Three Major Tips and Tricks When it Comes to Starting a Healthy Lifestyle

By: Lauren Roberts

When it comes to the new year, many of us promise ourselves that we will start the new year right. That is, by eating right and exercising regularly. However, a lot of us get in over our heads and we start to lose the motivation for maintaing a healthy lifestyle. Listed below are the top three (3) ways on starting a healthy lifestyle and maintaining your new lifestyle throughout the year.

1. Start off Slow

Slow and steady wins the race, theoretically. It's easy to become ambitious and think about the amount of weight we want to lose and how we're going to achieve it. However, when we look at our goals as a giant hurdle we have to achieve, we tend to become frustrated and lose sight of why we really started. 

When starting a healthy lifestyle, write down what you plan to get out of it. It doesn't always have to be about "losing weight." It can be about increasing the amount of movement in your day, pushing yourself to new limits, and not being afraid to try new things, etc. 

Next, don't start out by saying "I'm going to lose 50 pounds in 6 months." Instead, write down monthly goals for yourself. For example, you can say "I want to start walking every single day for an hour instead of 30 minutes for the month of March", or "I'm going to lose 10 pounds every single month until I hit my goal." When we break up our goals, it puts a lot less pressure on ourselves to achieve them. 50 pounds in 6 months is great, but when we don't achieve that we become discouraged. 

Remember that this kind of change is going to take time and it isn't going to happen overnight. Be patient with yourself and have fun with it. Having a healthy lifestyle doesn't mean that you can't have fun anymore. 

2. Exercise

When it comes to excersing, continue to write goals for yourself. Again, don't look at excercising as you have to do it. Exercise because you want to, because you want to move your body, and because it makes you feel good about yourself. When we look as excercising as "I have to" it feels like chores or just another errand to do within our busy lives. 

Be creative with the way you exercise. Involve your kids, spouses, partners, etc. This can not only be fun for you, but fun for your family and significant others as well. 

Make a calendar of what you would like to achieve in a month, exercises that get your heart pumping. The first week in a new month it can be something as simple as walking every single day for 30 minutes. As the month progresses, start to include more in what you do. For example, walking every single day for 30 minutes plus an arm workout, or an ab workout. This makes exercising a lot less stressful when its planned and you won't feel like you're doing the same things every single day. 

3. Food

When it comes to food, it can be difficult to know where to start. When we all start out, we try to follow fad diets that only utilize special foods and overall aren't giving our body the nutrition it really needs. 

Start out by cutting out simple carbs and replacing them with complex carbs. Simple carbs are anything that your body processes into sugar. Which can be processed foods, baked treats, breakfast cereal, etc. Complex carbs are high in fiber and digest slowly, therefore keeping you fuller longer. Complex carbs are whole grains, fiber-rich fruits, fiber-rich vegetables, etc. 

Now that we know the difference between simple carbs and complex carbs, find recipes that incorporate more complex carbs than simple ones. 

Remember that its okay to eat simple carbs, just eat them in moderation. Depriving ourselves can be detrimental and cause us to binge eat. Allow yourself a cookie or two in a week, but only do it once a week. Mark a day in the week where you allow yourself a "free" meal or a "free" treat. 

Finally, remember that its okay if you mess up but don't lose sight of why you're doing it.

Looking for recipes that incoporate complex carbs? Please visit: 

https://www.delicious.com.au for more ideas!

Wanting to know more about the difference between Simple vs Complex Carbs? Please visit:

https://smartfoodsolutions.org