None of us arrived out of the womb walking, it took us months to take that first step.  Why?  Because our muscles had to develop enough to support us, and those muscles were built over time.  We shouldn’t expect to lose 50 pounds the day after we start a diet or a work out routine for the same reason, those pounds were put on over time, and it takes time to lose them properly.  Have you ever decided to start working out after a LONG season of sedentary living?  You hit the gym, decide to run for an hour, do weights for an hour and then swim.  What happens the next day?  You just can’t move, right?  It’s a LOT of “abuse” on your body at once, so your body just refuses to work.  Yes, I’ve been there!  (and still tend to overdo!)

What’s the point?  Well, just like you don’t want to throw too much at your body when you start working out, you don’t want to shock your body by overdoing it on a new dietary regimen.  Everything you want to accomplish for yourself is just a matter of baby steps, one after the other, until you reach your goal.  When you reach one goal, you take some more baby steps to reach your next goal.  Water that doesn’t keep moving becomes stagnant and that’s not a good thing!

There are extreme cases when a doctor will drastically change your diet overnight, and I’m not addressing that here, although my earlier blogs shed light on how to do that.  Right now, I want to focus on the majority of us, who just want to live healthier and find it difficult.  Changing the way you eat can be a good start.

First, pick a realistic, specific goal

You need to be specific about what you want to change.  Don’t focus so much on what you CAN’T have, change the negativity into positive by focusing on adding something healthy to what you eat.  For example, don’t say, “No more cake”, but instead say, “I’m going to start eating more fruit, especially when I crave sweet things.”

Personally, I’m always changing things in my diet to try to stay healthy, and make my doctors even more proud.  😉  Here’s one of the things I’m about to try.  My cholesterol level is fine overall, but my “good” cholesterol is higher than my doctor would like.  So, I’m going to try one simple thing for a while – Eat organic eggs.

The USDA has found that organic (free-range) eggs have significant benefits over their commercial counterparts.  Here are their findings.

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

The dramatically superior nutrient levels are most likely the result of the differences in diet between free ranging, pastured hens and commercially farmed hens.

Knowing that they are better for me than the typical egg, and knowing that I eat eggs every day, this looks like a change I can make realistically.   It’s a baby step.  No, not everything I eat is organic, and as I do more research, I may add more organic items in.  We’ll see.

Stay tuned, because I am going to do a few blogs on “Baby Steps” for gradually changing diets to help us with cholesterol, weight loss, sugar intake, etc.  Please feel free to comment on an area you’d like to hear about!  🙂

**Update!   Recently I had blood work done and guess what??!!  My cholesterol is down 11 points!  Now, I’m attributing the result to the eggs.  Why?  Because I’ve not changed anything else!!  In fact, I hadn’t even worked out really in that amount of time, so nothing changed in my routine except the organic eggs.  I’m amazed!  Have any of you done something similar?  Baby steps, no matter how small, is still forward progress.  Don’t give up!