Getting Started on a Health Journey: Step 2
In my first post in this five part series, we talked about the first step when starting a health journey: making the decision. Today, we are delving into the next step: evaluation.
With evaluation, there are two main categories. First, evaluating where you are at, and second, evaluating your personality type.
1. Evaluate Where You Are At
We must first see where we are at in relation to where we want to go before we dive into our health journey. If you don’t know where you are at, how will you know what steps to take to get to your goal?
This evaluation process is fairly easy and practical. Simply start keeping a daily log of the following:
What you are eating, what time of day, and how you feel after eating
The quality of your sleep – when do you go to bed, when do you wake up, and do you feel rested in the morning
Are you exercising, and if so, what types, how often, and for how long
Your mood and energy throughout the day – how does it ebb and flow as you go about your day
Parts of your daily routine/schedule that you are happy with and aspects that you want to change
Work – what is your daily schedule like, who do you work with, do you feel fulfilled, etc
Pills and/or supplements you are taking, when, why, and how much
Keep this daily log (without trying to really change anything, but keeping things normal) for about a week. This will give you a great baseline as to where you are at in the beginning of this health journey.
It is critical to be detailed with your log so that you can use it later on for data analyzing. There’s no detail too small to include!
2. Evaluate Your Personality
When it comes to the second half of the evaluation process, you must determine which path is going to work best for you: the path of slow and steady change or the path of overnight change.
There is no right or wrong answer here. It is truly about what works for you!
Those who prefer slow and steady change will do very well taking small steps each day and week along their healthy journey to ensure that they stay on track and do not get overwhelmed. This is the perfect path for those who tend to jump “all in” only to turn around and fail or fall soon after. After so many times of this pattern, we see ourselves as failures, when it actuality, we aren’t the failure – it’s the methodology that we are choosing to use!
On the other hand, there are those who are better with overnight change. Simply rip off the bandaid and call it good. I’m this type, even though I loathe change (odd, isn’t it?!). I would prefer to just stop whatever it is that I need to immediately rather than delay the process. This is often best for Type A personalities or those who tend to want to things to happen five minutes ago. While on their health journey, people of this category will make bigger switches and changes basically overnight in order to start to change for the better.
Again, it doesn’t matter which personality you are, what matters is that you truly recognize which path suits you best and own it. From there, you can start the planning to continue on your health journey.
Stay tuned for Step 3: Support Systems where we will discuss how vital it is to have a network of support around you while on your health journey.
xoxo Olivia
