How To Start Living A Healthier Lifestyle

Making lasting change is hard. In a world full of promises of instant gratification and products to fix our every last issue, it is shocking to see how difficult it is to live a healthy lifestyle.

With all the diet books, personal trainers, and Apple watches, you would think that fitness in 2021 should be incredibly easy!

Then why is it just as tricky as it has always been?

Mainly our approach. Say an overweight individual is looking to start a healthy lifestyle. Let's say they go to a professional and ask them how they can be healthy. The professional is going to say:

"Well, you need to exercise. You should probably lift weights three days a week and do cardio the other days. But diet is the most important thing, and your cholesterol is high, so let's make you a vegan. Don't forget that you should drink nearly a gallon of water every single day, and make sure to sleep for at least 7 hours. If you don't do at least that, you aren't giving yourself a fighting chance."

Now, this person is expected to make a ton of significant changes to their lives all at once and maintain them indefinitely. As you might expect, our fictional overweight person will likely be able to stick to the above advice for a week, maybe a month if they're determined, but eventually, they will stop and fall off.

How To Create Lasting Healthy Habits

People don't change quickly. In the movies, characters often have epiphanies or come to Jesus moments where everything in their lives changes. One instant that changes everything, an acid trip that helps them invent the iPod or a behind-the-scenes look into factory farming that makes them vegan, etc.

In reality, people don't make massive life changes in a moment. Sure they might make the decision in a moment, but it will take them a month to ingrain even the smallest of new behaviors. Long-term success is the process of building up little habits one at a time until you are essentially a ball of good habits rolling through life.

There is nothing wrong with telling someone who is trying to get healthy all the things that one day you'd like them to do, but it is criminal to ask them to make all those changes at once.

When adopting new behaviors, it is best to start with one. Make it part of your life, and then move on to the next one. It is always best to start with the easy ones. When beginning a fitness journey, it is nice to get a win. Pick the most manageable behavior to adopt first and stick to it. Drink more water, walk for 30 minutes a day, sleep for 7 hours, do the easy things first, don't be a hero.

Every Good Habit is Related

Let's say you haven't been sleeping the past few nights because you've been binge-watching every movie in the Marvel Universe. The lack of sleep is going to mess with hormones and cause you to eat more. Eating more and not sleeping will make you more lethargic, meaning you are less likely to work out and more likely to continue binging through the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the beginning of a vicious cycle.

However, the cycle can become positive as well. Let's say you finally got to Endgame and can sleep peacefully knowing that the MCU is once again safe from Thanos. A few nights of adequate sleep can have you feeling refreshed and have your hormones regulating properly once again. You are no longer hungry for no reason and since you're so well-rested, decide today is a good day to workout. If you are going to exercise, you better stay hydrated, so you start drinking more water, and the cycle of positivity continues.

You can start a negative or positive cycle at any moment. Even the most die-hard exercise fanatic goes through periods of inactivity. And even the most thoroughly baked couch potato finds a new outdoor activity they enjoy from time to time.

Don't Become an Extreme

You don't need to be the perfect embodiment of a healthy lifestyle; it's not worth it. Trust me. I spent my mid-twenties trying to do just that. You just need to try and do some healthy things and view them as wins.

Our world is full of extremes: vegan or carnivore diet, Democrat or Republican, religious or atheist? In reality, even though we don't like to admit it, most of us are omnivore agnostics politically in the middle.

My favorite example of this is a former client of mine in Chicago, every Saturday morning, he and his husband would walk five miles to their favorite donut shop and eat all the delicious donuts they'd like. Truth be told, the donuts likely outweighed the caloric benefit of the five-mile walk, but in my mind, this is the perfect blend of a healthy and happy lifestyle. They were probably going to eat their favorite foods anyway, but now it is associated with a healthy activity.

Reward Yourself

There is no better way to ingrain healthy habits into your life than associating them with things you like. Whether that is a smoothie after your workout or a bike ride to your favorite restaurant, there is nothing wrong with incentivizing yourself.

Some people might tell you that "rewarding" yourself for exercise is an unhealthy behavior and causes you to associate the need to exercise with eating. I'm not going to comment on eating disorders. Every person is different, but habits are the same for everyone, and it is undeniable that rewards help build strong habits.

Rewards can be skill-based. If you can rock climb a 5.11 (difficulty grade) route in the gym, you'll take a trip to Yosemite. If you can bike 100 miles, you'll go on a bike trip, etc. The best rewards are based on your interests. Only you know how to incentivize yourself best.

Do's and Don'ts of Starting a Healthy Lifestyle

We covered a lot, in a lot of words. Let's recap:

Do:

Start slowly, develop little habits and build on them. Participate in activities you enjoy, and reward yourself for your hard work!

Don't:

Try to become the embodiment of fitness overnight; you cannot reliably develop more than a few new habits at a time. Don't beat yourself up; every little thing you do to improve your health is a win.