For the past 17 days, I’ve been obsessive about exercising every day and eating better. I think about getting healthy, and I think about it many times during the day. It’s the first thing I think about when I wake up and I go to sleep thinking about it. I write blog posts about it and share my accomplishments on Facebook. I talk about it with my friends and my family every chance I get and I have no plans to stop talking about it any time soon.

Here’s a great quote from Buddha that explains why I choose to do these things…

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.

That statement sums up about 90% of what Buddhism is about. It’s also about 90% of what life is about. Buddhism is not about a single dramatic experience or epiphany, but a gradual transformation of your thoughts, your disposition and how you see and interact with the world. I’m using the same formula in my journey to better health. It’s not something that happens in a day, a week or a month. Getting healthy is a gradual transformation in the way I think and my habits. Over time those habits will lead to me losing weight, looking better, feeling better and having more energy and stamina.

There’s science that supports this too. Repetition of thoughts and actions actually causes physical changes in your brain. We all have mental “muscles” that can be built up just like our physical muscles. The first time you heard “Let It Be” you probably didn’t remember the words. But if you’ve heard it a hundred times like most people have, you can probably sing it from memory. When you do something a lot, your brain physically builds up the pathways that handle it and it gets easier.

One afternoon, several months ago, I was sitting in front of the television catching up on shows I had recorded. I got up to do something and found that I had opened up the pantry and was looking for the potato chips. I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t really even want chips, but there I was.

It had become such a habit to grab a snack while watching TV that I went to the pantry without even thinking about it. That’s not a good habit to have, but it shows how the things that you do on a regular basis become etched into your behavior.

It used to be that when I’d wake up in the morning I’d be thinking something along the lines of, “I should really work out today”. Yeah, no kidding numb-nuts!

Now I wake up and think, “What kind of workout am I going to do today”? I start my day off not thinking that I should do something, but knowing that I will be doing it.

It’s a minor change that takes place entirely inside my head, but it makes a world of difference. And every day that I wake up with the right thoughts in my head, it just strengthens the path in my brain. In six months I won’t have to be conscious of it because it will be a solid habit.

It's like performing mental brain surgery on yourself.

Thinking about the right way to eat is probably the bigger challenge for me. I’ve been doing it so wrong for so long that it’s become second nature to me. That’s part of the reason I have such a strict schedule for eating. I eat at 7am, 10am, Noon, 2pm, 4pm and 7pm. That’s roughly every two or three hours during the day that I am forcing myself to focus on eating right.

When I’m choosing a meal or a snack, I’m asking myself if what I’m going to eat is good for me and what I could eat that would be even more healthy. If I come up with an idea, I write it down so I can look it up on the internet and potentially add a new food to my diet.

While I’m eating the food I try to eat slowly, enjoy the food, and think about how this food is good for me. I compare it to foods that I used to eat which were not so healthy and feel happy that I’ve made a positive change.

After I’m finished eating, I take note of how my stomach feels. Although I’m eating much smaller portions than I used to eat, I always feel full. So I think about how good it is that I’ve transitioned to smaller meals.

What you frequently think about becomes the inclination of your mind. I’m training myself to eat right by practicing six times each day. The practice is both the physical act of eating small portions of the right food and eating them slowly, plus the mental act of reinforcing the good thoughts about eating properly.

I’ve set out to get healthy several times in the past and always fallen short of my goals. I believe the reason I didn’t achieve what I wanted was because I wasn’t thinking about it the right way. Today I’m striving not only to eat right and get healthy, but also to pay close attention to what I’m thinking.

I think a lot about eating right and becoming healthy and thin again. And gradually that’s what I’m becoming.

I always look forward to your comments.