It’s not enough to simply know something. I know what foods are good for me, but unless I eat them, my knowledge doesn’t accomplish much. It’s not enough to do it sometimes. To make a permanent change, it must become ingrained and automatic.

Relying on emotion is a recipe for disaster. If I waited to do things until I felt like it, I’d probably seldom get round to any of them. So I need to keep my feelings out of the equation. The real question is, how do I make this thing that I want to do regular and virtually automatic?

One of the secrets of successful habit creation is something that kids love—an activity called piggybacking.

You choose an activity you do already on a daily basis and team up your desired new habit with it. After a short time, it becomes something you don’t have to think about. It’s just the way things happen.

When you wake up you put on your running shoes while you drink your first glass of water.

As you reach into the fridge for something you always pull out during your breakfast ritual, you reach for some green smoothie ingredients as well.

When you turn on your computer, you get yourself a glass of water. Or you sit perfectly straight, close your eyes and mini-meditate for the moments it takes the computer to boot up.

Of course you could overwhelm yourself by trying to pair every little automatic habit with a new one, and that would accomplish exactly nothing. But just one thing? That’s doable.

The strength of this way of adding good habits is that you don’t have to feel like doing it. Whoever decides on a daily basis that they feel like brushing their teeth? We all just do it because it’s part of our procedure.

Make it simple to remember your paired activity. When you shut down your computer, put your water glass in front of the keyboard. Lay out your gym clothes the night before. Have the blender on the kitchen bench and most of your smoothie ingredients in a container in the fridge.

Let’s make this as easy as possible for ourselves. If it’s easy, we’ll do it.

It’s strange, but when I immerse myself totally in reading about health and healthy diets I always seem to have this craving for chocolate. And I think I’ve worked out why. I need balance. When I saturate myself with the subject, I am in danger of overthinking everything. Thinking about food for hours on end is counterproductive. It should, rather, be something you consider quite carefully then make as informed a decision as you can. After that, it’s simply a case of acting upon the perceived solution rather than always going back to the problem.

For example, say the problem is a lack of Omega 3 or an imbalance because of too much Omega 6 in the diet (most of us have this problem, by the way). The solution is to find foods that will help everything from the alpha to the omega, if you will pardon my little Greek pun. Then you simply add in a little more Omega 3 in the form of chia seeds, flaxseeds, walnuts, oily fish or algae supplements (and whatever the experts tell us next) and tweak the rest of your diet so you’re not consuming so much Omega 6. Eating meat from animals that have been grassfed is a big help. Having a less grain-based diet yourself will help, too. Steering towards wild rice, quinoa, black beans and kidney beans might be a good idea too.

Ban the cheap vegetable oils from your shopping list altogether. Go easy on the olive oil. Use coconut oil—saturated fat that don’t oxidise easily—for cooking. (Another option is ghee, which is clarified butter and which has a higher smoke point than butter). Keep away from corn, canola and soy, which means keeping away from lots of packaged products. The best advice I think anyone could give would be to keep away from packaged foods as much as possible. Learn to cook your own versions and take control of what you put on your plate.

And have a piece of chocolate because you want to, not because you’re going cross-eyed reading what all the experts say about health.

So, it’s March already. The busiest part of the year is behind me and I am sitting here thinking about that March resolution that I talked about earlier. A new high-speed blender is making the task of eating better quality food so much easier. I’ve been doing my study on different flavours that seem to go together well and am becoming slightly more accomplished at flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to what I put in my smoothies. So who needs recipes? Pfffft!

Finding something that is easy and that works is exciting. The biggest thing to remember is to stock up on the right raw foods to feed my new blender habit. Not all my incarnations are equally delicious, but they’re all packed with nutrients and that is what I believe the modern consumer needs above all. Forget the only paleo, only vegan or only mooncheese diets. If we aim to increase our nutrient intake rather than worry about calories, I am sure our health will come bounding back.

A lot of people only think about their health when they’ve lost it or have had a bad scare. It’s incumbent on us to not be so casual with our most precious commodity. We need to act in a way that constantly improves our lives, not drags us down. We spend so much of our time being reactive, but the most valuable things we do are when we take control and act before it’s an imperative. We must decide our values then set our heads in that direction rather than being swayed by convenience, misinformation or the belief that it’s all too hard.

The longer I live, the more I realise I have been foolish about many things for many years. I continue to be so, but I also understand that by considering and examining life as it is being lived today I have within my grasp the tools to fix almost any problem.