How to get healthy, in five easy steps. Step 1, research.

We’re working our way through a simple plan to good health this week, starting with step 1, research.

First of all, I want you to understand that getting healthy will not happen overnight. It won’t happen in a week or in a month or even in two months. It doesn’t matter what those diet programs on TV promise you about losing 25lbs in two weeks. That’s all crap. It’s either outright lies or it’s the kind of weightloss that’s unhealthy and unsustainable. True weightloss is gradual and comes from making permanent changes to your life.

The reason I say this is because you won’t be making or seeing any improvements in your life during the research portion of this plan. I know this sounds disappointing, many of you want to jump right in and get started, but information is one of the most valuable things we have. Good information will help you make the right changes to your life while bad information or no information will lead you down the wrong path.

So yes, during the research or information collection portion of this plan you will continue living your life as is, all bad habits included. You will not improve anything nor will you try. You will simply collect information on what you’re doing and when.  One note, if you have some kind of medical condition and your doctor has told you to make changes to your life right now, then by all means, ignore me and go with your doctor’s advice.

What information do we collect?

There’s two pieces of information we want out of this period. We need to know your eating habits and your activity levels.

Eating Habits

We need to know what you eat, how much and when. For this purpose, you’re going to keep a food journal. Every single piece of food you eat is going to go into this food journal. From the largest dinner to the smallest nut or piece of chewing gum. You need to write it all down along with quantity, time and what you were doing when you ate this food. Things like “went out to lunch with friends”, “had dinner with family” or “snacked on this while at work” are all important because they will tell us why you ate this food. Don’t forget to add any drink other than water, yes, even the diet soda. If it’s not water, you need to write it down.

I’ve seen some people actually cheat when they write a food journal. They’ll underestimate what they ate on purpose or simply “forget” to write something down. It sounds silly but it’s natural. We know we’re supposed to eat healthy, so we’re a bit embarrassed to write down our unhealthy eating habits even if we’re going to be the only ones reading this food journal. However, the only person you’re cheating is yourself. Writing an inaccurate food journal will only cause you to make bad decisions later on. Please, make things as accurate as possible even if it doesn’t feel comfortable to write down that you ate an entire cheesecake.

You’ll also want to write calorie information next to each entry. If possible, add in protein, carbs, fiber and fat, but for the most part, you just need to write the calories. This kind of information is usually available on restaurant online menus, food packaging and so on. If you can’t find it there, you may want to look at a site like Nutrition Data. If you can’t find a calorie number for a specific dish, try to estimate it by looking at similar dishes or by looking at the ingredients.

I know this sounds difficult, and it is, but it’s a necessary step towards changing your life. Just keep a notebook or PDA with you at all times. for example, when I did this I would send myself SMS messages with the food I just ate. Then, at the end of the day, write it all down in your food journal and add in the dietary information such as calorie numbers, fat, protein and carbs.

For an example of a food journal, look here.

Activity Journal

An activity journal is like a food journal only instead of tracking what you eat, it’s tracking what you do.  It’s a bit simpler than a food journal since you don’t need to research calories and such, but it has just as much information.

In this activity journal you’re going to be writing down everything you did during the day.  It doesn’t have to be very complex, it can be as simple as:

• 7:30 to 8:00am - commute
• 8:00 to noon - work
• noon to 1:00pm - lunch
• 1:00pm to 6pm - work
• 6pm to 7pm - commute
• 7pm to 8pm - dinner
• 8pm to 10pm - watching TV
• 10pm to 7:30am - sleep

There you go, that’s an activity journal for an entire day.  Make sure to write down any physical activity like walking, yard work or exercise.

The Physical

One last part of our information research is a physical.  This means going to the doctor’s and getting a check up.  If you’ve had a physical in the past year, that’s fine, we can use that.  However, if you haven’t had one in a while then please go sometime during this month.

A physical can provide us with a lot of useful information.  It will tell us things like your blood pressure, cholesterol levels and heart rate.  A physical can also tell us body fat percentage although not all doctors will go ahead and test this.  Finally, a physical will tell us if you have any special conditions that you need to be aware of as your start to change your life.  Make sure your doctor is aware of what you’re doing and ask them for advice.  Most doctors love hearing that their patients are finally going to take responsibility for their own health and will be happy to provide you with guidelines.  So listen to them, they know your individual body better than I do.

How long?

You’re going to be keeping these journals going for a month.  That’s about enough time to see a good overall picture of your life.  Remember, keep your habits as is during this month, we need to have a baseline or a starting point when we begin to make changes.  These journals are going to provide that starting point.

Tomorrow, we take the information from the journals and start planning based on it.

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