Do you engage in the top five health behaviors? These are the lifestyle behaviors for preventing chronic disease, and as such are significantly associated with reduced mortality.
- getting regular physical activity
- maintaining a normal body weight
- consuming no alcohol or only moderate amounts
- never smoking
- obtaining daily sufficient sleep (at least 7 hours)
According to the CDC, only 6.3% of those in the study reported engaging in all 5 behaviors.
Are you in the that tiny 6.3%?? If not, here’s the good news:
It doesn’t have to be this way!
This is diet and lifestyle stuff. This isn’t DNA. This isn’t limited by your age or where you live. You can all do these things.
The interesting thing is you probably knew about these healthy behaviors before reading this. The problem isn’t lack of information. It’s because for most of us, change is hard.
Take #1 for example–we are hard-wired to conserve energy when we don’t need to expend it to get our food, to protect our families or in general “avoid the lion.” The was protective when we lived in caves and tribes. We didn’t go out for a jog for fun, in case we needed to flee from an enemy later in the day.
But now that we live fairly sedentary lifestyles, in houses with grocery stores around the corner, this hard wiring works again us.
And how about #2? Again humans are programmed to seek out foods that are high in calories. This used to be a field of berries or the fatty part of the kill. This was protective when we weren’t sure when our next meal would come.
But now this hard-wiring backfires when those foods that are high in calories are readily available, highly processed and in great abundance multiple times per day.
So what do we do when we are hardwired to avoid these very behaviors that are so desirable? Information is not enough. We need support. We need evidence-based methods that have been shown to lead to lasting behavior change.
This is the job of a health coach.
Health coaching has been shown to help people make successful and lasting changes to diet, behavior, and lifestyle. This isn’t because health coaches have “the secrets.” We’ve established you have the information. Just telling people what to do–giving you more information–is not enough!
Coaches help people change their behavior. And THAT is the single most important step we can take to prevent and reverse chronic disease, increase lifespan and generally create healthy individuals.
That’s the job of a health coach. That’s my job.
When you are ready to make changes, consider hiring a health and weight loss coach. Consider that support from a professional is likely the missing piece to your health–to changes you’ve been desiring to make, but just can’t quite figure out why you’re not making them. I’ll teach you the methods of lasting behavior change. This isn’t just about weight loss. This is about your overall health–and we can improve it!
Click the button below to schedule a free chat with me to see if health coaching is your missing piece!
P.S.: if you struggle with the other 3 behaviors, I got you there as well! I have programs for stopping over drinking, removing buffers, like smoking and reducing anxiety for better sleep. I got you.
