DISCOVER YOUR ZEN
Staying on Track
Continue Healthy Habits
Achievement of a goal is a milestone, a celebration point, on your life long journey towards better health. It’s not your cue to resume unhealthy behaviors and habits, which caused or contributed to your health problem. It’s easy to fall back into old patterns, especially if you think achieving your goal means you’re “cured,” you’ve beaten the odds, or you’re finished. This type of thinking means you need to work on your mindset, perspective, and/or your understanding of what it means to lead a healthy lifestyle. In order to maintain your health, you must continue to make good choices and take appropriate actions concerning your overall health. Keep the following in mind as you reach your goals and continue to focus on healthy habits for life.
- Eat Healthy Amounts – Remember that you need to eat the right number of calories for your body style and frame. You can’t cheat the system because your body will start demanding the calories in any form if it’s hungry. You’re less susceptible to that cookie or bag of chips if you don’t let yourself get too hungry.
- Eat Healthy Foods – Whether you’re on a low-carb or low-fat diet both types of diets promote the same thing regarding calories and eating whole, unprocessed food. Eat foods that are as fresh and natural as possible. Consuming the right amounts gives you the nutrients that you need to build a healthy body.
- Monitor Progress and Results – When you set your goals, you included ways to track/measure your progress and success. Depending on your goal, you may have chosen to track and measure distance, weight, repetitions, calorie intake, test scores, etc. This data verified how well your strategies worked and let you know when you reached your goal. Even when you’re in “maintenance mode,” you still need to track and check your data, occasionally. This allows you to pinpoint and fix a problem quickly.
- Supplement With Doctor Approval Only – At different times during your life, you’ll probably need extra vitamins, minerals, or nutrients. However, before you start taking any supplement, including herbs, it’s crucial that you talk with your doctor first. Some supplements can be downright dangerous if you take too much or they are contraindicated with one of your medications. Ginseng is one such supplement. Even some “healthy foods” can interfere with medication, such as grapefruit.
- Drink Water – There is no substitute for water. Water is what your body needs when you’re active and especially when you’re sick and/or can’t keep food down. As an estimate of the amount of water you should drink each day, take your body weight in pounds and divine that number in half. This is the number of ounces you should drink per day. You may need to adjust the amount depending on your weight, height, activity level, and weather. The next time you go to the bathroom to empty your bladder, note the color of your urine. If it is colorless and nearly so, then you are likely drinking enough water. Pure water (no flavoring or additives) is best because the added ingredients must be metabolized, making your body do extra work. Get your quota of water before drinking other beverages; your body will thank you.
- Keep Moving – Set a minimum amount of exercise you will do each day. For some people, the “minimum” is 10 thousand steps a day; for others, it’s 20 minutes of walking a day. You want to plan for the minimum amount that you can do to stay healthy. Make a requirement of yourself. In order to do anything else, you must complete the minimum amount of exercise, even if it means you stand in a corner and pump your legs up and down, simulating walking.
Healthy habits need to be maintained for a lifetime. To motivate yourself to continue following healthy practices, read about other people’s successes and achieving success. Listen to motivational music and audios. Watch YouTube videos and workouts that inspire and encourage you. Surround yourself with success and you’ll be more likely to stick with your healthy habits.
TODAY’S ACTION STEPS:
1) If you have been following the workout plans I’ve been providing, the Week 5 Workout Plan will start today. Log in to the Fitness App on your COMPUTER – https://doctorvenus.com/app-login/ – to access the Week 5 Workout Plan.
2) You should be exercising according to your planned routine. (You can use the workout plan I provided, if it works for you.) If you’re not ready to go FULL OUT with the workout plan yet…that’s OK. If you’ve been trying out my suggestion of creating a habit, then you may want to add on another step if you haven’t done so yet. Read through the Week 4 – Day 2 module if you’re not sure how to create this “habit chain.”
3) If you’ve been receiving the meal plans, the Week 5 (and 6) Meal Plan has been uploaded to your Fitness App. The Week 6 Meal Plan is the same as Week 5; so you should be starting the Week 6 Meal plan today.
4) Continue to meditate for at least 5 minutes each day. As I suggested in Week 6-Module 6, you can now have a goal for your meditation; for example, you can aim to make this goal a better awareness of yourself (by using mindfulness) or you can aim to quiet your mind and learn to block out stressful thoughts (by using transcendental meditation).
5) Mark your calendar for our next coaching call on Saturday, December 16, at 12:30pm ET (9:30am PT). The call-in number and Zoom link will be posted on the Home Page and in your daily email the day before the call. A replay will be made available for those who can’t make the call.
6) If you have any questions about anything…let me know in the Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/discoveryourzen/
Previous ACTION STEPS:
(Not a complete list, but some important highlights.)
1) Log in to the Fitness App on your COMPUTER – https://doctorvenus.com/app-login/ – and go to the FORMS tab. If you haven’t completed the Client Agreement form and the PAR-Q form from Day 1’s ACTION STEPS, do that today and sign them. Be sure to click SAVE when you’re done. (You can not receive the meal plan and workout plan when they are released until we have those completed forms on file.)
2) If you haven’t done so yet, send an email to team@DoctorVenus.com and state whether you want a vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal plan. It will be sent to your Fitness App by the next day.
3) If you haven’t done so yet, send an email to team@DoctorVenus.com and let me know whether you want an exercise plan for weight loss (focused on burning calories) or for building/maintaining your mass. So you just need to indicate whether you want a BURN or BUILD program. It will be sent to your Fitness App by the next day.
4) Download the Set Your Goals Checklist and complete it. CLICK HERE to download.
5) Download the Program Planner that you can start using, if you wish. CLICK HERE to download.
6) Download the Kitchen Clean Out handout and use it to guide the clean out of your kitchen BEFORE you start your meal plan. CLICK HERE to download.