quite the contrary, these issues manifest over months or years of neglect or improper care to our bodies. How then can we expect that we can eliminate this overnight or even in a few weeks and without putting in any work for it?
The body is amazing!
Just as every step in the wrong direction can lead us to imbalance, dysfunction, and disease, every step in the right direction can lead us toward balance, a fully functioning system, and a healthy body and mind.
It's hard to see those results sometimes because they are happening slowly. But I promise you that if they are happening consistently you will see major results over time. It's like having kids and a year goes by and you haven't noticed them growing at all. They look the same to you. Then someone you haven't seen in a while comments on how shocked they are by how much your child has grown since they last saw them. And then you realize that they grew 4 inches over the year. You didn't notice because it happened slowly over the year and you saw them everyday and those little changes were not noticeable. But they happened nonetheless.
Imagine replacing 1 meal a day with a green smoothie full of health building, energy fueling nutrients. How do you think you will feel after 2 months of doing that every single day? Your energy will slowly increase, hair will become shiny, skin smooth. You may not notice as you are doing it but I promise someone you know will make a comment on how great you look and ask you what you have been doing.
Or imagine removing sugar from you diet. It may be hard at first and you may feel like crap for the first few days or weeks but over time you drop a few pounds, skin clears up, hormones balance out, and sleep regulates.
Creating a lifestyle change doesn't have to be miserable.
You don't have to over exercise, starve yourself, and deprive yourself of every little thing you love. Making slow changes over time becomes easy work. The more small changes you make the more the body will begin to want those better changes.
By slowly increasing exercise, your body will eventually want to do more because you begin to have more energy.
By slowly adding in healthy foods to our diet, your body will begin to feel better, have less inflammation, better digestion, and you will begin to crave more healthy food.
Lifestyle change creates lasting results by teaching your body new habits and creating a healing environment at the same time.
So many people struggle with lifestyle change that my staff and I created a lifestyle success program in the office to help guide our clients through their lifestyle changing journey with ease. Sharing tips and tricks to make the process easy and enjoyable not stressful and exhausting.
Make a list of how you feel before starting, listing any symptoms you may have, weight, sleep, health, etc. Start with 1 or 2 healthy changes each week and at the end of the 90 days re-evaluate where you were and where you are now in terms of stress level, happiness, energy, symptoms, activity level, sleep, hormone balance, digestion, immunity, etc. and i bet the difference over 90 days is amazing even with simple steps just as it is for our clients on the program.
If you have trouble doing this on your own many people find having someone to hold them accountable for completing weekly action items is beneficial. This can be a friend, spouse, family member, or by finding a program through a qualified nutritional practitioner like myself where you can have some individual attention and guidance making sure that you follow through and are on the best path for your current situation. Or start a journal where you can record your health improvement steps and and log your improvement.
Remember, any positive step in the right direction is a positive step in the right direction!!!!!
As always.....in good health and happiness,
Brandy Augustine PhD