Nadia’s Ten Tips for Healthy Living

Anybody and everybody is writing about healthy living nowadays. Much of what is out there is common sense and you have to

My husband, a friend of ours, and I cycled from London to Paris this year. Having a short-term goal will motivate you to keep exercising.

wonder why someone has written a whole book about it. More of what is out there is just a load of crap. Generally, I think too many people have turned healthy living into something that is way too complicated for someone who wants to start on the road towards a healthier lifestyle.

So, since I am an anybody and I have accumulated some personal experience on this topic over the past few years, I thought I would share my own tips on how to live more healthily.

1.    Your goal should be gradually shifting into a lifestyle change and not finding a quick fix solution. One of the first things you need to do is completely remove the word diet from your vocabulary. YOU ARE NOT STARTING YET ANOTHER DIET. Your goal is not to lose a certain amount of weight in a certain amount of time. Your goal should not even be weight loss. Your goal should be to become healthy. This will inevitably result in some weight loss. But stop focusing on your weight and start focusing on changing the way you live.

2.    Lifestyle changes do not happen overnight.

Why I Have Decided to Live My Life and Why That Doesn’t Mean My Life Is Perfect

Sometime around my early to mid-thirties, I decided I needed to make some changes in my life. I was a fulltime mother and housewife at the time. And I was more than happy to continue doing that indefinitely. I absolutely loved, and still do, taking care of my children and managing the household. But I had come to the realization, observing my and my siblings relationships with my own parents, that children grow up and go on to have their own lives. If I didn’t find something to occupy my time, in addition to my children, a day will come when I will feel very alone. I was also feeling a need to be financially independent. At the time, my thinking on the matter wasn’t feminist in the slightest. I wasn’t thinking that I needed to be my own independent person and part of that independence was my financial independence. I simply wanted to have enough money to buy a nice shampoo every now and then without my husband complaining about how I was spending “our” money. And I wanted to be able to get my children nice things when I wanted to.

Shortly after I came to these realizations, I began to work. Becoming a career woman radically changed my life.

My love-hate relationship with exercising

Almost every single time I start thinking about beginning my semi-daily exercise routine I feel dread. But I’ve never once regretted

Hiking in the Cinque Terre, Italy

exercising once I’m done.

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes when I start exercising or when I go to the gym, I feel like giving up in the middle of it all. Sometimes I do the easier exercises rather than the more difficult ones. Sometimes in gym class I’ll be so tired that I do things at half the pace as everyone else. And a couple of times I’ve started an activity and I’ve just completely given up after a few minutes. But that’s only happened when I’ve chosen to do something I’m completely unprepared to do.

My journey with exercise has been just that: a long and arduous journey. It’s taken me years to understand my body, its limitations, how far I can push it, and when I just need to rest. It’s taken me years to get myself into a mindset of exercising as regularly as I can, no matter where I am, and no matter what facilities are available to me. The one thing that has convinced me most to keep pushing forward is that I want to be fit enough to enjoy my life and to do fun and exciting things.