Intelligent health habits create long-term sustainability, enabling you to focus more time and energy on what’s truly important to you. When you put good habits on autopilot, you don’t have to fuss over your health as much. You can simply use your body as a vehicle for creative self-expression, knowing that your background habits are successfully maintaining—and even improving—your health.
While it can be very challenging to install good habits, once they’re running strong, the effort to maintain them should be minimal. In fact, you should generally expect a net gain from your best health habits, even in the short term. For example, regular aerobic exercise allows me (Steve Pavlina) to feel refreshed with significantly less sleep, so the habit more than pays for itself. Snacking on fresh fruit throughout the day is also very efficient. Peeling and eating a few bananas is virtually effortless, and the payoff is increased energy and alertness without any drowsiness. A collection of healthy habits creates an ongoing sense of positive flow.
The human body is an exquisitely beautiful wonder to behold, but it’s more important to be healthy on the inside than to look like a supermodel on the outside. When it comes to body image, your most authentic choice is to accept and love yourself as you are, including those parts you may not consider attractive. Do your best to ignore that social conditioning that says you have to look a certain way. If you look like a toad, there are plenty of color-blind people who will take you for a princely frog.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina