I believe that food, exercise, sunlight, fresh air, relationships, and stress affect our health more than we will ever know. It is these things that we need to be spending our time, money, and effort on in order to live a healthy life. It is our daily habits that will determine the overall quality of our health.

So being the new year once again, what can we do differently to stick to our healthy habits this year?

 

I think you need to start with knowing yourself better. That is why I have started to give this questionnaire to every new patient that I see.

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According to happiness expert, Gretchen Rubin, we each fall into 1 of 4 tendencies. Questioner, Obliger, Upholder, and Rebel. Knowing your tendency can point you in the direction of the tools you need to best succeed in sticking to good habits. Here is a small summary of what I see that works best for the 2 most common tendencies when they need to stick to better eating habits.

Questioner: You need to know the reason why you are following a certain food plan. Understanding some of the nutritional science of why you are eating what you are eating is really important.

Tip: read about the history of the food pyramid in order to understand why the Canada Food Guide and general mainstream nutrition advice is not the best diet, and will likely cause you to be fat, sick, and tired.

Obliger: You need to have someone to keep you accountable. You can have all the knowledge you want but it won't translate into action. You need someone keeping you on track and as soon as you stray away from that regular contact you will stray away from your goals as well.

Tip: have regular bioimpedance analysis checkups with your ND or get a personal trainer. Being accountable to someone other than yourself will go 100X further than reading more books, gathering more recipes, or buying another piece of exercise equipment.

Download the PDF and give it a try. I would love to hear what your tendency is. Tell me one way you can use knowing your tendency to your advantage this year in the comments below.

Leave your comments below and I'll have a new article for you next week on Doctor as Teacher Tuesdays!

If you want to delve deeper into this information or take the quiz online go to www.gretchenrubin.com. I also highly recommend her best-selling book, "Better Than Before".