Taking care of yourself requires a clear dedication. Most of us lack it the majority of our lives simply because we get busy. That leads to more pressing matters taking the lead. We focus on our careers or our families and forget to take care of ourselves. Unfortunately, neglect for your health begins to show eventually in a myriad of ways ranging from weight issues to lasting health issues that are hard to shake. We can turn things around when they appear to have gotten bad, though. It does mean learning to focus on two key points if we want to work towards greater overall health, though. The list being only two points makes it at least feel a little less daunting, but there is still plenty to do when it comes to each step and it is easy to get overwhelmed or have difficulty with any single component. Let’s look at the steps though, and what it takes to stay dedicated.

Changing Your Diet
A big part of the commitment to a healthy body is retraining your body to eat differently. It is one of the hardest tasks most of us ever face. Your body honestly doesn’t know what’s good for it in the modern era. In the distant past, sugary things and protein dense foods were harder to come by than they are now. This lead to our brain ensuring the reward button in our brain being pressed whenever we ate such foods. It meant we’d have energy for survival and to keep moving. These days the foods are readily available on store shelves everywhere and there’s no disputing that it isn’t working out as well for us. Sugar and meat-heavy diets are hurting us. In truth, we need to largely be eating diets that favor greenery with a bit of meat added in for an extra kick. The key element in that is fiber. It helps regulate the body in countless ways and helps us not be as hungry too. So changing your diet means learning to focus on eating your greens. Don’t despair though as they can still be plenty flavorful.

Learning to Exercise
Similarly to how diets have changed since prehistory, our habits as a species have as well. When humans were still hunter-gatherers we tended to move around frequently to find better and new sources of food when done with an area. This meant a lot of walking each day as well as other forms of physical exertion. We’ve gradually phased out the various necessary movements of life from the past ages as we’ve made everything increasingly convenient. Our bodies are suffering for it. You can do a lot for the long term health of your body by rejecting some of those conveniences. It can be as simple as taking brisk walks to nearby places as opposed to taking a car or remembering to take the stairs rather than the elevator when you don’t have too many floors to go up. You can also work towards a full exercise routine if that’s more to your liking. Both will help boost your overall health over time providing you’re willing to put in the effort.

Being Dedicated
Both of these steps are hard. There is no getting around that. We’ve built a world that works against our own health in many respects. Eating well requires making the time to both seek out healthy ingredients and prepare healthy food. It can and will go a long way towards ensuring that you are able to improve your health, though. Exercising, even just walking, will also contribute. Your path to success hinges on your overall dedication to your goals. You can help yourself out some by remembering that you’re working towards a goal rather than rushing it all at once, though. Build the changes in your diet and your exercise routine over time. Yes, you’re allowed to have setbacks and to take a break from things every now and then. Don’t let those breaks become actual stagnation, though. A week off from exercising now and again or an evening with deliciously unhealthy food won’t hurt you. The overall patterns are what need to change instead.

Shifting your lifestyle around to work towards a healthy body isn’t a task to undertake lightly. It can be done in two simple steps by focusing on your diet and then learning to exercise properly. The problem is both steps are made of countless little steps and require maintenance along the way. Anyone can do it though. Talk to your doctor about areas to focus these efforts in though so that you get a much more tailored approach. Your doctor can and likely will be your best partner in working towards a healthy body.