3 Tips for Developing Healthy Habits… Before the New Year
Do you ever feel like you just absolutely cannot make a change in your life? I know I’ve felt that way with many things over the years. When I was in college, I had to adjust to independent living, which was hard because I had never done a load of laundry in my life before I headed off to live in a dorm! Over time I made the change from being dependent on my parents to independent living, and enjoyed my college years immensely.
When I graduated from college and started my first “real” job, I had to adjust to working an 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. job. I had to change my night owl schedule in order to rise early enough to get ready for work and make the 30 minute drive to my office.
Change is not always easy, but there are some changes that we make that are not just necessary, but beneficial. Developing healthy lifestyle habits is one of those changes that can be challenging and rewarding at the same time.
There were many unhealthy lifestyle habits I had as an obese person. Some of my most detrimental were not caring how processed the foods I ate were, eating way more than I needed, and eschewing exercise in any form.
Changing those habits took a lot of time and practice. At first, when I was losing weight, my primary objective was to lose pounds and inches. As such, I wasn’t as attuned to the types of foods I was eating as I would become later. Little by little, I changed from not caring where my food came from to caring very much. Gone were boxed “helper” meals and fruit canned in heavy syrup. I replaced those convenience foods with foods that were good for me and my family.
If you are struggling with some lifestyle habits that you find hard to change for the better, I want to encourage you to take a three-pronged approach to altering your lifestyle.
- Identify the habit you need to change. Write it down, verbalize it to a friend, or just determine within yourself that the habit needs to change.
- Identify what you want to replace the habit with. If you need to cut down on processed cereals or boxed meals, write down some healthy substitutes such as cereals from the Attune line or recipes for easy-to-prepare meals and eat more natural cereals like the new Erwehon Buckwheat & Hemp cereal.
- Develop an action plan. Give yourself six weeks to make the change. After six weeks of consistently eating healthier or exercising a certain number of days a week, you will often begin to find that the new habit is on its way to become a new healthy lifestyle.
What measures do you take to say goodbye to an unhealthy habit and replace it with a healthy one?
Be well!
Diane
Check out my latest posts here
