A Story A Day — 7 years later

I have this belief that the only way to make a large change in ourselves is to take action on it daily. Our lives and selves are the culmination of all of our habits. Our habits are simply the things that we do on a regular basis. To change ourselves means to simply change our habits. So we need to make a new action a daily habit to help ourselves.

Or, said in one sentence:

If you want to improve. Do one small thing, every day.

This is how I approached fitness. When I was just getting started, I was overweight, depressed, unmotivated. I decided something had to change. I knew what I needed to do from all the cliches (synonym for “something that works”). I had to eat better and exercise more.

To eat better, I needed to know what I was eating. So, I simply tracked everything I ate for a day. Then again the next day, and the next. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t 100% accurate, what mattered was that I doing something.

Exercising was the easy part. The habit was the activity, so I went to the gym that afternoon, and did a couple exercises. The next day, I went for my first run in months. Then I did a yoga class. Then back to the gym the next day.

It didn’t take long before I noticed a difference. Not only from the obvious actions (working out and seeing how much I was eating). My behaviour, and thoughts. I was becoming interested in picking out workout plans that made sense to me. I became more active throughout the day. I started to…