Achieving a healthier lifestyle take planning, commitment and consistency. Make these changes and achieve your health and wellbeing goals.

Far too often I read about the numbers and figures, what you have to do and how hard you have to work to reach you weight or fitness goal. Terms like beast mode and no pain no gain are pointless and offer no help with motivating you with weight management, better sleep or improving fitness. It takes knowledge and a good plan in moving forward achieving a healthier lifestyle. Whether it be reducing your alcohol consumption or giving up the cigarettes. These things take time and for some quite difficult. If you are one of the individuals who has been neglecting your health and maybe packed on the kilos, the first step is deciding you want to change.

So, before you go on a highly motivated and emotional charged clean eating starvation diet. Or even worse, take you calories from 4000 to 1200 as you learned from social media. You have to change the habits that got you to where you are now. With most things fitness and health related there are more factors involved than purely the basics. I agree that most of the time the science is correct. Calories in vs. calories out, take into account your basal metabolic rate, exercise and you’re done. Wish it was that simple in application. The fact is for some weight loss and maintaining a balanced and healthy lifestyle it is hard. If it was easy the multi-million-dollar weight loss and fitness industry would not survive.

Assess your current lifestyle

If you are wondering why reflecting on your lifestyle is important. It’s your choices that decide how healthy you are and whether you’re on the road to improving your way of living. It’s these same habits that most likely got you in to trouble in the first place. Things like giving up smoking or weight loss will be difficult if you don’t understand how damaging bad habits add up. Most of us have hit the diet hard and found out that after a few weeks nothing is happening. Some don’t even get this far.  Achieving a healthier lifestyle needs a good planning, commitment and consistency. Nothing keeps you motivated better than results. If you go ahead unprepared you will most likely burn out within 1-3 weeks and come back even heavier than when you started. Let’s introduce some ideas to follow in order give you a better chance.

Your lifestyle obviously determines how you are going to feel, how you are going to look and if you participate in any sport, how you are going to perform. The well touted information telling you to eat well, sleep more, burn calories, exercise and take their supplement approach in theory should work. What if your current behaviours are not up to scratch preventing you from reaching those important goals?

Now let’s look into some lifestyle factors that some of you starting off need to know. Whether it be improving nutrition, starting some exercise, working through some mental health issues with a professional or have poor sleep. We’ll have a look at some habit that once worked on can improve your current situation.

Typical habits that preventing you from achieving healthier lifestyle

• First is sitting at a desk all day, driving for hours, sitting in front of a TV or computer. Overtime tightening the hips.
• Regularly eating out at restaurants and making choices that will raise your calorie consumption.
• Drinking alcohol. And I mean really drinking alcohol, not just one a week here.
• Eating fast food or junk foods. Fried chips, pies, sweets and cake. Keep in moderation.
• Regularly staying up late not getting enough sleep. Poor sleep has been linked to hunger and poor food choices.
• Smoking. How to put the brakes on anything active. Overall, an awful habit to break.
• Recreational drugs. Just don’t.
• Reduce social media scrolling. This one habit prevents you from getting out and enjoying life.
• Lastly is eating poorly. An easy way to demotivate you and make you feel awful. the inverse of good eating.

These habits are all contributors to a poor lifestyle leading to weigh gain, low energy levels and sedentary behaviours to name a few. All is not lost. It’s time to get out of your rough patch and work toward feeling, looking and moving better. As they say with knowledge comes power. Collectively this list can lead to some serious health risks. Even having a few like poor sleep and smoking over the long term can negatively affect your day-to-day activities.

For this reason, it’s time to take charge of your overall health and add some positive habits negating or totally eliminating some of the inferior ones. Here are some suggestions to use and plan your path to a healthy you.

How much time do you spend on any of the following?

• Being active in general. Taking the stairs, walking instead of driving, gardening, cleaning or just moving.
• Doing regular cardio exercise of any type. Particularly running & cycling. Likewise faster walking, cross trainer or treadmill.
• Do strength training. Covering all muscle groups with challenging weights. Not just the light one because you are “taking it easy today”
• Generally, prepare your own meals and healthy snacks. Incorporating fruits, veggies and whole grains into your nutrition.
• Learn how to read food labels. We are fortunate in Australia that this information is a requirement by food manufactures and easily learned.
• Keep an eye out on calories. As a start learn to count calories and be educate what to look for. Later with experience use portion control.
• Sleeping. Do you get enough?  Generally anything between 7-9 hours would be acceptable.
• Dealing with stress in a healthy way like going for a run or taking up a sports activity. So, find a buddy and go for a regular walk.

In summary, if you spend more time “living” in the first list and not so much in the second, it’s time to evaluate your priorities and decide what you really want for yourself. These changes are not easy for some, but you need to take action now and make those changes in achieving a healthier and more productive lifestyle. Making lifestyle changes that last take time. Therefore, start small and work on one behaviour at a time.

Equally important is to seek support from others who can help you achieve your exercise and wellbeing goals or any health-related matters.