Posts Tagged ‘Healthy Lifestyle Tips’
5 Easy Healthy Lifestyle Tips
Instead of picking your biggest challenge, consider starting where you know you can be effective, where you can get some lasting bang for your buck, and where you can start growing motivation and momentum.
Here are five relatively painless and struggle-free tips to help you create lasting healthy habits:
1. Get some zzzzzs. Sleep affects just about everything we do and without enough sleep, we all tend to unravel. Inadequate sleep affects your cravings, your metabolism, your energy level, mood, activity, focus and motivation. If you aren’t regularly getting seven hours of sleep a night (or more) this is the first area to address. If you are exhausted and try to keep going, you aren’t likely to be effective and you’ll probably be drawn to mindless “zoning out” activities that are really just busy work. Go to sleep instead.
2. Identify your trouble spots. Don’t just focus on what you want to do. Be smart and identify the things that have led you off track in the past. A positive attitude is great, but a proactive plan for how you will do it differently this time is even better.
3. Grow tools for managing emotions and stress. Emotional eating (including stress eating) is one of the primary causes of overeating, weight gain, and weight regain. Without the strategies you need, stressful situations can trigger very unhealthy (and self-sabotaging) responses such as overeating, smoking, alcohol use, avoidance, or numbing out in front of the computer. Hard times are also the time when many women abandon or lose track of health, fitness, and wellness goals. Instead of only focusing on what you’ll eat or when you’ll work out, invest some energy in addressing any real issues that are the trigger for the habits you are trying to kick.
4. Don’t lose yourself. One of the biggest reasons that busy women get off track is that they get distracted by other life demands.
• Designate a time to check in with yourself-at least weekly-and evaluate how things are going. Use this time to schedule the additional time you’ll need throughout the week for exercise, stress relief, meal planning, etc.
• Post your goals somewhere where you will see them and be reminded of them regularly. Make sure you identify milestones along the way to your big goal and reward yourself for reaching them.
5. Keep it positive. Don’t ignore your mindset-it has the power to impact your mood, your energy level, your choices and your progress. Focus on what you’ve done rather than what didn’t happen.
Acknowledge the accomplishments (change is difficult) and celebrate your achievements along the way. Adopt the mantra, “I’m doing my best” instead of “I have to get it perfect” and you’ll be much better prepared to keep going when the going gets tough, recognize your progress and your efforts, and take good care of yourself along the way.
By: Melissa McCreery, Ph.D.
Healthy Lifestyle Tips
Creating a healthy lifestyle can be a challenge for many of us. But challenges are worth overcoming if we know the benefits will be good for us. These benefits can include helping our bodies stay strong, warding off degenerative disease, maintaining a positive outlook and extra energy needed to follow that dream of a better job or our own business! The benefits truly are numerous.
So to help you start making positive changes in your life, here is a list some guidelines to keep in mind. Use these to help on your path to a healthy lifestyle change.
Have patience with yourself. Know that healthy lifestyle changes don’t happen overnight. Positive changes that stick will usually come slow and steady. You have to practice – and just like any endeavor, practice makes you better. Many negative aspects of our lives (such as poor and convenient food choices) have become habits. Breaking the habit and practice replacing it with a new one. Healthy food can be convenient, too. Many “fast food” choices are made because they seem convenient. Again – this is just a matter of practice. You can re-learn how to choose healthy fast foods by stopping in your local health food store and see what’s prepared that you can take with you for lunch. Chemicals in foods do affect your mental state. For example, excess mercury is associated with depression. So watch for foods that are processed with excess chemicals since these can leave you feeling worse. Eat whole, organic, fruits and veggies as often as possible. Organics foods are shown to have up to four times the nutrition of non-organic foods. Nutrients in food are needed by your body so that it can manufacture proteins such as serotonin and dopamine, which are needed for feelings of wellbeing. If you don’t feel well and happy – you will lose energy and may not be able to break the barrier of “lack of motivation” to make positive change. Limit junk or fast foods. Junk foods and processed foods lack nutrition and many even have what is referred to as a “nutrition deficit.” This means they use your existing, stored nutrients (if you have any) to digest and process the food leaving you nutritionally depleted. Pay attention to how you feel thirty minutes or an hour after eating “fast food.” Do you feel fulfilled and energetic or tired and ready for a nap? Stick with it. If you “fall off the wagon” don’t let it drive away without you. It’s okay to falter then get back on track. This is a natural learning process. Take a break. It is not what you do once in a while, it’s what you do all the time. For example – give yourself one day a week to eat out at your favorite restaurant and have dessert or take a day off from exercise. Stay motivated. Do what you have to do to remember why you’re making the healthy lifestyle change. Write a list of reasons and post it where you can easily see it each day. Read magazines and books that continue to feed your brain tips and techniques to help you on your path. Listen to motivational CD’s while you’re driving. These are just a few ways to help you stay on your path. Cleanse your body. Cleansing helps eliminate toxins that can leave us dull and sluggish. Helping your body rid these toxins can leave you feeling more energetic and motivated.
Creating a healthy lifestyle is a novel goal. It is worth making a daily effort to get the changes in place. For many of us, cleansing is a great start to a healthy lifestyle. Cleansing can help you by eliminating chemicals, changing food attitudes and learning to make healthy food choices.
By: Cindy Papp
