Do you have a burning desire to improve your health, lose weight, and look younger? You may know what you need to do but you just can’t motivate yourself. I have a couple of powerful suggestions that, if implemented, can get you started and keep you feeling excited and motivated about the process of eating well.

First, select a time period–say, 21 days or 30 days–during which you’ll follow healthy eating guidelines. Why 21 or 30 days? It’s been said that 30 days is enough time to change your behavior, whether you want to eliminate a bad habit or form a new one. As for 21 days, Dr. Maxwell Maltz wrote a book called Psycho-Cybernetics in which he presented his theory that it took 21 days for a new habit to be created. Optimum Health Institute in California, a raw food health center, suggests that 21 days is ideal for forming a new habit of eating all raw foods.

So, choose your amount of time, then set a date when you’ll begin. Mark the days off on your calendar, so you’ll know the ending date. You may start out viewing this as an experiment, to see if you want to continue with your new behavior, but don’t be surprised if at the end of your 30 or 21 days, you have become committed to your new healthy eating behavior and it’s a breeze to continue.

For the second suggestion, I strongly recommend finding one or two other people to join you. They can have entirely different habits or behaviors they want to work on. The point is, you support and encourage one another. You might choose to meet in person, exchange emails, or have a conference call (if there are three of you). I have done this myself. In fact, I’m in the midst of a 30-day event with two other women. We are all working on something different, and that doesn’t matter. We email each other daily and offer our words of support and celebration and encouragement. This makes it fun and somehow easier to reach our goals.

There’s one other little suggestion–this is extra, not meant to take the place of the first two recommendations–and this is meant for those of you with a blog. You could consider “telling the world” about your goal and that you plan to spend the next 30 days blogging about how you’re doing. There’s something about knowing that other people will be reading your words to keep track of your progress that makes you feel and act accountable. You don’t want to let them down, and your ego doesn’t want you to be seen as a public failure.

Don’t wait any longer! Ask a friend or two, select a starting date, and get started. You could soon be weighing less, looking younger, and feeling great, all because you are motivated to begin healthy eating.