What would be your Top 10 Habits for a Healthy Life?
There are many to choose from and the key to success is finding the ones that fit your lifestyle.
As well as improving our health our habits can make us more organised thereby freeing up more time in our busy lives.
Making repetitive activities a habit can help us create a healthy balanced lifestyle.
You need to find a rhythm and flow that works for you.
If you could wave a magic wand what would your healthy balanced life look like?
Once you have this vision clear, reverse engineer the steps you will need to take to achieve this.
These are my top 10 tips, not in any particular order, but getting these actions right, fitting them into your daily/weekly routine, and making them HABITS are what help balance our life.
Habit 1. Create a daily ‘to do’ list
If you don’t have a ‘to-do’ list running spend about half an hour doing a brain dump, putting EVERYTHING you have in your head and on little notes lying around on to one big list.
From this ‘Master List’ pick 3-5 items that need to be done TODAY. Once you have achieved those, you may be able to take on more but don’t overload yourself.
Delegate any items you are able to.
At the end of the day make a list of tomorrow’s 3-5 priorities.
Habit 2. Break larger tasks down
If one task seems overwhelming, break it down into smaller steps.
This could be a work task, home, or personal project.
Think of the outcome you are trying to achieve and work out all the steps involved to get there, these are your smaller tasks, they are more easily checked off and will give you a sense of accomplishment and motivate you to keep going.
Habit 3. Create routines
Systematise as many mundane activities as possible, make them into HABITS, this takes away the effort of making decisions about them which endangers your energy levels and willpower, read more about this in my post Got No Willpower?
For instance, every evening when clearing up after dinner and loading the dishwasher I make lunches for the next day for whoever needs them, I prepare my breakfast as I generally have overnight oats in some form.
Every morning as part of my routine I put a load of washing on, I will either put it out to dry during the day or it goes on the airer as part of my evening routine. These small actions keep me on top of tasks that can suck up my whole weekend.
Habit 4. Meal Plan
This is a big one for me.
If by 4 pm I don’t know what is for dinner, I have generally used up all my decision-making mojo and therefore I could end up ordering a takeaway or popping to the chip shop.
Meal planning weekly allows me to:
- Create variety across the day and week ensuring lots of different nutrients
- Include the satisfaction factor
- Make sure my family has a nutritious meal planned around extra curricular activities
- Create less waste
- Save money
Habit 5. Grocery shop for a week
I can not recommend online grocery shopping highly enough.
For £6.99 per month, someone walks around my supermarket of choice, picks the items on my list, packs them, and delivers them to my door, that is good value!
During lockdown in early 2020, I didn’t have my shopping delivered, I saved this resource for the more vulnerable. This made me realise how much I value the delivery service, it saves me so much time!
I book a few weeks slots in advance by popping a few cases of beer in my basket (at least then if the worst happens and I completely forget to update my shop I know what gets delivered will get used eventually and won’t go off quickly! It’s only happened to me once so far). I can add to my shop as I go along or generally I update it the night before usually while watching TV – removing the beer 😉 .
The next day I can be working or cleaning or whatever and my shop arrives at the designated hour, it is so much more time-effective!
I also think shopping this way saves money, there aren’t those impulse buys!
Habit 6. Movement every day
We all know exercising every day is part of a healthy balanced lifestyle.
The best way to achieve this is to make it a HABIT.
Make it something you enjoy doing or something you can multitask, for instance, can you walk while your child has an activity? What about walking with an audiobook? I’m yet to find a way to multitask swimming!
Habit 7. Have fun every day
Laughter lowers stress levels and strengthens the immune system.
Are you finding you are having less fun as time goes by?
What makes you laugh? A funny movie or sitcom?
Schedule time to watch something you enjoy. Do you have a group of friends you belly laugh with? Get a date in the diary, make it regular. Do you and your partner make each other happy? Carve out time to spend together.
Habit 8. Work on your mindset daily
Are you a glass half full or empty kind of person?
Studies show that people with a positive mindset have a healthier life.
If this is new to you it is going to take time and effort to work on this. Create new HABITS to support a positive mindset.
- Spend time with positive people
- Keep a gratitude journal
- Practise positive self-talk
- Read positive material
- Focus on good things
- Open yourself up to humour
Habit 9. Hydrate
Make sure you drink enough.
We all know this.
I’m sure we all need to drink more water, I know I do!
A good way to achieve this is to divide the amount of water you want/need to drink per day by 6. Then drink one on waking, one mid-morning, the next before lunch….. you get my drift, make these times of day a HABIT that you don’t even need to think about! Alternatively use a sports bottle with a measure and aim to refill it so many times a day.
Habit 10. Set goals
Whatever you want to achieve in life, it is just a dream unless we make a plan and set some SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-based) goals.
Goals propel you forward and help you live life to the fullest.
Join the Challenge!
Do you need a little inspiration?
Come and join my 7 Day Healthy Habits Challenge, follow the link to subscribe. You will receive 1 email for 7 days with a simple, easy-to-implement, habit suggestion and how it can help you.
Notice a massive difference in your energy levels which will get you on the right track to creating and living a happy and fulfilling life.
As always, please get in touch and book a Virtual Cuppa and a chat to see how I can support you with your Healthy Lifestyle Goals.
With love
Sue x