How To Make 2024 The Best Year For Your Health

Hi, welcome to newsletter #9.

It is the time of year to reflect and celebrate, hope and achieve, so let’s begin.

What's inside :

• How To Make 2024 The Best Year For Your Health

• Webinar announcement

• Picture of the week

• Content summary of the week

As cliche as it may sound, the end of a year or the beginning of a new one is always a tempting opportunity to daydream about a great future ahead.

However, these dreams are forgotten as soon as the hangover clears and a brand new "working day" is staring at our faces to remind us that nothing has changed besides the date on the calendar.

However, this time we will be better prepared with a comeback.

Below I share how I plan to take control of my health back into my own hands, no matter what.

Reflect

To make anything better than it already is, we first need to find out what are the areas that need improvement.

one of my favorite methods to reflect upon is the "What Why How" method.

WHAT are the health problems I am facing?
WHY am I facing them?
HOW to fix it?

for example:

What are my health problems?
1. Too much belly fat
2. Pre-diabetes
3. Poor posture

Why am I facing them?
1. Half-heartedly tried dieting
2. Ignored regular checkups
3. Never leave the desk

How to fix it?
1. By not taking health for granted
2. By building habits
3. By educating myself.

Aim

One of my favorite methods is to have a 12-month big goal which will be reviewed on a three-month and a monthly basis.

I imagine sitting with your friends 12 months from now and boasting about your achievements over lunch or dinner.

so for the above example, the 12-month celebration goal would be

1. Reduced body fat percentage to under 20 percent.
2. Got my HBa1c under control
3. My posture is better now.

Shoot

Now is the time to hit the road.

Whenever it comes to something as abstract and "easy to slip" things like our health and habits, I take inspiration from the "Ulysses contract"

Ulysses contract says that "we should bind ourselves into a future action by closing all options of failure."

for example, if I were to fix my diet but binge on Swiggy and Zomato, then the best way would be to delete those apps.

this would make us jump more hoops to order food and thanks to our laziness, we would end up eating healthier.

did you observe that we eliminated the need for "willpower" completely? Willpower is a limited resource and best reserved for special situations, not everyday decisions.

so continuing with our example, I would set the following rules to fix the above problems

1. Working out three times a week / walk 10,000 steps a day and take progress pictures
2. 90-day challenge to not order food and not drink alcohol
3. Move from my desk every hour for 5 -10 minutes and stretch.
4. Educate myself on the above topics from good quality sources.

humans need to see results to keep themselves motivated, and the shorter the feedback loop, the longer we keep doing it.

notice that all the above activities can be easily tracked. We just need to tick boxes on our calendar online or offline and soon we will be celebrating our first 1-month checkpoint.

Every three months we asses our directions and by the end of our 12 months we are celebrating with our friends bragging our wins..!!

This was a very simple way of making you take your health seriously.

What do you think? what are your goals for the year? can we make it simpler or more fun in any way? do let me know.

I would like to hear from you.

Reply with a topic you’d like me to cover.

Cheers,

Dr. Vishal.