Author: Riley Pearce
Director of Social Media
A consistent exercise routine, a clean diet, and getting enough water is not always easy. Chances are you know what you should be doing to achieve your health and fitness goals, but the question is how do you make it stick?
Creating a healthy lifestyle is a great way to make all of those tricky healthy behaviours much easier. Here are just a few ways you can make your desired healthy habits into a long-lasting lifestyle.
Find a way to play
Do you ever see kids eating oreos and ice cream one minute, and then running around with friends for hours? Do you ever wonder how those kids manage to stay in “good shape” despite the oreos and ice cream? It is because of play.
As adults we replace play time with fancy social events, and dinner parties. We hang out with friends in a new way, and spend a lot of our time working.
If you want to make physical activity part of your life, then find a way to play again. You can join walking or running groups, play on a men’s or women’s recreational sports team, or join the local community center for an aquafit class, spinning, or yoga.
If you have a fun way to move, physical activity doesn’t feel like work. All sports can be supported by a consistent strength training routine too. Instead of working out because you feel like you have to, you can begin to work out for the purpose of making your sport more enjoyable.
Make food fun
One of the hardest parts about dieting is feeling like you always have to adjust your eating styles or be “that friend” that can’t go out because of their diet. If you don’t want your new healthy food choices to be reason for fuss, get the family or your friends excited about it.
Host a dinner party where you only cook “fun” foods with healthy ingredients. Bring the kids grocery shopping, and make cooking meals fun. In the end it is just food and we all need to eat. The more people who see your food choices as something to look forward to, the less strain you will feel on your social and family life.
The internet is filled with tasty recipes that can make any boring vegetable or protein into a flavour explosion – and a family favourite.
Spend time with people who are already living a healthy life
They say that you are the combination of the 5 people you spend the most time with. If you want to live a healthy lifestyle, an easy way to make that happen is to fill your life with health-minded individuals.
With this one, make sure you choose the people who live your ideal healthy lifestyle. If you have friends who seem healthy but their diets are restrictive, and their workout routine is more intense than you’d ever hope to achieve, then they aren’t the right type of person to model your healthy lifestyle after. But the right people do exist, and who knows, maybe one day you’ll be that person for someone else!
Commit to What Works For You
Last, but certainly not least, the best way to make fitness a lifestyle is to make sure everything you do works for you. If you constantly feel like you’re forcing yourself to eat weird diet food, or you actually hate going to spin class, then they’ll never become a part of your lifestyle.
The most important fitness principle is individuality: Every workout program, every “diet”, every way to play will be different for every person because every person is different. If all of your friends are taking up running, but you know you’d prefer to be lifting weights, then go lift weights.
Making fitness a lifestyle doesn’t mean that you need to become an ultramarathoner who only eats chicken, rice, and broccoli. Making fitness a lifestyle means finding little ways that you can incorporate physical activity, whole foods, and a couple glasses of water into the life you are already living.
