This is Day 20 of Live a Healthier Life in 21 Days Challenge, Jan 2012 run. Subscribe to the free newsletter for lifetime access of personal development articles and future challenge announcements like this one.



Today is the 2nd last day of 21DHL. If you're still with us in this challenge, 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 1 week. 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've to make a real lifestyle change. It's not just about forcing ourselves to behave a certain way for 21 days, and then revert back to our past habits after that. That does nothing at all.

Our goal here is to make healthy living part and parcel of our everyday living. Be it drinking water, being conscious of the nutritional value of the foods we're eating, knowing our daily energy expenditure, eating in line with our daily caloric needs, knowing our ideal meal plans, sticking to our ideal meal plans, going grocery shopping, exercising, eating 5-9 fruits/veg a day, going caffeine free, eating consciously, having a good posture, flossing our teeth, etc - all these are habits that we're sticking to for life. Things like our ideal meal plans, our TDEE, our ideal grocery lists and nutritional value of what we eat are important information that we'll always be accessing every day/every other day.

Hence, it's important that we have our own healthy living guidebook that contains all these information to help us live our healthiest life ever. We'd refer to this guidebook whenever we are planning our next meal, whenever we need a reminder on our vision for our healthy life.

Hence today, we're creating our healthy living guidebook.

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 lying around the house or even buy a book specially for this. Your soft copy format can be any processing software of your preference - word document, 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 whatever 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 you want to include in it. Everyone's book should be customized/personalized to meet his/her needs. I recommending starting off with these sections:

• Healthy Living Goal / Vision (Pre-Work)
• Action Plan to achieve your healthy living plan (Pre-Work)
• Learnings and Insights that will help you succeed in your plan ahead (Day 7, Day 14)
• Calorie List (Day 2)
• TDEE/Caloric Needs (Day 3) - So you know how much calories you need to be consuming and if you are meeting your target. This helps you in your design of your ideal meal plan.
• Ideal Meal Plans (Day 4)
• Review of Current status vs. Actual (Day 7, Day 14) - To review your progress in your healthy living plan, identifying the key areas that worked and key areas that didn't. This way you're continually improving and moving forward toward living your healthiest life ever.
  

Here are other sections you can include in your guidebook too. Not all of them will be relevant for you - pick and choose what you want to include.

• Ideal habits - A list of the habits you want to cultivate in your daily life, such as drinking water, eating 5-9 fruits/veg, meditating, waking up early, exercising, etc.
• Daily Tracking Plan - To help you track if you're sticking to your habits. If you haven't ticked the habit for the day, make sure to do it before you sleep.
• 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/Grocery List (Day 5) - Whenever you go grocery shopping, use this list as a check on what items you need to buy/stock up
• Exercise Plan (Day 8) - 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?
  

Feel free to decorate your guidebook with pictures if you want!

Day 20 of Your 21-Day Healthy Living Plan

What are your tasks listed for today? Do them with excellence and report them in your 21DHL Journal.

Also, read your group mates' 21DHL journals and cheer them along! Pick a few members' journals and make it a point to post meaningful replies there.

Update Your 21DHL Journals

Once you are done for the day, update your 21DHL Journal. You are also welcome to update your 21DHL Journal multiple times throughout the day. Post all your results for today's task and your 21-Day Healthy Living Plan directly in your journal.

If you have any questions specific to today's task, post them here.

"If you want to get something you have never gotten before, you've to do something you've never done before."
Personal Excellence - For people passionate about achieving excellence in life

That's a real good idea!
N wow! its the second last day..... AMAZING!
I remember being a lil hesitant about joining the challenge cuz I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to follow it thru
All I can say is that I'm so glad I went ahead anyway.
I find myself grateful for so many reasons...., and grateful that I am grateful!!!
I know I've said this before but thanks again, Celes!

Thank you Celes for facilitating a very special start to the Year 2012.
Today assignment sounds like fun - a great tool of distraction from any future re-lapse towards gluttony.
I did it! 100% of the healthy (mostly) plant based diet accomplished, circa 70% in exercise, way higher energy levels, new habit forged, 6 cm off ugly fatty deposits flushed down the drain. As a bonus some very special people met on the journey. No regrets of lost rendez-vous with quite distractive Mr. Chocolate.

Now when I think 2012 it will always be carved in my memory as The Year of Celes.
Good luck on your own path. Wishing you that all your wishes come true. To continue on your path of purpose driven life. Hugs.

I actually created my guidebook just before the new year. I like to use LibreOffice spreadsheets. I got rid of my old one and began making with with only the most essential stuff like my current weight, my goals, my plan, and a place to review my progress each week. I like the suggestions for this task though. Today I think I'll make a new place for my ideal habits and favorite recipes.