Lifestyle Changes for Health

We all want to live a healthy life and get so many different, often confusing messages to accomplish it, such as

1. Don’t be over-weight or obese
2. Have normal BMI
3. Don’t eat fatty food
4. Be vegetarian or Vegan
5. Don’t eat meat/red meat
6. Control your diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.
7. Do exercise/yoga/running/walking/dance
8. Do dieting
9. Sleep well
10. Quit smoking/drinking

As we want to have good health, if we are not in good shape, we try everything in our capacity to get in good shape. For instance, we may do dieting for a few weeks or months, or join a Gym or stop eating meat on some days of the week. Initially the results are encouraging, however, most of us are often not able to retain the gains. For example, a crash dieting may help you to lose 20 pounds that you desperately wanted to lose for so long, however, slowly you gain that weight back. Why does that happen?

Ours Brain is Conditioned

Our brain is conditioned to eat certain types and quantities of food, as we have been eating that kind of food all our life. We may trick our brain for some time by dieting, however, eventually the brain wins. If I have been drinking sugary drinks for 40 years, it is very difficult to stop that one fine day. Just like hard drugs, certain types of food and food ingredients also cause addiction — sugar, salt, fat, chips, fries, cake, ice cream, coffee, etc. fall in this category. Therefore, changing the conditioned brain requires more effort than a new year resolution — it needs a lifestyle change.

How to Make Lifestyle Change?

First step to make the lifestyle change is that we should be absolutely convinced that we want to live a healthy life. That is, we should be able to do day to day activities and enjoy life, which is particularly applicable when we reach the later part of life. It will be great if we can go on trails or play with our grandkids in our seventies, eighties or even nineties, and we don’t need to pop in 10 tablets each day just to survive one more day in bed! If you look at seniors in your circles, you will notice that those who are enjoying life have good health.

Okay, you are convinced that you want to live a healthy life, so what should you do? From my experience, for most people, the following will work:

1. Be physically active, at least 150 minutes a week
2. Eat mostly vegetarian natural food while avoiding processed food
3. Don’t eat too much
4. Sleep well

I will not go into details of what to eat, what physical activities to perform or how to sleep well — you can find tons of articles on these topics on the Internet. What I will talk about is that once you decide that you want to make a certain change, e.g. reduce the amount of food you want to eat or walk or run 30 minutes a day, how to implement it. I want to make it clear that I am not a medical or physical activities professional, however I am talking about my experience over the course of 60 years.

When I was in my twenties in India, I noticed that my weight was increasing. I was not a sportsman, however I was reasonably active. There was no Internet or Google at that time, so I used my common sense — weight gain is equal to food intake minus calories consumed, therefore I decided to reduce my food intake. However, instead of doing a crash dieting, I decided to do it slowly. I used to eat 4 roties (a kind of homemade pita bread) for lunch and dinner each. I reduced that to 3.5 roties and continued that for 2–3 weeks. Then I reduced that to 3 roties for the next 3 weeks. And then to 2.5 roties and finally to 2 roties with each meal. As I made the change slowly, my brain got reconditioned and I did not feel hungry, and there was no need to eat more. So, I was able to make a lifestyle change in a few months which has stayed with me till date. I want to add that I never gained weight, and even after 40 years, I almost weigh the same as when I was in my twenties.

The previous change was about reducing the amount of food I ate. Next, let me tell you another experience about lifestyle change regarding the type of food. About ten years ago, on the Internet, TV and print media, I came across a lot of information that eating fruits and vegetables is good for our body and brain, and I was convinced, so I decided to give it a try. As a first step, I increased fruits and uncooked vegetables (salads with no salt, dressing or meat) in my lunch on Mondays, and then slowly increased to just fruits, vegetables and plain yogurt. Next, I switched to that food (or diet, if you want to call it so) to two days a week, which continued for two-three weeks. After that, eating fruits, vegetables and plain yogurt all weekdays was no problem. And this slow lifestyle change reconditioned my brain which never compelled me to eat hot cooked meals at lunch.

I have a couple of other examples about changes I have made to the food I eat, however, let me move to another topic — physical activity. At the age of 55, one day I was required to run a distance of about 200 meters, and was shocked to learn that I was out of breath before I could complete the run. I thought that this is not good at all! Though I was not overweight, I had no stamina to run even 200 meters. So, I decided to run in my neighborhood in the evening after work. I started small and slowly built my stamina. I was thrilled when I was able to run one kilometre in two months! In another two months or so I could run 2 kilometres. I continued running, almost every evening, and by the end of the year, I could run 5 kilometres in one go. Next year, I kept running, and slowly the distance I could complete in one go kept increasing to 6 KM, then to 7 KM, then to 8 KM and finally to 9 KM, however, I could not do 10 KM for a long time. One day, I gathered some extra mental strength and was able to complete 10 KM on a hot summer afternoon. Next year I could finish 15 Kilometres and 20 kilometres the following year. That year, I also ran a half marathon in the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

My experience has taught me that sudden changes to our habits usually don’t work — we revert back to old habits after some time. However, if we change our habits slowly, the change gets submerged in our lifestyle and stays with us forever.

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