I’ve been thinking a bit about lifestyle lately, how it effects behavior, and more importantly, how it effects efforts to change ourselves.

I’ve struggled throughout my life to maintain a healthy, athletic weight. I gain weight from the calories in the air, and it has been pretty tough for me to keep up an ongoing exercise plan.

I’ve done all the usual goal setting with rewards, plans, and so on, and I’ve even made this work for me. This stuff has gotten me in gear and gotten me results, but it hasn’t quite stuck though in a long term sense.

I had been trying to incorporate a bunch of habits into my life, but those habits haven’t seemed to create the overall change that I have been hoping for. I can get a new habit into my life, but I never removed the old habits that are counter productive.

The other day I was watching a video online, I can’t remember if it was Tony Robbins or Frank Kern (or if it was the video with both of them). Anyway, in this video, a visualization exercise was presented. The exercise was to imagine an average perfect day.

Kinda seems contradictory, to say average and perfect, I know. The idea is that if everything in my life were just right, the big three of health, wealth, and relationships were all squared away and how I wanted them, what would an average day in that life be like?

Anyway, like an idiot I closed my eyes and got to work figuring out what that life would be like. I’ll leave out the mansion in the hills and the Swedish bikini team from the vision, and just talk about the aspect of this vision that relates to health.

What I realized is that the the overall picture of this healthy life was very different from the way I live my life now. A lot of the components were the same, like jogging, triathlon training, healthy food and lots of fruits and veggies.

I noticed that this vision was as much defined by what I did do as much as by what I didn’t do. Certain bad habits of mine weren’t there. In this vision, I don’t get dinner from Uncle Vito’s Italian Food, don’t buy a fast, unhealthy lunch instead of bringing a good lunch with me to work, and don’t stay up so late that I don’t wake up and exercise.

In fact, I could describe my vision of a healthy life as much by what was included as with what wasn’t included. What I realized is that what I saw when I envisioned a healthy life was an overall healthy lifestyle.

The lifestyle I saw would naturally lead to a strong healthy body:

• I wake up in the morning ready to exercise, and after a jog and workout I enjoy natural, wholesome fruits and foods that made me feel invigorated in a way that lasts throughout the day. I continue to eat good food throughout the day, and eat foods that are both good for me and delicious. I have alcohol in moderation, when I have any at all. I eat healthy foods because it makes me feel good, and get a restful night sleep anticipating waking up in the morning for a new, fresh day.

My approach to getting my health in gear has been to add habits into my current lifestyle, and I should have been focusing on changing my lifestyle. By changing my lifestyle, the results I want will fall in to place.

Lifestyle is the backdrop to our habits, the things we do every day. Overall lifestyle shapes and colors all of the habits that we do every day.

I am spending this week wrapping my head around changing one aspect of my lifestyle, that of exercise, health, diet, and well being. As I wrap my head around this, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on lifestyle change.

Why does this matter? Especially on a blog about dating women? Lifestyle, and changing it, applies as much to dating and being attractive as it does to health. The ideas that are gonna go into this discussion will carry over to a change in lifestyle that includes dating more, or being more flirtatious.

Lifestyle is lifestyle, and it effects everything we do. It may be one of the most important aspects that influences our habits and our ability to change those habits.

Anyhow, check back later in the week for more on this subject.