Women’s magazines, ads on TV and online constantly scream at us that we need to lose weight and get fit.

Don’t get me wrong, losing weight and getting fit is no bad thing. But we need to be alert and understand what really motivates us.

The problem is that most of us do not dig deep and work out for ourselves why we need to be fit and healthy. We become hypnotised by the ads, the constant messages, both direct and indirect, in the magazines we see and the web sites that attract us.

Few of us ever stop to ask what the main driver is behind this universal impulse towards health and fitness.

This is one of the main reasons why people keep falling off the wagon—they blindly embark on diets and exercise programs, without really comprehending exactly why it is so important to them.

In order to understand this, I urge everybody to do one exercise that I did years ago, which has changed my life completely.

Since I did this, I lost 40 lbs of fat, transformed my body, lifestyle and career.

This exercise is all about understanding and expressing our core values. I believe that this powerful technique will not only help people to lose weight, but also to figure out many other things in life.

This is how we do it:

1. We sit down with a pen and paper and write down 20 to 30 things that are important in your life, e.g. family, friends, career, having a good time, financial freedom, creativity, self-expression, health, community, independence, etc…
2. We choose the 10 most important out of this list
3. After choosing 10, we narrow the list down to five, then three
4. We prioritise these three values and then…
5. We look at them hard and decide whether our current lifestyle reflects these core values or not.

If it does, congratulations, there are only a lucky few!

But if it doesn’t, we really ought to reconsider our current lifestyle, because in truth it is creating disharmony in our life.

When I did this exercise more than five years ago, it was hardly a surprise that my first and most important value was my health.

But I was still a little shocked.

Deep inside I knew I wanted to be healthy and I could see that this was the most important thing for me, but I had never once expressed it and it wasn’t part of my consciousness. Therefore my actions and habits failed to reflect it.

I was shocked that although my health was the most important thing in my life, the thing I prized and valued above all else, I still smoked at that time. Health and smoking don’t go together, do they?

So I stopped smoking.

The shift in my behaviour didn’t happen overnight but the crucial seed was sown.  Now, years later, it has grown beautifully—not only have I changed my unhealthy habits to healthy ones, but I have also created a fulfilling new career, helping people improve their health and enrich their lives.

Now, I invite all readers to do this exercise.

Take a pen.

Yes, now.

Is health in the priority list? Is family in it?

In order to take care of family, have a passionate relationship, contribute to the community and fulfill our dreams, we need to be in good health and full of energy. We cannot take care of others as well as we’d like to if we are not in full health ourselves.

We focus on our weight but actually forget the real underlying driver—health. If we do not have good health, everything else loses its meaning.

What we really want is to be healthy and full of energy, to possess the gift of vitality. We want to feel good in our own skin, to be able to wear whatever we like and express ourselves freely and naturally, because this gives us freedom and allows our creativity to flow without restriction.

We want our outside to be a reflection of our inside. We want to be attractive to our current or potential partner. We want to be free and wild with, with no insecurities or fears weighing us down.

Deep down, self-expression and complete harmony between our inner self and the person the world sees.

That is what we want to achieve.

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Apprentice Editor: Yaisa Nio / Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Flickr / Lisa Plummer