The Essential Malady

I don’t know if this is still common, but I remember seeing the “food pyramid” posted around schools, hospitals and on various items in supermarkets such as cereal. This gave recommended servings from the different food groups. As I understand it, this has been replaced by something else. The recommended servings I thought ridiculous even as a child and I’d be willing to bet that anyone who followed it religiously would end up quite fat after a few months.  Continue reading →

Of all I have written so far, this one might seem the most out of place but it is actually very important. The company you keep does affect you whether you think it does or not. As committed as you may be to achieving physical and mental well-being, this can still be affected by those around you. The simplest way is related to the habits of those of your family and friends. If they have poor diets and do not get regular exercise, this is something than can happen to you simply by osmosis. A more sinister might be how people around you may react to any success you have. This might be down to jealousy or just a false sense of concern. I shall give a couple of personal examples that illustrate what I’m saying.

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Keeping good exercise and dietary habits is important and something you should be proud of. However, this does not necessarily mean you should just rest on your laurels and keep doing exactly what you’re doing without change. You will notice as you go that exercise you previously found hard becomes much easier to the point of just being a routine. Similarly with your diet, you should start finding it just normal to avoid certain foods and eat well.

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Even when you achieve success with health and fitness and get yourself to an ideal weight, it can be easy to lose this success. This can happen for a variety of reasons. The time of the year is a particular factor. If the climate is especially cold in winter, it is all but expected that you will put on more weight as the cold weather will make you reluctant to exercise, if you’re not prevented outright by extremes. Another is to do with festivities, particularly the Christmas Season when it is easy to eat, drink and forget about many of these commitments.

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The first four steps have really dwelt on what you might be doing wrong. Once you’ve worked through all these it is time to start doing things right. We often think of habits in the negative sense because we associate them automatically with bad habits. For example, picking your nose, chewing your pen (still one of mine), or in more extreme cases, drinking and gambling. But there are good habits too and a good habit is a virtue.
It is important that you don’t just stop doing things but that you start doing things as well. More importantly for this step though is that you keep it up. Going back to the first step is a great place to start here.

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