How to Make New Healthy Habits Stick
By Genevieve Cunningham
It’s the beginning of a new year. While this is definitely a time for celebration, it’s also a time for making positive changes to our everyday lives. And for many people, this means starting the year with new healthy habits. Perhaps it’s this new chance for health that leads to packed gyms and empty vegetable shelves for the first few weeks of the new year. But what happens after that? How do we take our newfound dedication to a healthy life and make it last all year long? If you need some help making those new healthy habits stick for good, take a look at these tips.
Request Help
We’re not meant to do everything alone, and changing habits is something that definitely requires assistance. If you want to make gym time a regular habit, ask for help with your kids, ask for help from a personal trainer, and ask a friend to keep you motivated. If you’re looking to quit junk food, let it be known that this is your goal and ask others to remind you when needed. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, and getting a little help in this area may be the difference in quitting before March or making it until next year.
Make Your Goals Shorter
Even though you’re beginning at the start of a new year (or really close to it), you can still make short-term goals to make the process easier. Quitting soda? Make a goal to make it two months. Chances are good that after this amount of time, you won’t even want to begin drinking them again. But it will seem a lot less menacing to aim for two months instead of an entire year! If your goals are a bit shorter in length, you can constantly feel success and move toward better health at your own pace.
Don’t Overwhelm Yourself
You don’t have to change everything at once. In fact, you shouldn’t! Take it slowly. Change one bad habit at a time, and give yourself a chance for success before piling on a new responsibility. Trying to change too much too quickly, no matter how much motivation you currently feel, will only set you up for failure and disappointment and ruin your chances of changing your life for good.
Starting the year with new habits is easy. But making those habits stick for good? That’s the hard part. Use these tips to both create and maintain these healthy habits, and this will likely be the year that you finally meet your health and wellness goals for good.
To learn more about your health, wellness, and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Aiken, S.C.