Kickstart your fitness journey before 2022 arrives.
New Year’s Day is a few weeks away. Rather than wait until then to kickstart a new health and fitness routine, why not start today? You’ve only got time on your hands. Use it in a way that benefits your mind, body, and soul.
Build Better Health One Day at a Time
To give you ideas on simple things you can add to your daily routine, we’ve created a short guide that lets you explore healthy living at its finest. Apply what is relevant to you and add other ideas to the list as you discover them. You’ll find the more you live a healthy lifestyle, the easier it is to incorporate other ideas in your
Here are ten healthy habits you can start before the New Year begins:
- Address stress productively. Stressors exist in many forms. Learning how to address them positively is a skill. It helps you overcome challenges quickly and maintain the type of attitude needed to make long-lasting changes in your life. Exercising stress-reducing tips and using tools that you learn helps tremendously. It promotes a healthier nervous system response and lets you get back on track after experiencing setbacks. Stress contributes to a myriad of health problems and can be fatal if chronic.
- Give intermittent fasting a try. There are many different approaches that you can explore. Choose the one that feels the safest and easiest to apply. Going periods without eating allows the digestive system to get a break. It helps you lose weight and feel less sluggish, too. Research intermittent fasting techniques, download an app to help you track your progress, and learn to start detoxing your body in a healthy way.
- Allow yourself ample time to recover after a hard workout. Your body needs time to repair itself. If you push too hard, you could become injured and halt your progress. Make sure to build rest time into your fitness routine. It can be the difference between you achieving your goals and sidelining yourself for a long time. The thought that “no pain, no gain” isn’t the best approach because it can potentially hurt you.
- Invest in self-development. A strong mind builds a strong body. Take time to learn what you can that helps you become the person you’ve always wanted to be. Take advantage of books, videos, blogs, and other media that motivates and inspires you. Set goals that you can work on daily to become more resilient, knowledgeable, and determined to succeed. You’ll know the proper way to lift and how to burn calories effectively. It makes you a more well-rounded, more analytical version of yourself, too.
- Buy the highest quality foods available to eat. It’s an investment in you and your health. Buying higher-quality foods means that you’ll be ill less often. You’ll build strength in your body and help it work out more beneficially. Organic, non-GMO, whole foods are best with lean proteins and healthy sources of fat. Your body is an amazing machine capable of doing incredible things when given the right foods.
- Focus on your strengths. Think about what you’re good at and make it what you put your energy into. If something you try doesn’t work out for you the first time, think about a different way of approaching it. Perspective is everything. You can divide and conquer if given enough time to find the right way to do something new. You’ll become stronger at what you’re already good at and even better at things you’re first learning how to do.
- Be up for a challenge. Don’t be afraid to try a new exercise or way of living healthily. Remember how important it is to feel well. Everything else takes a backseat to your health. If you don’t feel good, you can’t do what you want to do with your life.
- Enjoy healthy fats. Olive oil and coconut oil are two that you can use in moderation. Add fatty fish, nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes to your diet for the best results. You need to change the quality of the fats you eat, not eliminate them. The better the fat, the better you feel.
- Boost your immune system. Make sure that you’re getting enough zinc with the foods that you eat. Vitamin C is also essential. It promotes a healthy immune system. It keeps you from falling ill because you’re running on empty and haven’t given yourself time to recover.
- Challenge your brain. Switch up your routine so that your brain gets a good workout, too. You want to have a healthy mind as well as a strong body. Take an online class, learn a new language, solve a complicated puzzle, or use your non-dominant hand to write as ways of making your brain work differently than it usually does. Have fun learning new things and expanding your world.
Good health and fitness are lifestyle choices. They’re something you invest time, money, and effort to achieve. It’s not a situation where you reach your health-related or fitness-related goal and call it quits. It takes sheer determination and strength to maintain your progress. It also sets the tone for the other things you set out to achieve in the future.
Use the Next Few Weeks to Prepare for a New Year and a New You
The holidays are the perfect time to get a head start on your goals. While everyone else is being indulgent, you’re exercising discipline and staying focused on the things that matter most to you—good health and well-being. Taking the time to get very clear about what you want to achieve is imperative to your success.
It lets you know why your goals matter to you in the first place. Your “why” is unique to you. It takes into account your experiences, dreams, and values. It helps you achieve things that you once thought were impossible easier than you imagined it could be.