Adding and Subtracting for Health

Getting healthy — and staying motivated to get healthy  – requires the right balance of adding and subtracting things from your life.

For example, my life coach, Kristin Taliaferro, is big on eliminating energy drains from your life. Taliaferro recommends deleting what the coaching world calls “tolerations” — those little annoyances that make you feel resentful and demotivated, such as “The dog keeps jumping on the bed,” “I hate the way my phone rings,” and “My nails look terrible.”

Make a list of 100 of your tolerations (and believe me, it’s easier than it sounds), then pick three to get rid of this week. You’ll find that many of your tolerations have very easy solutions! When you start clearing out your tolerations, you’ll start to feel lighter, more energetic, and more motivated — the perfect state for living healthy. I did this in February and then stupidly let it lapse until just now. I deep-sixed a dozen or so tolerations and felt incredibly energetic. This week, I revamped my list and plan to remove three more tolerations.

You can also subtract activities that suck your time and your energy. If you watched one hour less of TV every night, what else could you be doing — maybe exercising? If you surfed the web one less hour a day, you’d have time to prepare healthy meals. Find out what’s holding you back and bringing you down — and subtract it.

Then there’s adding. One thing I’ve learned in my nutrition writing is that if you want to eat more healthfully without feeling deprived, concentrate on adding good foods to your diet instead of subtracting bad ones. For instance, make a deal with yourself to eat one salad a day for the next week (something I’m doing right now). And make it delicious, with grilled chicken, dried cranberries, nuts, whatever it will take for you to love your salad! Just by adding a daily delicious salad, you’re automatically eating less junk. Salad for lunch means no fast food fries, no cookies-for-lunch, no nachos loaded with sour cream and cheese.

What foods would you like to add to your diet? More water automatically means less Coke, and you can add lemon or a splash of juice to make it tastier. More healthy fats means you dip your bread in olive oil instead of slathering it with butter, that you add nuts to your salad instead of bacon bits, and that you layer avocado on your sandwich in place of mayo. And you don’t feel deprived because you’re adding yummy foods to your diet.

So: What things can you add to or subtract from your life to get healthier?

Stay healthy,

Linda