We all know that the secret of living long is to eat well and exercise but to do that you need to be organized. And organizing yourself is easy so long as you know how to do it.
So what’s it like at home? I bet you don’t have your home life so well packaged and this is the key to getting things done. How often do you decide to have a healthy lunch and then find, to your dismay, that you can’t because you forgot to buy the healthy food? And how often do you intend to exercise in the evening and then find that it’s ten o’clock and too late?Most of us spend the majority of our time when we are at home in a disorganized mess drifting from one half-finished job to the next and taking our time to do it. You don’t believe me? OK, think about the last time you were at home. How do you rate your total achievement for that day? Could do better?The solution is easy and, once you get into it, not at all regimented or ‘too much like work’. Make a list of your healthy lifestyle like this:
1. Meat Monday, fish Tuesday, eggs and veg on Wednesday, meat Thursday and fish again on Friday.
2. Half an hour at gym (20 mins to get there) on Wednesday and Friday night.
3. Walk with Jane to town center Monday night
4. Take Jane and kids to park for an hour on Saturday afternoon
OK, your list will look a lot different from mine and will contain more in it but write it down somewhere in a computerized organizer or on paper and, if it proves hard to think of everything, just do the best you can – you can always add to it or change it later! The act of writing it down symbolically converts it from an idea to an intention.
Now, think about next week and go through that list in your mind. Are the meals OK for those days or do you need to adjust them. How will you get the food in, remember this is fresh food, you need to buy fresh vegetables, fresh fish and whatever else you need. Can you fit the exercise in? Do you need to make any changes to the schedule? What have you forgotten (remember there is always one thing that is forgotten!).
Put the list into a final form and write it out neatly and put it somewhere where you won’t lose it. Now, when Monday comes, you’ll be ready to use it. Try it for a week and next Sunday allocate half an hour to sit and make the list for the next week.
What will you change? Usually there will have been several hitches and you may need to change the menu or the days or make adjustments to the exercise but whatever you need to do, make a new list. If it did not go well last week, don’t worry. It takes time to get it all together, just accept that you made a stab at it and prepare a new list and resolve to make it work better.
If you found that you forgot all about it after the first day, divide it up into ‘days’ and put each day onto a yellow ‘post it’ note and stick it on the door or on the fridge or above the bed so that you won’t forget what you are doing.
Remember this is not work, you don’t need to rigidly adhere to it each day, it is just a guide for your own benefit, it you want to do something else or eat something different by all means do so and go back to the list the next day.
After a week, or so, you will begin to get into the habit of checking what you are eating each day and what exercise you are doing and getting into the habit of shopping for fresh food so there will be no more panic days of high-fat, high-calorie processed meals.
Once you begin to organize your life you will start to feel better and have more energy because you are eating healthy food and getting the exercise you need. Make a point of sitting each Sunday for half an hour and write out or print the list for the next week and think about fine-tuning it if you want to change or add in some healthier options.
This is an easy task to write about but one which, as I well know, is a hard one to put into practice but organizing your life will change it for the better. You will make more of your time, feel better, live longer and enjoy life 100% more.
