Hi everyone, today is the second last day of our 14-Day Healthy Living Challenge. If you’re still with us here, I congratulate you. It’s easy to be enthusiastic and jump on the bandwagon at the start of a new project; it’s another thing to continue with your plan after nearly two weeks. In fact, the fact that you’re still here, reading this, already means that you’re truly serious about living a healthy life. Because of that you’re going to succeed in your healthy living goal.
By now you should know that to succeed in living healthily, we need to make a real lifestyle change. It’s not just about forcing ourselves to behave a certain way for 14 days, and then revert to our past habits after that. That does nothing at all.
My goal here, as I’ve mentioned at the beginning of the challenge, is to make healthy living part and parcel of our everyday living. Be it drinking water, eating at least five servings of fruits/vegetables a day, being conscious of the calories and nutrition of the food we’re eating,knowing our daily energy expenditure (TDEE), eating in line with our daily caloric needs (or lesser/more if we want to lose/gain weight), knowing our ideal meal plans, staying true to our ideal meal plans, reviewing our progress, exercising, being aware of our healthy living pitfalls andfood struggles, meditating, or conscious eating, these are habits to do for life. When it comes to things like our ideal meal plans, TDEE, and calorie/nutritional information, they are important information to refer to every day/every other day.
So how great is it if we have a guidebook that contains all this information needed to help us live our healthiest life ever? I call this our “Healthy Living Guidebook,” sort of like how our “Life Handbook” is our guidebook to live our best life. Creating a Healthy Living Guidebook was a task that I worked on with 2011 and 2012 Healthy Living Challenge participants. Think of this book as your holy grail to healthy eating, because it reminds you of your vision to live healthily and supports you in achieving this goal.
So today, you’ll be creating your healthy living guidebook! For those of you who’ve already created yours from a past Healthy Living Run, it’s time to update your book today. Let’s go!
Step 1: Pick a format for your healthy living guidebook
You can use hard copy or soft copy for your healthy living guidebook. If you’re using hard copy, you can pick any book in your house or even buy a book specially for this. Your soft copy format can be any processing software of your preference – Word, Excel, or even Powerpoint if you like.
The benefits of soft copy is that you can easily edit/format it, while for hard copy you can refer to it even when you’re not at your computer. Either way, use what works best for you!
Step 2: Fill up your guidebook
It’s up to you on how you want to structure your guidebook and what to include in it. Everyone’s book should be customized to meet his/her needs. I recommending starting off with these information (all of which you’ve actually worked through in the challenge tasks; it’s just a matter of putting them together and tidying them up):
- (Your) Healthy Living Vision (What we covered in Day 0′s Pre-Work)
- Action Plan to Achieve Your Vision (Day 0)
- Current Healthy Living Struggles (Day 7: Week 1 Review, Day 9: Identify Your Healthy Living Pitfalls, Day 11: Identify Your Food Struggles)
- and… Strategy to Bust these Struggles (from Day 7, Day 9, and Day 11 as well)
- Calorie List (Day 3: Calorie List)
- TDEE (Day 4: TDEE) — So that you know how much to consume to maintain / reach your weight target
- Ideal Meal Plan based on TDEE (Day 5: Ideal Meal) — To guide you in your daily eating, so that you stay on track vs. your ideal meal vision
Here are other sections to consider for your guidebook too. Obviously not all of them will be relevant for you, so pick and choose what you want to include.
- Ideal habits – A list of the habits you want to cultivate daily, such as drinking water, eating at least five servings of fruits/vegetables, meditation, waking up early, exercising, etc.
- Daily Tracking Plan – To help you track if you’re sticking to your habits.
- Food Journal – Helps you to track what you’re eating so you know if you’re over/under eating.
- Favorite Recipes – To keep track of your favorite recipes, and even create your own!
- Shopping List (Food) – I find that having a fixed grocery list helps me to be more structured in my grocery shopping. What is a list of items that you’d want to buy every time you go grocery shopping?
- Exercise Plan – Your exercise regime, caloric expenditure for each exercise, and your progress in your current exercises.
- Other sections – Are there any sections that you’d like to include?
Decorate your guidebook with pictures if you want!
Next, Follow Your Plan for Day 13 (Take Pictures Too!)
What tasks have you set for Day 13 of your 14-Day Healthy Living Plan? Do them today!
Take pictures of your healthy meals – breakfast, lunch, dinner, and mid-day snacks if any — and share them in the comments section. 
After all, a picture tells a thousand words, and when you share photos of your healthy meals, it inspires others to eat healthily and gives them ideas on what healthy food they can have too!
After all, a picture tells a thousand words, and when you share photos of your healthy meals, it inspires others to eat healthily and gives them ideas on what healthy food they can have too!
Post your initial comment sharing your results for today’s challenge task, then add on throughout the day as you have your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and/or if you’re doing any workouts. Attach photos of your meals by clicking the image icon on the bottom left of every comment box. As you add on to your comment thread, be sure to click on the reply button directly below your original comment so that you reply to your own thread (as opposed to starting a new thread).
Share Your Results (and Photos!)
Share in the comments section!
- Your healthy living guidebook — What format did you pick? What sections do you have? Share pictures if you like!
- Your progress with your healthy living plan today
- Pictures of your meals
- Pictures of your workout (if any)
Do check out the other participants’ comments too and share a word of encouragement or two. We’re all in this together, so let’s support each other as a group! 
Stay tuned for Day 14′s task tomorrow! Just one day left everyone!!
Just one day left everyone!!
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