Let’s sweat the small stuff!
We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.
—Richard G Scott
What we know versus what we do
We know that our daily habits and choices add up. When we make bad eating or exercise choices over several days we end up with a sluggish digestive system, weight gain and an overall sense of dissatisfaction.
On the flip side, when we create healthy habits and consistently make good choices, our digestive system thanks us, we feel in control of our food decisions and we look and feel great.
We often know what we “should” be doing in terms of making healthy food and fitness decisions, but that’s not the same as actually making these healthy choices on a daily basis. Part of the problem is that we don’t spend much time thinking about seemingly small choices. Like whether we take a 15-minute walk or just hunker down in front of the latest Netflix offering. Instead we get hung up on big goals like losing 15 pounds or running a marathon. What if we focused on our daily choices instead?
Making small changes and building them into habits is the best way to reach our larger goals.
Two simple habits to build
Two easy but important habits to establish are exercising and eating your vegetables. How can make these into healthy habits that happen effortlessly? What action do you need to take every day?
Start with adding exercise to your daily routine every day for the next couple of weeks. Don’t start by committing to an hour-long intensive workout every single day. Instead commit to at least 20 minutes of movement every day. Wake up 20 minutes early, take 20 minutes on your lunch break or wait until the kids go to bed. In no time, you will have established exercise as a daily habit and if you want more exercise than that it will be easy to build from there.
As for eating your vegetables, the most effective way to establish healthy eating habits is to shift your mindset away from what you can’t have and onto what you can have. A healthy diet needs to include 6-8 servings of vegetables a day. Another way to think about this is that you can eat lots and lots of delicious vegetables every single day!
For the next two weeks, when you plan your meals, think vegetables first. Fill most of your plate with vegetables and you’ll find that there won’t be as much room for less healthy choices. So now eating vegetables has a double benefit; more healthy stuff, less unhealthy stuff. Plus, you will have established a daily habit of veggies first.
Beyond exercise and veggies first
In all aspects of our lives, when we take small steps towards our goals by implementing what is easily do-able each and every day, we develop habits that will help us reach our larger goals.
xoxo
Rebecca