By Dr. Frank Sabatino

With all of the media attention on health nowadays, you’d think we’d all have a pretty good idea which lifestyle choices promote optimal health and weight loss: eating better, moving more, sleeping more, drinking more water, and reducing stress.

However, there is often a big gap between the intellectual understanding of healthy lifestyle choices and one’s ability to practically apply and implement them into daily life.

Following are four key ideas that can help close this gap in our efforts to achieve and sustain a successful health and weight loss program.

1. Find Creative Substitutions and the Give Yourself the Opportunity to Win

If there is one thing common to all mammals, and especially humans, it is that we will use the least amount of energy to experience the greatest amount of pleasure.

So if you’re trying to make a healthier choice or change in your life, make the negative thing you’re trying to avoid a complete pain in the ass to do. Make it much more difficult and energy-demanding to do the “wrong” thing.

Keep healthy plant-based options near at hand. Keep them at your desk, in your car, anywhere near at hand so when it comes time to reach for some food, you don’t have to walk to the vending machine or drive around looking for a fast food joint.

Make it easier and less energy-demanding to be successful. Give yourself what I like to call the “opportunity to win.”

When making change, it is important to make choices you can live with. Don’t make choices that make your life unbearable; nobody likes deprivation.

However, taking advantage of the variety of creative substitutions available in a vegan, plant-based lifestyle can make even challenging change more bearable and doable.

There is nothing you may be consuming now, including cookies, candy, ice cream, cheese and meat, that can’t be replaced by healthier vegan options low in salt, sugar and oil.

Make sure you fill your refrigerators and kitchen cabinets with healthy options so in the middle of the night you don’t have to take that zombie-like journey in your housecoat down to the 7-11 for some commercial ice cream.

Remember, these changes will not occur overnight.

Many of the processed, refined and animal foods that you’re used to, such as refined sugar products and cheese, have an addictive quality that makes them difficult to stop eating abruptly.

So be patient with yourself and respect some modest time factor for your successful transition to healthier choices.

Why do you think addiction rehabilitation programs typically last for 21 to 30 days? It only takes a week to detox, but it takes additional time for new choices and strategies to become part of healthy routine behavior.

To eliminate risky, addictive habits, it is absolutely necessary to practice total avoidance combined with creative substitutions in order to create a separation between what you were doing and the new things you’re trying to do.

If you have a problem with sugar, you can’t have a little bit of it because it will only reinstate the problem. Don’t try to regulate addictive substances. The only people who think they can are addicts, and you know how well they do it.

Understand that the things you’re doing right now have had a long history of time and practice to become part of your routine behavior. So no matter what I say, there’s a part of your brain that just can’t believe that you can be any different than you are right now.

These old choices and addictive habits have been like old friends in the night, providing you a false sense of pleasure and well-being. However, as you make even small, consistent changes over time, you will actually get to a place where you’ll have a hard time believing where you once were.

Make healthy changes you can live with, but make them more consistently across time. This will allow new choices an opportunity to weave their way into your behavioral tapestry and become an integral part of your brain and daily routine.

2. Seek Entertainment Related to Personal Passions and Interests Rather than Food

Does it seem that all you ever do when socializing is go out and eat?

We hear, “Hey, haven’t seen you in a while; let’s get together for dinner,” and “Hey, how you been? Let’s go out and eat something.”

Let’s eat, eat, eat!

Now don’t get me wrong; I love to eat and I love socializing around great food. But it will be necessary to find other more creative ways to spend leisure time and express yourself that don’t center around eating.

However, let’s face it; so many of us have jobs that put food on the table and take care of our family needs, but our jobs may not be how we express ourselves creatively.

If you have a job or a profession that allows you to do both, it is a blessing. I contend, however, that if you don’t have some creative outlet, at the end of the day you will seek out a variety of compulsive or addictive behaviors (food, alcohol, etc.) that may take the edge off. But this will only provide unhealthy distraction and an illusion of well-being and pleasure.

Therefore I urge you in the quiet of your own meditation to get in touch with your personal passion; that thing or that behavior that gives you great pleasure, peaks your interest and makes you timeless. How can you make this a hobby, or shift gears, as we now see some people doing, reinventing themselves to change their direction later in life and adopting livelihoods more in line with their greatest passions?

People that entertain passionate interests typically age better and have less degenerative diseases. Remembering or discovering your driving passion may even take you back to some earlier time in your life.

Many of us have gotten derailed from our passions early in life by parents or other influential people who felt compelled to disrespect our Plan A, and tell us what they think we should do, and all the ways we will fail at the things we love when these things don’t match their preconceived notions of what they think we should do.

So as you grow and navigate adulthood under life’s intense survival pressure life often doing what you really never wanted to do in the first place, you can suffocate in the regret of not doing your first choice passion and purpose and drown in whatever mindless behavior or addiction is near at hand.

I have two sons that are musicians, writers and artists. I recognized their passion very early in their lives and homeschooled them through some of their middle and high school years as music and art were being phased out of the public school system due to budget cuts.

I wanted them to be able to devote more of their time to their passionate pursuits. And even though I have typical parental concerns about the future survival and success of my children, I realized very early that I had to let go of any preconceived notions of what I thought they should be.

So I’ll tell you what I told them: Go for your first choice, there’s always going to be a second, third and fourth. You’re always better off succeeding or failing with your greatest passion as the bull’s-eye of the target.

