Habit Building for Health and Wellness

Habit Building – every year millions of people make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight or get healthy. BUT by the end of the second week in January, more than 80% throw in the towel and go back to what they were doing prior to their resolution. Setting so many all-or-nothing goals sets the majority of people up for failure. The number of changes you try to cram into your big resolution is just too much and overwhelm kicks in after a few weeks of you white-knuckling so many habits at once.

I don’t believe in making changes that you cannot do for the long term. Set up lifestyle changes that can become habits over time, not another drastic “MUST GET RESULTS” short term plan. When you follow a short term diet, it has an end date. Most people go back to doing what got them into the place they are now trying to change. Create sustainable habits you enjoy so they stick.

Habit Building for Health and Wellness focuses on intentional actions so that:

• It works WITH your lifestyle
• Adds value and quality of life
• Has you excited about your future
• Steadily moves you closer to your personal health goals while having fun doing it!

Right now take some time to imagine your personal health goal success and what it would feel like. Imagine how much better your day-to-day life would feel and all the emotions you feel when this is your reality. Write it down (are you journaling?) and add in all the details.

Habit Building – “a journey begins with a single step”

This step doesn’t need to be huge – small steps add up over time and that is how good things happen. Scan your health goals and think about habits you can build over time that will move you in the direction of your health goals. You can make a list if you feel the need, but you are not going to do them all at once. I want you to pick one that you know you can implement – that’s where you’ll start. Remember to keep them realistic and you’ll expand on them over time. Starting small, achieving daily and weekly wins will help you build momentum, success and fuel you to keep going.

Make a list of your top 10 areas you want to create change that lead you towards your health goals and then you will create a list of 10 habits that will help you achieve each goal (remember, we’re just making a list – not implementing them all at once).

Once you are done, go through them and decide in which order you’d like to start tackling them – you’re going to do one at a time. Now they say it takes 21 days to create a new habit, I think it can sometimes take longer depending on how long you have been repeating a habit you want to change. The goal is to do this ONE new habit until you don’t think about it anymore and just do it automatically. Allow yourself more time to get to this point. If you slip up, get right back on track as quickly as possible. Don’t let a missed day roll into two missed days because that freight train gets rollin’ and harder to stop again!

Pick the habit you feel most excited about and will give you the highest reward so you’ll get a quick win and stay motivated to keep going. Remember take the time you need to create this new habit before tacking the next one. You are not in a competition with anyone, you are improving your health and wellness for YOU.

Make sure your choices are realistic for you and your lifestyle and that you can fit in this new habit without a huge disruption in your daily life. Six months or a year from now you will be miles ahead of where you are now even with taking it slowly. You won’t be jumping from diet to diet trying to get a short term fix and then finding that harsh tactic isn’t working and switch again. That’s mentally exhausting and leaves you feeling defeated.

I’ve included a couple of habit tracker sheets for you to fill in and track your journey. Research shows if you write it down and keep it in a visible place, your more likely to succeed!

Happy Habit Building!