You have a super healthy month behind you and you’re feeling amazing – well done! But how do you hold onto this new-found health & happiness? They say it takes 3 weeks to form a habit so you should be set, right? Um, not really. It’s always easy to fall back into our old routines. Which is why you’ll need these five tips for maintaining healthy habits.
1. Know what habits to keep. In the last month you’ve changed the way you move, become more aware of your mood, adjusted your diet and given meditation a go. In an ideal world you’d keep going with all of it, but we live in the real world. So pick the habits that you really want to hold onto and focus on those ones. For now, at least. You can always add more later.
2. Know your why. Why is a very powerful word. Take a few moments to really think about why you want to hold onto this habit. How would it change you life? What would it mean to you if you could exercise more/eat better/meditate regularly forever? How good would it feel? Any time you feel like quitting, remind yourself ‘why’ you’re doing this.
3. Use your diary. All habits take planning (well, until they become habitual). These days, we can’t escape our diary – it’s on our computer, in our phone… constantly attached to us. So use it. Plan your training sessions. Write a meal plan. Block out 20-minutes of meditation or down-time each day. Each Sunday afternoon, plan your healthy week. You might not quite stick to the plan, but you’ll be far better off than someone who has no plan.
4. Ask for support. Choose someone who you see a lot of and ask them to help you out, maybe even to join you. It needs to be someone you see almost daily (partners or flatmates are ideal) and someone you’ll be honest with – there’s no point having them support you if you lie to them.
5. Get back up. There will be setbacks. There’ll be deadlines, illnesses, all sorts of obstacles. Sometimes you’ll overcome them, sometimes they’ll win. But every time you do get knocked down, get straight back up again. Don’t let a bad day turn into a bad month, you’re bigger than that.