I have counseled some of the wealthiest, most successful people in the world who were some of the sickest, most depressed and anxious individuals I have ever met. They followed paths that they thought they should, or that some authority figure told them they should, but never got truly in touch with, or truly expressed, their personal passion.

Too many of us live lives of regret about the things we didn’t do but wished we did and probably should have; and it creates craving, emptiness, unrest, depression and an insidious lack of well-being.

It is also so important to realize that you can discover and use your personal passion and creativity as an important resource and support for healthy lifestyle change. Participating in activities that express your greatest interest and passion can be a tool for reinforcing the choices that ensure optimal health across time.

Do not underestimate the power of passionate, creative expression in keeping you on the right track.

Understand that even when you are changing and evolving in a healthier direction, it is a process that does not occur in a quantum leap.

You’re not going to be completely there yet. There will be times under stress and adversity when the voices of old demons and addictions will rise up and try to pull you back into old patterns of behavior.

These choices, compulsions and addictions of the past were how you formerly dealt with things in an effort to create some sense of survival and well-being. They were your old friends in the night. However, if you have some passionate, creative outlet, you can divert your attention from momentary temptations and stay on track more effectively.

3. Cultivate New, Supportive Relationships and Environments

Have you ever had the experience of having some success at some vacation retreat, or some home diet and lifestyle program, and meeting your well-meaning friends who say things like, “You’re not going do that, go there, or eat that way again, are you?” or “You know you’re going to put that weight back on; let’s go out and eat something.”

Unfortunately, misery does truly love company.

These well-meaning friends, who may have a difficult time maintaining any success themselves, just seem compelled to undermine your success in order to keep you in the failure club with them.

Over time, as you make these alternative choices more consistently, they will become more and more a part of your new behavior and you’ll eventually become like me, not caring what anybody says.

But initially it matters a lot, simply because, as much as we need the biological necessities similar to other mammals—food, water, shelter, warmth, etc.—there is something we crave more than other creatures: the acceptance of others.

This is a throwback to our distant past when we depended on a supportive social group (or tribe) to help us procure our basic needs and minimize dangerous environmental pressures.

On some deeply rooted level, social rejection triggers a fear response and is perceived as a threat to survival.

You don’t need to get rid of your old friends, but you must find a way to cultivate some new major relationships and activities of support at home.

Perhaps you can find a walking or exercise group that will help you stay on track. Perhaps you can find a plant-based support group near home or online, or an online lecture series, or a vegan cooking program near your home.

The idea is to add a new or ongoing nucleus of people and activities that will promote and support the new food, exercise and lifestyle choices that help you maintain health and weight regulation.

4. Evolve, Grow and Change!

In my opinion, one of the problems we face is that we have all been conditioned to look at choices from a very limited perspective, one that is shaped by the duality of our Judeo-Christian culture.

A mentality of sin and religious retribution skews the process of choice and change, diverting our attention from the true task at hand.

As a result we become more preoccupied—and even lost—in whether a choice is good or bad, including any guilt that we may harbor as a result, rather than considering its impact on the bigger picture of our life and health.

Always remember that when you make a choice, there’s another one immediately lurking around the corner. Try not to get lost in the last one you made.

You always have a unique opportunity to use the consequences of your actions to transform your future choices.

This is the alchemy of mindfulness and consciousness: the ability to transform pain, dysfunction, and failure into an opportunity for success and optimal health.

So don’t get lost in guilt or perceived failure; instead use the consequences of your choices to affect what happens next.

Before he drank the Kool-Aid, Socrates was absolutely correct when he said a life that is not examined is not worth living.

That may sound harsh, but anytime you so choose, you have the remarkable ability to examine your life and mindfully evaluate whether your choices are consistent with the goals you have established for yourself.

This moves your choices from the simplistic discussion of good, bad or evil into a larger consideration where your choices fit on the path of your own evolution, growth and change.

As absurd as it may sound, if you tell me that your goal is to be fatter, sicker and more disabled than ever, and every choice you’re making is moving you in that direction, I applaud you; you have achieved your goal.

On the other hand, if you tell me you want to be healthier, more fit and leaner but your choices are not congruent with that outcome, you need to take a closer look at your life and make the appropriate adjustments.

Only through your own responsible action can you shape the successful outcome of your own life. Every choice you make affords you a unique opportunity to evolve a deep-rooted consciousness of health, grounded in self-care and self-love.

As Rumi, the famous Sufi poet wrote, “When you truly become a lover, duties become inspirations.” With all due respect, I have modified his saying to: “When you truly love yourself, the duties of responsible action become inspirations.”

As you truly embrace your evolution toward health, your self-love will urge you to naturally implement choices that are in your best interest.

You will continue to recognize that these healthy choices are clearly associated with your greatest vitality, function and performance, and realize that they are less pressure and drudgery to implement, insuring that they become a consistent part of your life and a fundamental source of inspiration.

This fosters not only a healthy life but an inspired life. That is our legacy and need.

It is our natural inclination born of a deep connection to the rhythms and cycles of the natural world around and within us.

It is the direct extension of body wisdom and the creative value of conscious life. But it is not common. The pressures and pursuits of our mindless, frantic culture continue to disturb and distort our connection to what is natural and beneficial.

I urge you and I implore you to listen to the deep, primal, proactive beat of your own personal drummer who is pounding a divine cadence for a dance on a road less traveled. Only you can utilize your personal dynamic dance of action, reaction, evaluation, and transformation to foster physical, emotional and spiritual balance, and to promote optimal health and weight.