Maintaining A Healthy Lifestyle

Maintaining A Healthy Lifestyle Means What?

So what does a healthy lifestyle mean to you?.

Ok, let's say you are committed to adopting a healthy lifestyle for your own sake and the sake of your children and family.

You know this is something you need to do.

You are excited, but you are not sure what maintaining a healthy lifestyle will mean.

We all know what it feels like to make a New Years' resolution, to be really excited about it and then find a week later, or less in some cases, we've run out of juice and have gone back to our old habits - what happened?

How Do You Suceed?

Yet some people really manage to transform their lifestyle and make lasting changes. How do they do that? Do they just have more will power than us?

Sure, will power is part of the answer and lasts a while, sometimes only a very little while and then it runs out. So there is more required than will-power alone.
We need to have a plan of attack - a healthy wellness program for ourselves.

What do I mean by a healthy wellness program?

A Healthy Wellness Program

This is a program that sets out what is required for living a healthy lifestyle and needs to include certain healthy lifestyle factors:

• Breathing fresh air and getting the right amount of sunshine
• Drinking pure water
• Making healthy food choices
• Taking physical exercise
• Taking care of our relationships
• Taking time for reflection
• Getting adequate sleep and relaxation

We look at this list of healthy lifestyle factors and we think it looks great - now what?
Well researchers looking into what makes the difference between fulfilling our dreams or not found out that one important difference between those who accomplish their dreams and those who don't comes down to setting clear specific goals and writing them down.

Set Clear Specific Goals

First write out a list of what you want to achieve.
For example: Lose ten pounds
Now decide what you need to do to achieve this objective.
It could be:
I walk 40 minutes each day.
I eat fruit snacks.
I have salads with my lunch and dinner

Put your written goals where you will see them every day. Writing a list down once and putting it in the bottom drawer of your desk won't get you to follow through. Put them where you will see them every day. Then review it each day.

Will that be enough to get you to maintain your healthy lifestyle? Well it is a start, but what about when obstacles crop up?

What Really Pushes Us To Follow Through When The Going Gets Tough?

We rarely do things consistently just because we should. If we should do something then maybe we will, maybe we won't, depending if it is easy, convenient, or tops our A list for enjoyment!

How Important is being Healthy to You?

We only do something consistently if it is a must for us. So when it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle we really need to think: "On a scale of one to ten how important is being healthy to me?"

On a scale of one to ten whether it is a one, a three, a seven or a nine and half, will make a big difference to whether we follow through on our goals or not.

One way to work out how important maintaining a healthy lifestyle is to you is to ask your self whether you would prefer the pain of self discipline to get and keep healthy or whether later down the track you would prefer the pain of regret?

Develop some healthy lifestyle habits around your goals. If you decide maintaining a healthy lifestyle is a must for you, you've taken a really big step. To make it happen and stay on track consistently, you'll need to substitute some healthier habits for the ones you already have.

Developing New Habits

Remember it takes patience to create a new habit so stick with it.

For example if you drink sodas all day, but you want to substitute drinking water instead, gradually wean yourself off the soda and once you have, make sure you stick with the water for at least three weeks. This will give your taste buds time to adjust.

If you slip up now and then don't beat yourself up, keep on going, remembering you have decided health is a must for you, not something that's optional. By week three you may notice that you feel better on the water.

After a while the soda will probably taste pretty sickly. Before long you will wonder why you bothered spending all that money on the sweet, sticky stuff in the first place.

Do the same with all the other factors create specific goals around them.

Think about this when you are thinking about maintaining a healthy lifestyle -
if you stick with performing regular exercise for six months, researchers say the chances are you will stick with it for life!

So with a little planning and setting out your goals as outlined above you will be heading towards accomplishing your overall goal of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for the rest of your life.