So you’re ready to get healthy. You’re ready to buckle up and hop on the highway to health. Where do you start? It can seem like an overwhelming decision. Some might even suggest a massive overhaul to your lifestyle, like eliminating entire food groups or starting an intense exercise program akin to that of a bodybuilder. It can seem like you have to go all-in, that you have to change everything…this is where the overwhelm sets in…
It’s also where I’d like to tap the breaks a bit on this metaphorical highway to health.
Improving your health doesn’t have to be all or nothing, win or lose, succeed or fail. Let’s try approaching it from a different angle, here’s how…
Enter: The Health Continuum
The Health Continuum is a concept and a tool used to replace dichotomous thinking and to build healthier habits by improving the ones you already have.
Thinking that there are only two options, things are either good or bad, is a major roadlock to success. Instead of trying to eliminate things we deem as “bad”, we can try replacing them with something that is a little better. This is a key concept that will continually point you in the right direction.
Here’s what it looks like:
How to use the health continuum
To improve your health, one of the first things you can do is audit your current habits. Consider things you are already doing on a daily basis that you think you can improve on and are willing to make changes to.
To audit your habits, imagine a typical day in your life. Write down all of the things you normally eat and drink. Notice the routines and habits that get you through your morning, the ones that get you to lunch, what you eat for lunch, and so on… Take note of things like what, where, and how much you’re eating and drinking. Don’t forget things like snacks, or drive-thru coffees, muffins, and donuts!
Another option is for the next 24 hours, create a note on your phone (or bring a notebook with you) and write down all of the nutrition habits you notice.
*You can skip the habit audit if you already know what you want to change, especially if you already decided you are willing and able to make that change!
Next, choose one habit to improve on. Remember that improvement comes from moving that habit further towards healthy on the continuum.
Low-Hanging Fruit
One of the best ways to start this process and to ensure you get the ball rolling is to pick the low-hanging fruit. More importantly, your low-hanging fruit.
The low-hanging fruit will be the habits that, when you wrote them down, you immediately thought, “oh yeah, I can change that, easy”. Or if you can already picture yourself doing the more health promoting version of the habit.
It’s important to build momentum, because momentum fuels more momentum. If we start off with a few wins we will really notice how good positive change feels.
What if I Don’t Succeed?
If you choose a habit or specific food to change and it turns out to be more difficult than you thought, consider this:
There is no failure, only feedback.
For health improvement, this just means that we didn’t “fail” if we were not successful in changing a behaviour. We actually learned something. We learned that right now, that’s just too much for us and we should revisit the continuum.
When we revisit the health continuum, we may realize that the change we just tried to make was a little too big a jump toward the healthy side. Let’s try a smaller step this time.
What Will Success Look Like?
Success with health improvement looks similar to compounding interests in financial investments. You can see this represented visually in a graph like this one from the book Atomic Habits, depicting a 1% improvement every day:
The important thing to take away from this is that change can be slow AND incremental. It doesn’t have to be radical, or all-or-nothing. With consistency, a 1% improvement each day will lead to healthier and more sustainable habits.
When we stop seeing things as either good or bad, our options actually open up and we can make more realistic, sustainable changes.
Thank you for reading!
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