Making healthier decisions can enhance your life and extend its duration. Perhaps you have tried in the past to eat healthier, exercise more, get more rest, quit smoking or relieve stress but were unsuccessful at maintaining these healthy practices.
While maintaining a healthy lifestyle may not always be straightforward, studies indicate there are ways to improve your chances of doing so.
This article presents you with some suggestions on creating healthy habits. Here you will discover various techniques for creating or building them.
15 Ways To Create and Stick To Healthy Habits
Below are 13 effective techniques for creating and keeping up healthy habits.
1. Assess Your Benefits
To start building healthy habits, the first step should be understanding what benefits await.
If you want to start eating healthier, find out why and give yourself reasons as to why eating healthily will benefit you personally.
Interested in improving your sleep? Learn the benefits of getting quality rest, and consider how this could assist you personally.
2. Make it Fun
Studies show that people who find making changes enjoyable tend to keep them long-term, so find activities which will bring enjoyment for you.
If your goal is weight loss, for instance, consider switching up the way you exercise by opting for jogging rather than walking. If quitting smoking is part of your agenda, join a support group with similar aims.
3. Set Small Goals
Setting lofty goals like, “I want to lose 50 pounds in three days” may leave you disappointed before ever reaching them, so set more modest objectives instead, such as “I plan on walking 30 minutes daily.”
As you meet these small goals, they add up into bigger achievements. If your aim is to lose weight, setting smaller, manageable goals can help motivate yourself towards this objective.
4. Celebrate when You Achieve Goals
Once your smaller goals have been accomplished, treat yourself by doing something special; whether that be taking cooking classes or purchasing new clothing.
Reward yourself by taking time off work or adding another hour on the treadmill; there are numerous healthy ways you can celebrate and acknowledge your efforts and feel proud about them.
5. Keep Track of Everything
It is helpful to keep a log of everything you do so you can remember why and how well it was accomplished.
Change can be hard – smoking, overeating and emotional eating all require effort! So making time to review bad habits like these is critical if you want to break them.
If your goal is to maintain a healthier diet, keeping a food journal may help ensure success in doing so.
6. Set realistic expectations about your ability to succeed
Don’t expect yourself to become an accomplished marathon runner overnight – instead, start small and increase activity levels gradually.
Do not expect to entirely stop engaging in unhealthy behaviors; even with drastic changes, willpower may still be required to keep yourself motivated.
7. Focus on positive aspects Rather than dwelling on any possible downsides to changing your behavior, shift your thoughts toward all of the great opportunities that change offers.
Focus instead on how much better you feel after exercising instead of how tired you are; there are numerous health advantages associated with being positive and remaining optimistic.
8. Seek Help
It can be challenging to make lasting lifestyle changes on your own, which is why having support from family, friends and professionals who can offer encouragement and advice can be so helpful in making real change possible.
Don’t hesitate to seek guidance from a nutritionist, fitness professional, or mental health expert if necessary.
9. Do not compare yourself with others
It can be tempting to compare yourself to others; however, doing so makes it harder for you to focus on reaching your own goals. Set your own priorities. Focus only on yourself!
10. Take Breaks
While working on a project can be tempting to push through until its completion, this often leads to burnout and fatigue. By taking regular breaks and giving yourself enough rest time between tasks, your productivity should remain intact and allow you to finish your tasks on schedule.
11. Eliminate Distractions A great way to create healthy habits is to eliminate temptations and distractions that might thwart progress – for example if you want to change your eating habits by eliminating junk food from your pantry and fridge.
If you want to start exercising regularly, avoid spending too much time on social media or watching television.
12. Make Healthy Choices Accessible
A key way of creating healthy habits is making healthy options readily accessible – this means making it easier for yourself and others to choose them over less-than-ideal ones. If you want to eat more fruits and veggies, keep them cut up and stored in your fridge so they’re always ready to eat when hungry strikes!
If you want to exercise more, keep your workout clothes and shoes visible so they’ll remind you when it comes time for physical activity. By making healthy options more accessible, it will make more likely to stick with their healthy choices over time.
13. Devise a Plan for Overcoming Setbacks and Obstacles
When developing healthy habits, it’s essential to prepare a plan to address potential setbacks or obstacles which might occur along the way.
If you’re trying to eat healthier but find yourself at an event with tempting junk food, devise a strategy for how you’ll respond in this situation.
Bring along healthy snacks or meals, or indulge in small indulgences without overindulging.
14. Be Patient and Persistent
Change does not happen overnight, and developing new habits requires dedication, time and persistence.
Patience is essential in this endeavor as progress may take time and you may not experience instantaneous results.
Persistence is also key, and you’re sure to encounter challenges and setbacks along the way; however, it’s crucial that you remain positive.
Each day can be an opportunity to reinforce healthy behaviors, while accepting that even minor missteps are part of life’s journey.
15. Use visual reminders
Place sticky notes, set alarms or use visible cues around your home or workspace as visual cues to remind yourself to stick with new habits.
Just leaving your gym bag by the door can serve as a visual reminder to work out. Incorporating visual reminders is one way of creating healthy habits easily.
Below are five healthy habits you can start and maintain today.
Studies demonstrate the importance of getting enough sleep as part of an overall healthy lifestyle. Studies indicate that lack of rest increases risk for heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
* Eat Healthy
Eating healthily by selecting foods such as lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low-fat dairy products and nuts has been shown to reduce risks of certain cancers, obesity, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and depression.
* Exercise regularly
Engaging in regular physical activities can significantly benefit both your cardiovascular system and immune system, as well as increase mental wellbeing.
* Stay Hydrated Staying well hydrated is key for health and beauty; drinking more water can help balance body fluids, promote digestion and maintain skin health. Discover ways to stay more hydrated now.
Prioritize Mental Wellness
To stay healthy in today’s society, prioritizing mental wellbeing must be top of mind. Set goals to practice self-care and engage in activities which boost it.
Bottom Line
Healthy habits will form when we set ourselves up for success, so taking these steps to form healthy habits may just be what’s needed to start living healthily today.