Lifestyle Change: Challenges and Solutions - Part 1
Lifestyle generally referred to as healthy food
habits, physical activity, good mental health with proper sleep and stress
management. With changing economical, geopolitical, and climatic conditions lot
us are going through stressful conditions like losing jobs, homes, loved ones
and especially bread earners and struggling to maintain decent standards of
living. People with decent standard of living the riches, middleclass are also
suffering with a lot of health conditions, illnesses due to poor lifestyle
choices. Whoever it is and whatever we earn there is still an opportunity to
make incremental steps towards healthy lifestyle.
I would like to set the context with an article
written for United Nations (UN) on Lifestyle diseases, the author mentioned “Today, chronic diseases
are a major public health problem worldwide. In 2005, the World Health
Organization (WHO) estimated that 61 per cent of all deaths -- 35 million --
and 49 per cent of the global burden of disease were attributable to chronic
diseases. By 2030, the proportion of total global deaths due to chronic
diseases is expected to increase to 70 per cent and the global burden of
disease to 56 per cent. The greatest increase is anticipated in the African and
Eastern Mediterranean regions.”
When I looked at the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) 2019 data (led
by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) ), I understood that
chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD) like heart diseases, cancer, diabetes,
respiratory diseases etc., trending in that direction as quoted by WHO. In
fact, there is shocking trend based on the income of the countries, as shown in
Fig 1 below, low-income countries like Niger in Africa have as low as 21% of
NCDs but when it comes to developed countries like US it is as high as 86%,
although global average is 64% (as shown in Fig 2)
These chronic non communicable diseases (NCDs) can
be strongly attributable to lifestyle choices especially the food we eat,
chronic stress we undergo, lack of minimal physical activity and quality of
sleep. There are lot of factors that are influencing our lifestyle
choices some of which I will detail next and my recommendations on how we can
overcome some of these challenges and move towards healthy lifestyle. I will
divide them into 3 categories: Internal factors, Shareable factors, and
External factors. Let us see what the internal factor are first!
Internal Factors:
Internal factors are those that we all can take
control of individually if we put some efforts towards them, lets us see some
of them.
Time
Most of us can resonate with not having enough time, especially it is the time of the year we make bucket list of new year resolutions like hitting gym, eating healthy, reducing stress with Yoga etc., but fail to implement them fully. Many of us keep ourselves so busy with work, don’t have time to eat or skip breakfasts or eat at different times so most likely picking easiest processed food options and never have opportunity to walk or do some physical activity of at least 2 hours in a week and going through lot of stress. If it is the job that is keeping us busy, we must change it or look at ways for effective utilization of time to keep ourselves some personal time.
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| Photo Credit: RD.COM, GETTY IMAGES |
When I was working 12-16 hours a day couple of years ago without work-life balance, I felt exhausted and not enthused at times waiting for weekends to rest. As it was proving to painful, I have invested a lot of time on my lifestyle moving towards complete plant- based eating, set aside time for a regular physical activity liking running, walking, and cycling which improved efficiency with a lot of focus and clarity in thought process. I have seen the benefits within a month of lifestyle changes with proper work-life balance which I wrote about earlier, feeling active even with long working hours without any tiredness and getting good night sleep. It is very unfortunate that some of us spend a lot of time investigating for a new car, mobile, laptop, house but not for our health which is most important than any materialistic needs, at the end of the day we all are earning to eat and live healthy. The time we invest now on lifestyle changes incrementally and ongoing basis will help us spending quality of lifetime at old age without any diseases or illness. I have written about some of the ways that I follow in my 3P model which can provide structured learning experience with effective utilisation of time. Every one of us have same 24 hours but the difference is who takes control of it and especially invest in lifestyle changes which can optimize time spent on every activity and reward us back. Make time to change 1 thing in your lifestyle at least, be it food, sleep pattern, stress management, physical activity, but you got to pick one at least to start with and build on, come one even 2022 changed a digit become 2023, change is constant, just we need to realize that and be better at least a fraction of percentage from yesterday!
Company or Affiliation
“Energy is contagious: Either you affect people, or you Infect people” said T Harv Eker.
