It works in both positive and negative applications. For instance, if you decide that you will no longer drink soft drink and replace it with water within a few days you will feel better and over time will have more energy, lose some weight, and save money. Alternatively, if you keep drinking the soft drink over time you will gain more weight, your insulin levels will always be high, your body will become inflamed, you’ll most likely get cavities in your teeth and develop type 2 diabetes.
The only way to lose weight and keep it off is to consistently make better eating and drinking choices. A few good habits repeated daily, and they don’t have to be massive, because from experience, that’s where most weight loss journeys fail. Too much is changed all at once. And if you have been overweight or unhealthy for a while the massive changes will make you feel terrible – at first.
So, if you change one thing from your eating and one thing from your drinking habits add some more movement into your life you will, over time, lose weight and feel better (as long as you don’t replace it with more of another bad food/drink). For example, instead of having cereal or toast for breakfast have two or three boiled eggs, or ½ cup of oats with berries and yoghurt, or a banana protein smoothie. You could get up 20 minutes earlier and go for a 15-minute walk, take the stairs whenever you can rather than the elevator, go for a 20-minute walk during your lunch break or a walk after dinner.
Walking is a great way to incorporate more movement into your day and burn more calories. However, the best way for your body to become a calorie burning machine is to grow some muscle. And it’s not hard. You could start with a 15-minute routine, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Include body weight lunges, bodyweight squats, along with some push ups and sit ups. You don’t have to go to the gym to start to build muscle.
Below is a table over a 30-day period, demonstrating the compound effect. The table shows how just 10 cents can compound over a 31-day period. The table shows that in the first 14 days nothing significant really happens, it’s not until the last few days that the impact is really noticed. The same goes for weight loss. Now I am not suggesting that you can lose your desired weight in 31 days, it wouldn’t be healthy, but rather, I am suggesting that the same behaviour good or bad over time will compound and if you stick to it, in time you will notice the compound effect.
This is a calendar that shows how money would compound if you just started with 10 cents and doubled this amount each day
