Take it easy: the lazy person’s guide to getting healthy

This is no time to start treating yourself like a hardened criminal. Starving your body, forcing it to do push-ups or berating yourself for indulging in buttery mash is no fun and it’s not even necessary.

A lot of people try to jump-start their health and fitness by signing up for classes or making resolutions to overhaul their eating habits. Three cheers for those who stick with it. But trying to make drastic changes can be counterproductive if your heart’s not in it. Think of those who join gyms in early January only to have long given up by February.

Any health professional will tell you the best way to go about getting healthy – especially for those of us who are a bit lazy and not very motivated – is to make small changes that you stick with over the long haul.

In Small Move Big Change Caroline Arnold, who is managing director of Goldman Sachs by day, explains how "microresolutions" – small modifications in everyday behaviour – are the key to making lasting changes for life. You turn them into habits that are as automatic as brushing your teeth.

Understanding willpower

That way you don't have to keep making decisions about everything you eat or do. This is important because research on willpower indicates it is like a muscle that can tire out. In Willpower: Why Self-control is the Secret to Success, Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, explains that after making a lot of decisions your self-control is lower.

Did you ever feel too tired to resist a piece of cake or some chocolate? Chances are that happened in the evening, rather than first thing in the morning when you had not spent a day resisting temptation. So make it easy on yourself by introducing changes one by one.

After a few months, you will have incorporated a whole new way of living without too much effort.

Small changes

But what are those small changes? Why should you do them? How can you incorporate them into your life?

I will answer those questions here over the coming weeks starting with the one that can have the biggest impact in the short and the long term: ensuring your blood sugar balance is normal.

When it is not in balance, you feel tired often, get energy slumps, struggle to lose weight and suffer from cravings.

The magic is that it doesn’t take long to notice an improvement once you take action. Within a few days, you start to feel better, with more energy and fewer slumps.

Think back to Christmas. Don’t blame the turkey if you didn’t feel great. It is far more likely that it was your system struggling to cope with the heavy dinner, cake, pudding, chocolates and maybe a few glasses of something alcoholic. Your blood sugar rockets when you eat like that, you may even feel a fluttery high. Within a few hours, however, it plummets making you feel lethargic and in need of another boost. Hello biscuit tin.

Get back control

So how do you get back control? How do you make it so that you can have your cake and eat it too?

We can learn from the glycaemic index, which was developed in the 1980s by doctors to help diabetics with their diet. The index tells you on a scale of 1 to 100 what effect foods have on your blood sugar. So for example, pure sugar scores 100, but green vegetables get a very low score because they don’t give you a kick.

More recently, the low-glycaemic load diet was popularised by British nutritionist Patrick Holford in his book The Low-GL Diet, among others.

So you could check the individual scores of what you eat and then try to keep them under a certain level. That is the most controlled way to do it – and it works superbly.

But this is the lazy person’s guide so we are not going to ask you to do any maths. There is a simpler way to keep your blood sugar where it should be and ensure you have steady energy all day long.

Try doing this:

1. Look at the white stuff you are eating and substitute with brown. So swap white bread, rice and pasta for wholemeal bread, brown basmati rice and wholegrain pasta. Like porridge oats, they will give you steady energy for hours.

2. Cut out sweet treats if you can. If you feel you can’t, then have them early in the day so they don’t interfere with your sleep.

3. Have a little protein with your carbohydrate each time you eat. This means having a dollop of yoghurt on your porridge, some beans in your vegetable soup or a little meat with pasta and sauce.

4. Don’t let yourself get too hungry. Have three decent meals and two savoury snacks per day. The snacks don’t need to be big: try a handful of nuts and an apple.

Make these changes before you start a vigorous exercise programme and you will find you have more energy and enthusiasm before you get going. You will wake up feeling refreshed in the morning and will have steady energy all day.

The biggest secret nutritionists will share with you is that keeping your blood sugar in balance can make a huge difference to how you look and feel. If you lose blood sugar control, you feel tired, hungry and gain weight more easily – and struggle to lose it. If you need more encouragement how about this: high blood sugar damages your arteries.

Can you do this? Yes, it’s a lot easier than it sounds at first. It just gets to be a habit and one that will serve you well. If you eat this way most days, then you can go to that party (or wedding or First Communion), have your cake and eat it too.

What can upset your blood sugar control

1 Too much white stuff, eg sugar, white potatoes, rice, bread
2. Stimulants such as coffee, tea and sugar
3. Too much alcohol
4. Lack of exercise

Panel: How to get your blood sugar back in balance

1 Have something to eat regularly
2 Eat slow-releasing carbs such as brown rice, brown bread, wholemeal pasta
3 Have some protein with your carbohydrates
4 Avoid stimulants

Sign up for one of The Irish Times' Get Running programmes (it is free!).

First, pick the programme that suits you.
- Beginner Course: This programme is an eight-week course that will take you from inactivity to being able to run 30 minutes non-stop.
- Stay On Track: The second programme is an eight-week course for those of you who can squeeze in a 30- to 40-minute run three times a week.
- 10km Course: This is an eight-week course designed for those who can comfortably run for 30 minutes and want to move up to the 10km mark.
Best of luck!