Let’s face it, living a healthy lifestyle ALL the time can be tough. However, a healthy lifestyle doesn’t mean you have to be on your best behaviour every second of the day. It’s about learning to enjoy things in moderation and knowing the right choices for you.
At times, you may feel as though you are slipping too often or finding your next meal daunting rather than looking forward to it, or you may just be struggling with your motivation. It’s OK, it happens to everyone, and is normal.
In fact, you will find it hard to find anyone who hasn’t had a time in their life when they have had to get back on track with their healthy lifestyle. Finding the motivation and staying on track doesn’t mean you need to work out every time you eat cake, spending hour after hour in the gym, eat only salads. It’s much easier than that.
Let’s have a look at some top tips for staying on track with a healthy lifestyle below:
Have A Real Reward
One way to give yourself a fast track ticket to making a few wobbly choices with your lifestyle is to reward yourself with things like food after a run, or a new dress if you slim down ‘in time’. It’s about recognising the achievements you are making and giving yourself a reward that is going to help you stay on track. Anything else and you may run the risk of having an unhealthy link between things such as food and your lifestyle.
Why not take an hour for something you enjoy? Perhaps watching a favourite show or reading. Or treat yourself to a massage after you have stuck to your 30 min exercise routine in the morning for a few weeks? After eating a good well-balanced meal, reward yourself with self-care such as a spa treatment or reading about different types of yoga instead of a huge piece of chocolate cake.
Remember, you are aiming to live a healthy lifestyle, so one of the best things you can do, is to prevent yourself from being rewarded with bad foods, this can lead to a bad diet. Exercise will soon become a habit, and your motivation will continue to grow as you reward yourself in new, positive ways.
Set Yourself A Contract
It’s easy to make promises to yourself, and it’s just as easy to break them. This is why people who start a healthy lifestyle with a partner, family member, or friend are more likely to stick to the commitment and be more successful with their changes. When you are committing to someone else you are more likely to stick to it. Why not create a contract with the people you start with such as working out three times a week or cooking one healthy meal a day? A good contract to set could be to go to an exercise class with your sister every Tuesday night, for example.
Make Small Changes And Grow Them
If you have big changes to make such as you need to completely change your eating habits, make sure you start small and grow your changes. It can be extremely daunting and easy to quit if you start to feel as though your commitments are too much to reach. So, rather than changing every meal in one go, change just your lunch at work. You could commit to taking a healthy lunch with you instead of buying lunch every day. When you need to buy lunch out, you are more likely to make bad choices, plus it can be hard to know exactly how some foods how been prepared.
Remember Why You Are Doing It
There will be a reason, personal to you, why you are making changes to live a healthier lifestyle. And, this is exactly what you need to remember when you start to fall off the wagon. Whether it’s because you have struggled to lose weight after a pregnancy, or you aren’t moving as often as you should. It can help a lot to think about the reasons you started your changes in the first place.
When trying to stay on track with your healthy lifestyle, you need to remember it is a journey and won’t happen overnight. Never give up at the first hurdle, and keep trying. Do you have any other tips that could help? Please share them in the comments below.
*collaborative post
