18 Small Steps You Can Take Towards A Healthier Lifestyle
It is easy to lose focus on your health goals during your busy life. New Year’s Resolutions can often seem overwhelming, with less than 10% of people achieving their New Year’s goals. But many small steps taken over time can lead to a healthier and happier you.
Research suggests that the smaller steps you take over time eventually lead to you forming habits. Tiny daily steps will ultimately build up to longer-term healthy habits that you can perform without thinking.
This article will examine 18 small steps you can take over time to help create better habits and a healthier lifestyle.
1. Drink Water
Drinking enough water helps regulate your body temperature, with experts recommending you drink between 8-11 cups daily. But how can you integrate this habit into your daily life? Carrying around a bottle of water is an easy way to stay hydrated, as is switching out sugary or caffeinated beverages with water. Try to flavor water with fruit, and avoid high-sugar or calorie juices.
2. Go For Short Walks
Scientists state that a minimum of 15 minutes outside, between two and three times a week, can protect your health and keep your body healthy. If you are trying to build up your health, several short walks over a week are a great place to start. Listen to a podcast or a TED talk as you walk if this helps you reframe walks as a positive activity.
3. Build In Five Minutes Of Something You Enjoy
Are you struggling to fit in activities that you enjoy? Put five minutes on the calendar to do something entirely for you. This might be five minutes of reading a book or watching a TV show you enjoy. Whether you enjoy browsing online to buy your favourite Delta 8 THC Vape Carts or finding funny Insta memes, block in those five minutes to do something entirely for yourself. Over time, you can build this up for more extended periods. You’ll reap the benefits of reduced stress, happiness, and better relaxation.
4. Set Timings For When You Eat
Disordered eating schedules can leave you hungry or grumpy without knowing why. Try to stick to regular eating habits when you can. Set schedules for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack times. Put a note in your calendar or set an alarm to help notify you of your meal times. Regular eating habits can help you maintain your body’s regular functions and even help you sleep better.
5. Start Your Day Right
The way you start your morning can have a huge bearing on the rest of your day. Try to build in relaxing activities you enjoy. This might be 15 minutes of meditation, your short walk, or a breakfast you like. If it feels too overwhelming to have a whole morning planned, simply pencil in those five minutes just for you to do something you enjoy.
6. Start An Achievable Project
Does committing to a new hobby feel too much? Start a project with a set timeline and see how you feel once you’ve finished it. Projects could include completing a small knitting task, attending one art class, or even listening to a training course on a topic you enjoy. Complete one achievable task and see how it made you feel. If you enjoyed it, consider achieving another small task and gradually build these up into something longer term.
7. Plan Meals For The Next Day
Our meal planning often gets lost in the daily grind, leaving us eating whatever we have to hand. This might be junk food or a takeaway order. Try to plan meals for the next day and write down what you will have for each meal. This is a small task that you can take 15 minutes to complete. It will get you thinking about what you eat ahead of time and thinking about healthier options.
8. Switch One Unhealthy Snack To A Healthy One
Do you tend to snack throughout the day? Try to replace one of these snacks with a healthy option. Replace one packet of crisps with a banana or a chocolate bar with nuts. Make one healthy trade-off a day and see how it adds to a healthier you over time. You could trade a second item in your meal with a healthier alternative – e.g. switching store-bought chips to home-cooked wedges.
9. Learn About Habit Forming
Habit forming is an interesting research area that can help us strengthen our self-awareness. Atomic Habits by James Clear goes into some micro-steps you can take to form habits, like committing to set time frames and taking smaller steps over time to form longer-lasting habits. Looking into the neuroscience behind habit forming and how it works over the long term is an excellent way to understand why some of your healthier habits don’t stick.
10. Surround Your Social Media With Positive Influences
We spend so much time browsing social media that it’s easy to digest opinions from negative sources. Try only to fill your news feed with positive accounts, such as healthy eating advocates and well-being sources. Remember that over-exercisers can also create somewhat toxic environments, so follow people that promote healthy eating and well-being above all else.
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11. Write Down Three Things That You Did Well Today
We tend to be our worst critics and say things to ourselves we would never say to others. At the end of the day, write down three things you think you did well. Be descriptive with the details so you can refer back to them later. Being kind to yourself is essential to a healthier lifestyle and positive mindset. Refer to each set of positive tasks you completed weekly and monthly for a confidence boost.
12. Create A Bedtime Routine
The end of the day is the point in time when you start to wind down and relax. Staring at a glowing screen can keep your body awake for longer. Set up a bedtime routine which allows you to unplug from your devices and do something relaxing before bed. This might be reading a book, drawing, or anything that takes your eyes away from a device.
13. Limit Your Screen Time
How much time do you spend absent-mindedly strolling through Instagram? Try to limit your screen time through several small steps throughout the day. This might be putting your phone in a different room while you work or using an app like Forest.io to incentivise the time you spend away from your screen. All these small steps over time should reduce the amount of time you spend staring at an electronic device.
14. Cut Back On Caffeine
Are you a caffeine fiend? Cut back on one caffeine item daily and replace it with juice or water. You don’t have to cut it out entirely, but reducing your intake may result in reduced stress and better sleeping patterns. Over time, you may rely less on caffeine, which can help you reduce your intake even further.
15. Connect With People
Connecting with people is what humans are designed to do. This doesn’t mean you have to meet up with friends every day. But calling a close friend and walking to the local shops is a small but good place to start. Make sure you can engage with your local community and are around people at least every other day.
16. Book An Appointment
Do you find that you studiously ignore booking a health appointment because you are too busy? Ensure you book your doctor, dentist, or other health appointments when you need to. Don’t think ahead to attending the appointment; just make sure you book it as the first step of prioritizing self-care.
17. Accept You’ll Make Mistakes
We are all human; making mistakes simply comes with the territory. Think of how you’d talk to a loved one or someone at work who made a mistake. Would you be hard on them or let them know that making mistakes is essential to being human? Remember to show yourself the same compassion that you’d show others.
18. Don’t Punish Yourself
People often associate healthy eating or lifestyles with a restrictive diet. But cutting out food types or activities you enjoy often has the opposite effect of what you intend. Cutting out food items relies on willpower, a finite resource that can be ground down over time. When willpower runs out, we often return to our unhealthy habits. Don’t punish yourself by restricting your intake wherever possible.
Final Thoughts
Small but achievable goals will eventually help us transform our diets into healthier habits. Steps like swapping out items with healthier alternatives, taking short walks, and reframing our mindset don’t have to be a complete life overhaul.
Focus on taking small steps towards a healthier lifestyle in 2023. Whether you want to improve your fitness, mindset or eating habits, these manageable items can help you transform your lifestyle over time into a happier and healthier you. Remember to be kind to yourself and treat yourself the way you would treat others. No one is perfect, and you will make mistakes on your journey to better health.
