You could think of your health and wellness like a bank account, your own personal bank account to be more exact. You can make deposits and you can make withdrawals. If you continue to make deposits over time you will end up with a healthy balance, have a body you are proud to live in and reap the rewards of peak health and fitness.
If you continue to make withdrawals at some point your account will become overdrawn and you could find yourself on the sharp end of poor health which can in the short term lead to a lower quality of life and in the long term to disease and a shortened life.
As it takes time to build this bank account it is all about the small deposits you make on a daily basis. Each healthy macro-nutrient balanced meal (protein, carbohydrates and fat) and each proper exercise session (where you are working your muscles properly) will add to your account balance.
Think of this as a journey – and a journey is made up of hundreds of small steps rather than being a one time event. It is the little things you do and do not do on a daily basis that add up and make a difference. Not a small difference either – but a really big difference over time.
It is easy to ignore habits that you know are not helping you to reach your long-term goals. We get busy and we get lazy and we just continue down the same old path because it is easier to do so. Change is hard so we tend to put it on the back burner. But as the years pass those add up and combine to work against our health.
You may think you are doing well by getting the odd bit of exercise in or eating healthy here and there but at the end of the week if the deposits have not outweighed the withdrawals you will find your self-care bank balance has not risen and may well have dropped.
The real secret to making these things stick in your life is by sheer repetition. The more often you take some time to exercise or eat properly the more of a habit it becomes and the easier it gets. Soon it does not seem like a chore but is simply a part of your life. In fact you could say ‘it is not something you do – it is something you become’.
When you reach this point it is so integrated in your life that it seems like you have always done it. Think of brushing your teeth or getting dressed to go to work. You do not consciously think too much about doing these things – you just do them. They are part of your life.
It is exactly the same with exercise and healthy eating. But you do not have to be so strict that you end up feeling bad if you have a slip (or two). Use the 80/20 rule which means 80 percent of the time you eat healthy and do your exercise program a minimum of twice per week.
Then you get 20 percent of the time for some wiggle-room so you can enjoy life and all it has to offer without feeling guilty. Your bank account will have enough of a healthy deposit to spend a little here and there without getting in the red or bankrupting yourself.
