Everyone, at least once in their life, has dreamed about making lasting health changes in the new year. But there’s no magic formula to reaching a healthy lifestyle. Instead, it’s all about developing healthy habits that will serve you throughout the rest of your life. This blog covers some ways to get started.
Exercise
Most of us understand the importance of exercise in our daily lives. It helps us get our weight under control, build muscle mass, improve digestion, and just feel all around better about ourselves.
And yet exercise is also often considered one of the hardest healthy habits to get into. This is because it requires an active investment of time, something many of us feel like we have precious little of.
Healthy eating habits involve swapping out one food choice for another. Exercise involves finding new time in your schedule. It’s essential that you meet at least your minimal exercise goals. A good rule of thumb is that you should be getting at least either 150 minutes of moderate exercise in a week or seventy-five minutes of more intense exercise
To build healthy exercising habits, it’s vital to start with smaller goals. Using lunch breaks for walks is an excellent way to get started, and to enjoy the fresh air if the weather permits. We’re also big fans of yoga at Chef V, as a low-impact way to get more exercise and flexibility.
Stress management
Making any permanent change in your habits will be difficult unless you manage to get your stress levels under control. Too often, physical health is emphasized so much that our mental health is forgotten. However, chronic stress levels can cause appetite issues, sleeping difficulties, and mood swings. These can further degenerate into diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.
Getting started with stress reduction can be intimidating. Stressing about stress is counterproductive, not to mention just a little bit silly. Don’t be afraid to reach out to a therapist for assistance. Healthier choices in diet and exercise can also go a long way toward reducing stress levels, thus creating a positive feedback loop, as your positive mood encourages you to make better choices.
If you really don’t know where to get started, we can certainly recommend simple breathing exercises throughout the day. These are good ways to calm yourself quickly and cut down on the worst effects of stress.
Sleep
Sleep is incredibly easy. Most of us can do it without even thinking about it. All you have to do is lay in bed, that’s it! So it’s strange that for so many people getting enough sleep is an incredibly difficult proposition.
The hectic modern lives we live, plus the proliferation of screen-based technology, has significantly impacted our ability to get a good night’s sleep. Remember, the average person needs from seven to nine hours of sleep.
Getting enough sleep depends on maintaining a strict routine for sleep. Your body will get used to regular sleep times—you just need to start enforcing them on yourself. An excellent way to get started is to shut off your phones and other screens an hour before bed, letting your mind relax and your eyes recover.
Increase water intake
Hydration seems like such a minor detail, but water is incredibly important to us humans. Water flushes the toxins from the body, lubricates joints, improves mood, boosts digestion, and improves organ health. Thankfully, getting more water in your life is easy. Just make sure to have more glasses of H2O during the day. You can also try to mix in more green drinks with your daily habits to get all the important hydration.
Intermittent fasting
If you’re still worried about weight loss, even after improving your health, sleep, and exercise habits, the new year might be the time to give intermittent fasting a try. Intermittent fasting is the idea that when you eat can be as important as what you eat. The longer you give your body to digest food properly, the better you can manage your weight.
It might sound like a lot, but it’s easy to get into. For example, all you need to do is try having your dinner an hour earlier, and breakfast an hour later. Maybe you can even replace your morning routine with a healthy green drink!
Try some juice cleanses
If you have severe issues around bloating, weight gain, digestive system problems, blood sugar levels, and cravings for processed foods, then the new year might be the time to start a juice cleanse.
The best juice cleanses for weight loss will include things like detox soups and detox smoothies as well. If you’re new to juice cleanses, we recommend starting with a 3 day juice cleanse. Even a short 3 day cleanse can help you fight back against cravings for sugary foods.
Get more green juices in your diet
Still uncertain about where the best place is to start with your new year’s goals for building a healthy lifestyle? One of the easier healthy habits to get into is adding more green juice into your everyday routines.
Chef V’s green drink is great whether as part of a 3 day juice cleanse, a snack in the morning, or as a refreshing treat throughout the day. Our own green juice recipe mixes plenty of healthy leafy greens with delicious apple juice for some natural sweetness. Best of all, we can deliver all the incredible health benefits of green drink right to your doorstep!