How To Build & Maintain A Successful Healthy Lifestyle

Keep It Simple, Be Consistent

A healthy lifestyle does not have to mean eating nothing exciting and doing hours and hours of exercise, it really doesn't. It's not a sustainable "for life" way to enjoy life.

Focus on making the easiest to achieve changes first, like

Improving Sleep

Increase Your Water Intake

Move Regularly Throughout The Day

Work On Improving Your Stress Levels

Add an extra portion of vegetables to your meals

Find a way to exercise that you enjoy a couple of times a week

Ask yourself, could I do all of the things I'm currently working on for the rest of my life? If the answer is yes, then that's a great start! As things become a bigger part of your routine you'll see that they also start to feel easier to do.

Over Restriction Inevitably Leads To Over Eating!

You know that as soon as chocolate is on the forbidden list, all you crave is chocolate and then you can't stop! So stop denying yourself entirely all the foods you enjoy. I like to have a little bit of chocolate in the afternoon with some yogurt and fruit. It means I can really enjoy the taste of it and also eat some food that's a little more healthful too.

Fail To Plan - Plan To Fail

Build a quick and easy meal plan, Monday-Friday, take the stress out of what to eat, make sure you include food you enjoy eating!

Put your walking and workouts into your diary on a Sunday evening. Find the best time to do them for you and keep that date with yourself!

Use apps, spreadsheets, journals, whatever you think will help you to stay accountable.

Be Patient!

Think of building your healthy lifestyle as a marathon not a sprint (well if you want to enjoy life along the way!) Honestly, the first 3 weeks of changing habits are tough (!) psychologically SO do not give up when it starts to feel really hard. Keep ticking the boxes, doing these habits is going to be for life so don't let anything or anyone derail you in the early days. I promise you that there will be a breakthrough just around the corner and you will be SO glad you kept going.

Routine

Once you achieve your goal you will hopefully be in a position to maintain your new eating and exercise routine. Eating healthfully most of the time and getting regular exercise can become a part of your daily routine, just like brushing your teeth is (hopefully!) 

Your journey to a healthy lifestyle hopefully continues for the rest of your life so turning the work of these habits into a routine is what will make you able to do them forever.

Be Kind To Yourself

You are not a robot, you will not be perfect and that's absolutely fine. So start with the intention of Imperfect Action! 

Ate a bit more at the weekend, good, life is to be enjoyed, get back to your normal way of eating and move on, please work on giving yourself grace when you have a slip up. It's really not the end of the world. Learn one thing from it and work on that in the future.

By forgiving yourself it allows your to make other mistakes and learn from them in the future. It's a very important part of the process to a healthier life. 

Set out with the expectation that the end result you desire is probably going to take months rather than weeks. That's actually a good thing. This is a process of delayed gratification, doing something today that your future self will thank you for.

If you need a bit of support, get in touch and we can have a chat x