There are so many different views on health and well-being. Everything from traditional medicine, to nutritional healthy, to Ayurvedic medicine, to homeopathy, to herbal... and a whole lot more!<br /><br />Given your personal beliefs, experience and knowledge about health, what would be &quot;the first small step&quot; toward better health for the average person? Everything is fair: diet, vitamins, exercise, lifestyle, etc.<br /><br />This is a first small step, so it has to be reasonable. For example, &quot;Eliminate red meat&quot; is OK, but &quot;become vegan&quot; is way too big for a first step.<br />

My health really improved after I went organic. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Taking a good Calcium, B complex, Zinc, and Vitamins A and E also helped a lot. You should also get some exercise three times a week. Ever since I've been on this regiment I haven't have any health problems.

1) recognizing that your lifestyle is not condusive to the way you want to live your life.
For me I wanted to stop gaining weight (I was emotionally eating due to my crappy job) so I started looking for new jobs, but also switched to diet soda and started to chew gum whenever I got hungry. Then I started to take the stairs every time I went to the bathroom. I still feel hungry all the time, but now I don't compulsively eat. I eat all of my meals on schedule.
p.s. I have a job interview on Tuesday!!!!

Number one for me is start eating healthier, try to cut as much junk out of you diet as you can manage and try to eat lots of fruits, vegitables and lean meats.

Cut out sugar. Eliminate processed foods as much as possible.

I think taking any step at all is a positive choice and will help you on your way to better health. I think maybe it is best to start with what is most comfortable for you. For me, I found that switching to water as my primary source of liquid has been tremendously helpful. Others might find starting an exercise program to be useful, or just changing their diet. Making small changes over time is very important, however one change will not make someone healthy. It needs to be a group of positive changes, including physical activity, healthy eating, eliminating empty calories and sugars, having good mental health, etc.

What's wrong with becoming vegan as a first step? I went vegan overnight from being an ovo-lacto vegetarian, and I was fine. But to keep it a bit smaller, maybe delete dairy products from your diet.

For me, it's attitude .... I once saw a sign that said &quot;Attitude is Everything&quot; ... and I do believe that is true. I honestly think that most of us need to stop, think, and re-adjust how we view things. A positive attitude will take you to the moon and beyond ... a negative attitude will dig your grave.

It is a small step, in the sense that it doesn't ask much. It is a huge step because it asks us to wish, to dream, to imagine ... it is late, and I'm far too tired to psycho-analyze it ... but it is, for sure, something to think about!

Good question, hard to answer. The best answer would be, if you have some specific, extremely unhealthy factor in your life, do your best to get rid of that (ie. you live next to a nuclear weapons test site, or have an abusive partner that routinely physically and psycologically assualts you).

Assuming the cop out answer is not viable, I think the two starting steps are either in mentality or food, although experience has left me a bit cynical about people being willing to change their perspective to wishing to heal and make themselves better (which makes this an advanced step many can't do instead of a starting point). However, if it's possible to give someone the motivation to want to help themselves, that always is the best way to go.

Practically though, I must go back to the food focus. As you brought up in your post, having someone suddenly become a vegan is unreleastic (and seeing a health nut as a goal to aspire to for beginners shys many away).

Conveniently enough (for the purposes of answering your question), the food system in the US is fairly disfunctional (the Omnivores dillema sums it up fairly decently), but basically, most food americans eat is processed food, most processed food should not be eaten, and the predominance of processed foods in people's diets is one of the primary causes for health problems in my country, the US.

So, asking someone to try and cut down on processed foods, and see if they can notice the difference in how they feel (as opposed to say doubling their grocery bill), will be the simplest action with the largest change of health resulting from it. Plus, if you really want to kick start someone in the correct direction, you can give them one of the many books on the topic that envokes outrage at the food supply (Ie. the previously cited book).

Bit long winded, but that's the best answer I could think of :P

Find a good reason to change. That might sound strange, because a lot of people would think: &quot;Yeah well, you should want to change because being healthy is a good thing.&quot; But that's not really a reason.

Im talking about setting yourself a goal of WHY you want to become more healthy. For example: I realised that my singing vocals could be improved by a change of lifestyle to become more healthy. That is, changing my lifestyle for better health became important to me, because it affected something that interested me. I could never have been bothered to change if it wasnt for that, because not many other reasons are important to me like that.