There is a healthy living blog with a tagline very similar to (if not the exact same) the title of this post, and I love it because it’s very memorable and not at all accusatory. It doesn’t push you to become a running, peanut-butter-oats-eating freak overnight, or even in a week. It’s just a gentle yet firm push in the right direction, which is just about what most of the human population needs. It can be any choice, too. Choose to get the apple slices with your McDonald’s meal instead of fries. Yeah, that counts as a healthy choice. Now make another – order a water instead of a Diet Coke while you’re in the drive thru. Congratulations, you’ve followed the mantra! Maybe that’s enough for one day, pat yourself on the back and do something else tomorrow.

It’s easy to get discouraged by the things we see all around us, from the obviously unattainable (hello, Victoria’s Secret ads), to the still just-out-of-reach seeming way that a girl at a gym strides so purposefully on a treadmill, like she was born knowing how to do this. With the major resolutions and life makeovers that are staring us down like the barrel of a gun with New Year’s just a calendar tear away, it’s important to structure your thinking and goals so that failure isn’t the ultimate outcome. Make a healthy choice. Now make another.

I’ve been feeling down about myself lately because I trained for my first 5k and astonished myself with my time, and quite literally 10 minutes after I crossed the finish line, my world shifted from worrying about getting my workouts in consistently to worrying about getting in time with a sick family member consistently. Up until last week, I hadn’t run since the 5k, and I had only been to two group exercise classes, neither of them of the strenuous nature. I felt as though my muscles were shrinking back into oblivion and I felt like I had lost track of my physical goals.

Then I remembered that is isn’t something that I can lose – I just have to make a healthy choice. So I decided to jog on the treadmill for 30 minutes last week. Then I made another today, by taking another half hour to myself to go a mile and a half on the treadmill and to take my mind and body away from the constant worry that I’ve found myself in. So even though I felt like I was going to have to scale the mountain of physical healthiness again, just that one saying made me remember that it’s not about climbing Everest overnight. It’s about making one healthy choice…and then making another.