Welcome to the Health Wheel. I am indebted to my great friend and health mentor Dr Fiona Ellis of the Highfield Road Wellness Centre (www.hrwc.co.uk) for her invaluable input, help and advice for this section of the book.

You’ll notice that the Wheel of Health is broken down into three main categories:

1. Eat well (Effective eating, Food awareness, Hydration).
2. Move well (Structure and posture, Physical exercise, Breathing).
3. Think well (Stress, Body image, Sleep and meditation).

You’re going to start by quickly rating yourself on each of these categories so you know where you’re starting from. Then, on the assumption that there’s room for improvement, you can turn to whichever chapter you think needs the most attention to find a host of simple, practical ideas to make your health better, starting today.

Eat well

Do you think about what you eat and drink, how you consume it and know what foods do what for your body? If you eat a wide range of nutritious healthy foods, take your time over eating and drink plenty of pure, unadulterated water, you’ll score highly on this – maybe eight or nine.

If on the other hand you eat whatever is in front of you, no matter how packaged or polluted, if you usually eat ‘on the go’ and don’t drink much apart from coffee and alcohol, you’re at the other end of the scale. Only you can decide exactly where.

If you know the theory and generally have quite a good diet, but it tends to end up with ready meals in front of the TV a bit too often, you’ll probably want to give yourself a middling mark.

Move well

Can you touch your toes? Do the heels of your shoes wear down unevenly? If you get out of breath after a short walk, feel a bit lopsided and realise when you think about it that you usually breathe fairly rapidly through your mouth not nose, then low marks here (something to build from!).

If you are as fit as a fiddle, both straight and flexible, and breathe deeply and through your nose into your belly, then top marks for you.

Good on some points but not so good on others, then choose to mark each spoke separately.

Think well

Stress is a big part of how you are mentally, but surprisingly you’re not going to measure how much stress you have in your life; you’ll measure how you think you deal with it.

Give yourself an honest mark for how well you think you manage stress, but also factor in how you feel about your body image, and your sleep patterns.

So, if you sail through a busy schedule with calm and ease, sleep a good, refreshing eight hours a night and think ‘not bad’ when you look in the mirror, and find it easy to switch off, then high marks.

If you often feel tense and overwhelmed, would rather not look in a mirror at all thank you very much and know you go to bed way too late and sleep fitfully, then very low marks here.

Good on stress but poor on sleep or any other good/bad combination, and you’ll have a middling score for ‘think well’ – your mental well-being.

Adding it all up

Now join up the scores and you’ll see quite quickly how well you are doing in the three big regions of health. Are you happy with your scores or is it time to do something about this, the most vital area of the Wheel of Life?

Wherever you’ve got a low score, turn now to the section on that subject on the following pages and commit to taking an action on each section. Do it now and keep on doing it. Without brilliant health how can your brilliant life happen?

Remember to take action on any area where you have a lower score first and by using the simple ideas found here you’ll soon find yourself re-scoring with better marks and a healthier life.

Here are a few things you need to know before we start:

• I am not a health expert.
• I am not a fanatic. Don’t become one yourself.
• In most of this part, I’m passing on knowledge that I’ve picked up and used from people who know a lot more about health than I do.
• Being healthy is a constant conscious process; what you learn here needs to be treated as a guide. Just keep on doing it!