Image courtesy of Silus Grok via flickr

I was chatting with a friend of recently when the subject of weight loss came up. He told me that he had managed to lose 10 pounds in the last month, and when I asked what he was doing he told me that he had stopped going to McDonalds for breakfast every morning and started drinking less soda at work.

That’s it.

He isn’t exercising or counting calories. He isn’t starving himself. He isn’t even going out of his way to make better food choices. All he did was cut out his morning dose of sausage biscuits and replace some of the soda in his daily routine with water. Those two relatively minor changes made a huge difference in a very short amount of time.

One of the first hurdles that people who want to get healthy encounter is the seemingly large number of things that they “need” to change in order to get healthy. When faced with the daunting tasks of eating better, exercising daily, drinking more water, and giving up vices many people simply throw up their arms in frustration and quit. These changes can be intimidating, especially if you are starting from a situation where you really haven’t been making any effort at all to lead a healthy lifestyle.

What’s important to remember, though, is that there is no reason why you need to go from zero to sixty in your quest to whip yourself into shape. As a matter of fact, your chances of success are considerably better if you take it slow. You didn’t develop all of your “bad” habits overnight, so there is no reason to expect you’re going to suddenly drop them all in the course of one day and have an easy time of it.

If you’ve decided that 2010 is the year you’re going to make positive changes in your life take it slow. Maybe start going for short walks every day or make a commitment to just drink one more glass of water daily until you’re getting in the recommended six to eight glasses of water in. You can also take part in our ShrinkGeek Daily Quests.

The important thing to remember is that in order to make lasting changes to your life you are going to be required to change the way you think, and that isn’t going to happen just because you’ve made a resolution. Commit to making a little change every day and in no time you’ll find yourself taking on those daunting changes that seem unobtainable in the beginning.