Tips for Building Healthy Habits Effortlessly

Maybe it’s new year’s day and you’ve declared this is the year to get fit? Or maybe you just woke up one day with a groggy head from the night before and decided you need to make a change. While it all seems a good idea in theory, changing habits that we’ve had for a while can be a struggle.

We all know what we are supposed to be doing eg; eating a healthy balanced diet, exercising regularly, cutting out refined sugar and takeaways, minimising the alcohol we drink -- the list goes on. But often, we just can’t get ourselves to make the right changes or stick to ones we make. So why is it so hard? Here’s where people often slip up;

• Trying to change all bad habits at once
• Being conditioned to receive instant gratification
• When results don’t show immediately we get impatient
• Life gets busy and we slip back to old habits
• You don’t have a powerful ‘’why’’ that makes you stick at it

How to Build Healthy Habits Effortlessly

Learn Your Triggers

Everyone will have certain triggers that set them off on their bad habit. These may include;

• Thirsty and having no energy: drink a sugary soda which boosts you up
• Bored in the evening: snack on crisps and chocolate
• No energy when home from work: sit on couch and watch TV
• Friday night end of week: drink 5 pints of lager and 3 double vodkas
• Nervous in an uncomfortable situation: bite nails and pick at skin

The first step is to identify your bad habit and realise why you do it. The person who drinks sugary soda for energy has got used to drinking soda. But this can be swopped for a black coffee which will give then the same boost.

Plan for Your New Healthy Habit

Now you need to plan to make a healthy change. A good way to do this is to make the new healthy habit easy to perform. If you want to go to the gym in the morning, get your gym kit out ready and have your running shoes next to the bed. If you get bored in the evening and munch on high fat snacks, try removing these from your home and replace with nuts, seeds and Ryvita/cottage cheese.

Replace Bad Rewards with Good Rewards

If for example you go drinking at the end of the week to reward you for the week at work. Have a think why you drink too much? When you really dig down into the cause, it could be that you’re actually unhappy in your 9-5 and if you had a job you loved, you wouldn’t binge drink. Instead of going drinking, why not spend that time starting your own business or getting new skills to start a job you’ll not need to escape from.

Results Take Time -- Be Patient

It’s ok to slip up now again. What’s not alright is to completely give up. Change takes time and you need to be patient. Unlearning the bad habits we’ve been doing for years takes perseverance. Keep your mind on your ‘why’ and if you keep at it, you’ll make those healthy changes and improve your life massively.

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