How do you feel? Don’t just say you’re fine – actually think about it for a moment and try to get a better picture of your health. Do you feel sluggish and tired? Exhausted, perhaps? Maybe you’re in pain, but it’s chronic so you just accept it as part of your life. Perhaps your skin looks unhealthy. Maybe you’re losing more hair than you think you should or you’ve got acne even though you’re well past being a teenager.
If you really stop and think about it when you’re asked how you feel, you might realize that you’re not one hundred percent well, and that you really need to do something about it. That’s not always going to be easy, but once you get into healthy habits, staying fit and well isn’t even something you need to think about anymore. With that in mind, here are some habits to start right now to make your life healthier.
Exercise Regularly
Exercise isn’t something everyone loves to do, and even when you do like going to the gym or playing sports, being motivated to do it every day or at least three to four times a week can be a lot. When you factor in work, hobbies, and trying to spend time with friends and family, your exercise routine can be what falls to the bottom of your list of priorities.
That shouldn’t happen because making exercise a regular habit is really going to give you some opportunities to change your health for the better. Although it’s hard, the best thing to do is to regularly schedule time to exercise in your day – add it to your daily calendar and make sure you do it when you’re meant to with no excuses. The more you do it, the easier it will be, and you’ll quickly fall into a routine where missing your exercise feels strange, not the other way around.
Eat A Healthy Diet
Once again, time can play a major factor in what we eat, and even how often we eat. When you’re on the go, you might grab a quick breakfast that doesn’t contain all the nutrients you need to start your day off right (or perhaps you’ll skip your breakfast altogether). When it comes to lunch, you might eat at your desk while you’re working, which leads to overeating and/or eating too fast. Then there’s dinner, and by the time you get home, cooking from scratch is a lot of hard work, so takeout can seem like a great alternative (it’s not – it’s unhealthy and expensive).
If you know you don’t have a lot of time to eat well most days, it’s well worth working on this when you do have time, and making some meals in advance. By batch-cooking at the weekend, for example, you can have all your dinners prepared for the week ahead. You can prep your breakfast and lunch the night before as well, just before bed – it won’t take long and it means you’ll not only eat, but eat healthily too (because you’ll have time to consider what to make and you won’t have to grab the first unhealthy thing you see).
Get Enough Sleep
Sleep is a wonderful thing, and we desperately need to make sure we get enough of it – sleep is when our bodies finally get a chance to relax and heal, which is why, when we don’t get enough sleep, we feel so bad and can often get sick (or sicker).
Adults need around seven to nine hours of sleep each night, so if you know when you have to wake up in the morning, you can work backwards and determine the best time to go to bed – even if it’s earlier than usual, try it for a few nights and see what happens. It’s highly likely that you’ll feel so much better you’ll be happy to go to bed at the same time every night (with a few exceptions, if you want to go out, for example).
Relax
Finally, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of relaxing, which is harder than it sounds for some people. When you relax, your body releases serotonin, which fights against the cortisol – or stress hormone – in your body, ensuring you’re happier and healthier and a lot less stressed, so it makes sense to do it.
Ways to relax include listening to music, enjoying a hobby, spending time with friends and family, exercising, cooking, or perhaps even trying CBD from a reputable store with a good CBD payments tool. You might need to experiment until you find the thing that really makes you relax, but when you do, make it a habit and your health will thank you for it.
