Kanata Chiropractic Centre

Healthy Living as a Full Time Job

Posted by: Marcelle

We’ve got a job for you and the payback is excellent:

Wanted: A happy and healthy individual who knows how to organize their life so that it accounts for the needs of an optimal body. Must be willing to commit to schedules and work overtime when required.  Salary starts at ‘feeling great about yourself’, and can rise as high as ‘long life’ and ‘comfortable living.’

Your health is a full-time job. It needs to be taken seriously, and often the key to this is organization.

What do I mean?

Try this exercise: Decide how often you review your level of nutrients, your level of rest, and your level of exercise. Rank each aspect using the scale below.

A) Never

B) Occasionally

C) Most often

D) All the time

If you’re like most people, you might rank yourself between  ‘Occasionally’ and ‘never’.  If you’re one of our clients, then hopefully you’re falling between ‘Most often’ and ‘All the time.’

This scale might seem like a quick bit of fun, but the idea behind it is vital.  Would you run a business without reviewing the finances, the sales, and the conversions? Hopefully not.

At Awakening Potentials, we call organized and healthy living a “therapeutic lifestyle.”  This is the first and possibly most important therapy a person can use to help fight many chronic health problems.

But where do you find the time? How do you know if you’re living well?

That’s where your ability to organize, prioritize and review comes in. Consider your health a second job, but one with immediate benefits and lifelong impacts. Do you take getting to work on time seriously? Then why not take having a healthy breakfast seriously as well?

Here are some interesting thoughts to consider:

• 91% of Type 2 Diabetes cases could be prevented by the adoption of healthy habits and lifestyle choices.
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommends lifestyle changes as the most important and cost-effective way to lower cholesterol.
• Lifestyle changes are now recommended as the “first-line therapy” for the major chronic diseases in our society:
  • Heart disease
  • Stroke
  • Diabetes
  • Cancer
  • Arthritis
  • Osteoporosis
  • Alzheimer’s disease

• Lifestyle choices are also the key to many symptoms that are not classified as diseases:
  • Fatigue
  • Stress-related symptoms
  • Hormone imbalance

Last week Dr. Tony discussed the idea of accountability for organizing your life. Now we want to take that a step further – don’t just be accountable for your body’s health, be proactive. Stop problems before they even have a chance to develop. It’s better to make the effort than to suffer the consequences of inaction.

Try taking inventory of your day. When did you wake up? How many hours did you sleep? What did you eat? Did you take any vitamins? How do you feel by 2:00 p.m., what about by 8:00 p.m.? Are you happy, bored, somewhere in between?

Once you start paying attention, trends and habits will become apparent.  This will give you a solid idea of where you are and how much work needs to be invested in this second job of yours.

It doesn’t have to be boring or tedious. Join friends in a running group, plan a nutritious menu with your family’s input, make love and burn those calories.

If you’re not sure where to start, there are many online options offering guidance to healthy living.  Also, Tony and I are available to help you set up a structure for organizing your health.

A therapeutic lifestyle will likely lead to years of feeling great and living well.

Good luck! We’d love to hear your thoughts. Did you try taking an inventory of your day? What do you think about therapeutic living – what obstacles do you foresee, how could they be overcome?

Have any fun ideas for getting fit? What works best for you?

Please do share – let’s see what comes out of the conversation!

To your health!

Dr. Marcelle

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