21 Day Challenge

We know and expect certain things in our life to take time and effort and a commitment to living a healthy lifestyle is no different. A good jump start to a healthier lifestyle is to full on commit to eating healthy for 21 days. 

If you have not worked out in 10 years and now you are in your mid 30s, you cannot expect to lose the weight you put on over the past decade in one week, especially if you haven’t even started trying to yet. You can expect to begin seeing results at the end of three weeks though if you make a serious commitment and do not stray. 

If all you do is change your breakfast from a bagel with cream cheese to an egg omelet in the morning and still live your life the same, it won’t help too much. Let’s say you eat, meaning put food into your mouth no matter how large or small the size, 35 times a week (five times a day you eat something multiplied by seven days a week). If you switch to an omelet every morning, that’s sven meals or 20 percent of your weekly intake of food.

It’s a good start to put your ratio of good-to-bad nutrition needs to look more like 90 percent of your weekly meals, or 32 of the times you put food into your mouth, it must be healthy choice.

Twenty-one days worth of meals is 105 choices you are making to put something in your body. 95 of these must be a good choice for this 21 day trial to give you a 90-to-10 ratio.

I’ve given out a lot of nutritional advice to hundreds of people. Not just the spoken form but packets of information and written out nutrition plans where all the thinking has been done for them and they just have to commit to eating that way. So detailed as to include options of eating x,y and z, if they are not filled from meal a, b or c.

The problems I face are from people who do not truly commit for the first 21 days.  This is the period when you need to see results otherwise you start to think "is this worth doing?"

Commit doesn't mean to try for a couple days or to go through 21 days but make up their own rules as to how they’re going to eat and exercise. It means devoting and disciplining yourself to follow through and reap the rewards at the end of your 21 day eating challenge.