We all know about good & bad vibes; it is the company or affiliation we surround with will slowly impact our thought process and sometimes lifestyle choices. As NAS daily a famous youtuber explains in this story, be careful who your closest friends are as sooner or later you become them. If we surround with people who have common goals and shared vision, it works for betterment of all of us. On the contrary, some social engagements can be compulsive especially with an affiliation at work or parties with unhealthy habits like smoking, alcohol, playing games all time and eating ultra-processed food etc., In my personal journey of putting 3P model to test, I felt the real benefit with my running experience with a friend of mine who had similar goal to shred weight and we started running together for a month and I had an opportunity to change his perception on eating habits with 1 month challenge on plant based diet. He never went back to eating meat ever since besides losing close to 10KG wight. In another good company, I walked 263 Km for a Greenpeace UK 100 KMs in June 2022 to raise more than £200 funds on climate change campaign. There are a lot of good people around us who will support for good cause, and we can have a ripple effect passing some of the positive vibes and motivating few others to do something better. If you are an introvert and doing things solo, it is then better to have a company of good books, podcasts, audio books, TED talks, articles and indoor activities like Yoga, gym etc., that can motivate you towards healthy lifestyle. Famous doctor and Forbes “One of the world’s seven most powerful teachers” Dean Ornish explained in his book “UnDo It!” company in the form of love and social support as one of the 4 key pillars in healthy lifestyle.
Motivation
We might have figured out a plan with a goal and
set aside time and got a buddy who could join our cause for a lifestyle change,
but we need that motivation to get ready for that daily run, cultivate that
habit of doing things consistently. Some of the things successful people do is
to write their goals or even post it on their bedroom wall to remind themselves
constantly or keep things ready with clothing, shoes all at one place to get up
and do that walk or run. How can we get this motivation to show up and keep
doing it until we reach our goal, I have written about it earlier in detail on how we have to follow
for 21 days continuously even if it is 10-15 minutes a day but without leaving
a day to cultivate a habit first. But then we need to have a purpose in life
the Big Why as I wrote in other article which gives us direction to make
lifestyle changes. If I take my running experience, I started to build a
healthy habit investing time along with good company but at sometimes buddies
get busy and carried away with other priorities and we might lack motivation to
do all by ourselves. What I realised is we need to have some purpose, I asked
myself “why am I
running?” to find
out the answer. I wanted to be better version of myself and inspire people
around me along the line join some campaigns for good cause to give a direction
and sense of purpose and mostly importantly aim for happy, healthy and independent
retirement life. Despite minor health challenge that required a surgery (not
due to food) in last year (2022), since I had a purpose, I changed from running
to walking, did that fundraising campaign and then explored cycling to keep
myself motivated always.
Recently, I came across this wonderful Rich
Roll podcast with an insightful talk from Drs
Dean and Dr Ayesha Sherzai, 2 doctor couple who studied a lot about Brain
health and Alzheimer’s disease, wrote a book "The Alzheimer's
Solution", explained
about Motivation beautifully which I took as 1 minute clip.
Our brain has
blind spots that it will fill naturally with information, colour and knowledge
and it require a story to stick in. If we have small incremental successes with
a vector in a direction with purpose, our brain creates an emotion to it. That
emotion which has direction is motivation.
Ironically that’s what I was doing all the while
which my brain seems to like it as Drs Dean explained! By the way if you want
to get an extra dose of motivation from the personal journey of Rich
Roll who was a successful student and top class swimmer went to top
colleges, had a law degree and pursued corporate law but then due to alcohol
addiction and bad food habits, broken down at the age of 40 losing friends,
house and at the brink of complete collapse but then turned it around became
world’s top 25 fittest men in 5 years with multiple ultramarathons, triathlons
under his belt, here it is. He had similar method of vision
boards in all rooms with some of his inspiring people on the wall to remind
himself on his goal every time.
Why not in this new year we try to include more
diverse foods especially fruits and vegetables, and work on one thing that we
can’t control like sugar, salt, or processed food ? I would further ask if you
are super serious you can try Veganuary challenge or other 21 days plant based
programmes from the likes of plantbasedhealthprofessionals or to get a
perspective and head start from Dr
Neal Barnard of Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine on
healthy lifestyle.
There could be few others, but these are my top 3
internal factors. In the next part we will see some of the Shareable factors!
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