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.

Lots of people would agree with me but why can't they seem to put it into practice?
 
I think you need to start with knowing yourself better. 

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.

You can find the link to Gretchen's tendency quiz here:

The Four Tendency Quiz

Go ahead and give it a try. Then pick one strategy that you can use to improve your habits and ultimately your health!

Now I would love to hear from you! What do you think my tendency is? Leave a comment below and I'll be back again next week with another edition of Doctor as Teacher Tuesday!

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