Here are four healthy habits to adopt in the year 2021.
There has never been a more important time to start looking at how you can be responsible for your health and adopt new healthy habits, but so many people want to make the change but do not know where to start. There is much information available online and it can seem daunting after reading it all. Often the thought of adopting healthy habits can be off-putting; many people don’t follow it through. Equally, people can also try and make too many changes such as exercising for too long or cutting out too much from their diet. Therefore, finding balance is important.
Be kind to yourself
If you don’t know already, then you need to think about the kind of personality that you have. For example, some people know that sugar is their weakness, therefore cutting out sugar completely might be too much to start with, or you may have a weakness with exercise where if you don’t do it in the morning, then you won’t do it later in the day. Having a good understanding of your strengths and weaknesses can be useful when it comes to making lifestyle changes. This type of approach to making changes means that you are taking care of yourself. You are considering your needs and helping you discover who you are as a person.
It’s also very important to make sure that what you are committing to is doable (more on this later), but if you know that you are not going to be able to stick to the changes you want to make, then readjust your changes to suit what is happening in your life. Equally, you can make all the excuses in the world to not start, so you absolutely should start with something, which is why it’s when adopting new healthy habits, you should have a change of mindset.
Here are four healthy habits you can include in your current lifestyle.
- Set realistic goals. This is a big one which is why it’s at the top. You absolutely must set yourself realistic goals. When you reach your realistic goals there is greater satisfaction than never reaching the goals you set yourself. Realistic goals might be something like I am going to exercise twice a week for 45 minutes, rather than every day for an hour. Or, you may say that I am only going to have one sweet treat a day rather than cutting sugar out completely. Be kind to yourself, don’t set yourself up for failure.
- Listen to your body. It can be very easy to listen to your mind, or the minds of others, but all of your answers come from within you. When you slow down and ask yourself; how am I feeling? Or what is it I need today? You are showing yourself more kindness. Sometimes your body may be telling you that you need to rest. You may know this because if you become unwell, you might catch a virus. When you are unwell it’s usually a sign that the body is stressed and therefore trying to slow you down. The best you can do in that instance is to listen to your body and allow yourself to rest.
- Be patient. Being patient is another important skill that everyone should learn. When you become patient, life becomes a lot less stressful. Often people have an urgency that everything should happen right now, or results must be instant, this is not realistic because to make life-long changes it’s about understanding that it may take you a long time to get better or to make the changes you need, but that’s okay you have your whole life ahead of you. It’s better to make small changes over time rather than big changes quickly.
- Be mindful. Often people think mindfulness means that your mind must be full. It’s quite the opposite. Being mindful means slowing down and learning to do one thing at a time. As humans, people have evolved to juggle multiple tasks at one time, or the classic – sitting in front of a film whilst messaging on your phone. You are doing neither task mindfully, instead, you are focusing on the urgency of your messages rather than absorbing the story of a film. Another example is eating. Most people barely chew their food, they may chew for a short time before putting another mouthful of food in their mouth without even swallowing the previous mouthful. But eating should be an enjoyable experience – allow your senses to alert to the food you are eating; the taste, the smell, the look and the feel. Mindful eating is also great for weight loss and can prevent indigestion.
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