When it comes to new beginnings and new commitments that we decide to take on, we face the challenge of persisting and sticking with them. Luckily there are some simple “tricks” we can use in order to make it easier to hold on to our initial commitments and transform them into habits. This article will help you let the seeds of change grow and blossom as you begin making that new habit solid and permanent

Living a healthier lifestyle can be looked at from many different angles- what we eat, how we sleep, if and how much we’re working out, etc. Our goal is to slowly incorporate small changes in our day-to-day life to make the dream of a healthier lifestyle a reality in the making!

1. Sleep

While striving to accomplish our goals and live well, we instead end up overloading ourselves to try and achieve and get everything done. This nonstop striving, in turn, negatively impacts our personal time and sleep. Kind of counter intuitive! So in order to fully realize our body and mind’s abilities, we need to give some attention and time to quality daily sleep. Sometimes, the concept of good rest may seem like a weakness or lazy trait, but the cells in our body require this sleep time to recover and function better. Sleep is a biological must throughout the entire animal kingdom – just take a look at these lion kings of the jungle below.

The good news is that each individual can find his own sleeping routine and needs and coordinate it with his personal schedule. As for the schedule problems, the most important things is to take it step by step, changing your sleeping hours too fast would be very hard and it could possibly undermine your push to sleep better, a better option is to gradually adjust your sleeping hours and make sure  you’re aiming for enough sleep, these little adjustments could be set with a permanent time to wake up or go to bed each day.

Another tip you can use is to try and improve your sleeping routine which is basically the time the leads to your sleeping hours, i always make a camomile tea or listen to a sleep story in https://www.calm.com/ to sleep better and you can find some more suggestions in the following page – https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/bedtime-routine-for-adults

2. Stay Active

It’s pretty clear in these days of quarantines how important it is to nurture our workout routines. Similarly to the sleep problem, sometimes we encounter time management issues and personal problems that interfere and lead to an unstable workout routine, which is less satisfying and beneficial. As hard as it is, it’s extremely important to maintain a workout routine as much as we can. Living an active lifestyle that includes working out has been proven to be one of the most important things we can do for our bodies.

One recent study in Current Aging Science reviewed over 150 articles about sleep benefits and found that maintaining a minimal amount of physical exercise can decrease the chances of  cardiovascular mortality and neurodegeneration. The good news here is that being active doesn’t mean you need to workout each day! You can walk to work, take the stairs instead of the elevator, carry groceries or even clean the house- these are all good additions for times where your workout routine is not stable.  So, take it easy and keep moving yourself as much as you can!

3. Enjoy that in-between time

From the moment we open our eyes each day, we’re trying to take care of our tasks, that’s great! However, it’s helpful to find times during the day to take a break or a breath, and relax to give our mind and body some rest. Think about your body in terms of what it’s not. It’s not like a car (though sometimes we drive ourselves just as hard). First thing in the morning, you start your car in the garage, “ waking it up”. Pretty quickly you move gears and before you know it you’re flying down the highway doing 65MPH. While somewhere along the route you slow down a bit and take the gear down, but then you take it back up and so on.

By contrast, our bodies can’t be driven all day or even a few hours without some rest. We just aren’t capable of doing that. If you haven’t read about the Pomodoro Technique (25 minutes on, 5 minutes off), check out a blog post about it here. So, make sure you’re taking a break between different tasks to give yourself a pat on the back on making it through the day so far and enjoy that mid-day rejuvenation!

4. Let your creativity blossom

This Tip might be helpful both to find ways to get healthier and manage your time better in order to achieve your healthy new year goals. Being creative is a tool we can always incorporate into our lives. Here’s a crazy idea … Whenever you feel you’re not being productive or hitting a roadblock, just stop your thinking for a moment and throw some crazy ideas on the table about , then see if you can develop them. If not then just repeat, worst case you’ll laugh a bit, and best case you’ll find some new ideas to get your tasks done .

You can also schedule time to take a painting, writing or language class or start a book club – something creative that you want to do or learn but is out of your comfort zone. It doesn’t have to be related to your work or productivity. Our brains can handle a lot, and sometimes being good in 2 completely different disciplines actually helps us in both! Don’t forget that without creativity, our usual routines can get in the way of us moving forward to the direction we desire.

5. Eat when it’s right for you

Finally, let’s talk about our food! We always hear about new diets and regimes that are meant to help us lose weight or become healthier.  Everyone who knows about The Good Chocolate has probably heard of the Keto Diet. (Fun fact: did you know that The Good Chocolate didn’t start with the Keto diet in mind? The company’s goal was just to help reduce overall sugar consumption).

While there are some general diet concepts you can follow like: eat less sugar, avoid eating late night, and always try to have vegetables with every meal, it’s better to get a holistic diet evaluation from a professional nutritionist. Expert advice on diet is extra important simply because there’s not a one-size-fits-all diet regime for everyone. We all have individual needs and requirements to fuel our bodies the right way, so the secret is to find a way to first find the nutrients that fit our body and then fit them into our schedule.

If you don’t want to or can’t invest in a nutritional consultation, there are many options for switching from unhealthy additions to our food with better products, so lookout for the products that you like the most, experiment with new stuff every now and then and let the food you eat be the fuel that drives you forward! Try one of these bargain grocery markets where you can experiment on healthier, organic options without breaking the bank (we also like Grocery Outlet on the West Coast). Finally, while there is no one-size-fits-all diet, check out this list of eating recommendations from Great Britain’s National Institute of Health (go food science!)  that are easy to follow. Of course, I always recommend eating some fine Zero Sugar chocolate as a dessert

If we’re fulfilling every day and living each moment with humility and appreciation, we improve, and that’s what it’s all about, day by day, year by year we get better as humans, and the better we get, our bodies reward us more

Happy new healthy year!