With tons of information at your fingertips today, it still seems that americans especially, truly don’t understand the concept of what is a healthy lifestyle. In general most of us commonly think it’s about eating healthy and exercising all of the time, but the reality is that it entails much more in order to acquire and maintain a balanced healthy lifestyle and truly live a good life.
When a healthy lifestyle is practiced many components are involved but an overall daily behavior pattern or routine is maintained in order to improve the quality of one’s life, be healthier and live longer. The style of living is not only about diet and exercise but also your physical, mental and social well-being. When you consistently practice and live a healthy lifestyle you create a better environment which will eventually influence your friends, family, kids and produce an overall positive effect on society in general.
We’ve compiled 3 fundamentals of what living healthy entails and things you can do to kickstart a better lifestyle now.
1. Make Healthier & Smarter Choices
First and foremost start making smarter choices throughout your day and do it consistently. From the moment you wake up try to make better decisions with the meals you eat, the liquids you drink, the activities you’re involved in and make beneficial choices instead of unfavorable one’s. Managing the choices you make throughout your day is the foundation of living a healthy lifestyle. If you are to feel fit, energetic, stress free, illness free and live more of a comfortable life, then choosing better nutrition, better stress coping techniques (as exercise over alcoholic drinks or cigarettes) constructive activities on your spare time and associate yourself with worthy individuals throughout your life, you’ll start experiencing a better balanced good life. Living well highly depends on the choices you make throughout your life on a daily basis. The quality of your life is a direct product of the lifestyle you live and all of the daily choices you make including diet, exercise, drugs, alcohol, activities and people you associate yourself with. The lifestyle a person lives ultimately equates to how happy and healthy they will be.
2. Change Your Behavior
When you review your life, there will be things that stand out which you know aren’t healthy or beneficial towards living well. Try to develop a plan to start changing some of these behaviors that you know are detrimental and start implementing some positive behaviors in place of them. It is not going to be easy and it will take some time to change all of your negative behaviors so pick one or two to start off with and eliminate them immediately while working to develop consistency for several weeks. After a few months once you’ve noticed that you’ve been consistent and decide you’ve improved in those selected areas of your life, pick a few more and begin working on those as well. Changing your behavior patterns will take time and require a great deal of work on your part, especially in the beginning, but be assured that once you’ve developed healthier behavior patterns the quality of your life will be so much better.
Your eating habits or diet could be something you might want to change in your life to start with for example. Become accustomed to eating differently if you know your diet is less than nutritional or healthy. Try and exercise or move around a little more if you’ve noticed that you hardly ever move from your work station or couch. Try not to smoke or drink as much if these behaviors have been a part of your lifestyle for some time. Get accustomed to avoiding detrimental vices and replace them with wholesome, healthy or useful one’s.
3. Create a Plan and Stick to it.
Establishing a better life and environment will improve your health and well being but change will require long term commitment and will take lots of work to target the many components involved. You can start by focusing on the fundamentals that are most important, as diet and health. Creating a plan and a check list will help keep things in perspective and ensure you accomplish what needs to be done. Continue by analyzing your health and address any issues you may have, such as fatigue, depression, poor diet and compile a to-do list to get these things taken care of immediately. If you know issues with smoking are concerns that need to be addressed for instance, quit immediately and make a progress list of the days you’ve gone without cigarettes and or the times you’ve had setbacks. This will give you a quick glance at progresses or setbacks and help you stick to a plan. Set weekly goals for yourself and keep track of progresses that have been made. Having consistency throughout this plan and in your life will be pivotal in living better, happier and longer.
You should research, gather and learn as much information as possible to assist you in designing a lifestyle plan that will work for you. Here are some steps in this WebMD article that you might take to help actuate and kickstart a healthy lifestyle today.