You’ve decided that you want to live a healthy lifestyle. Yay! Just for making this decision alone, you deserve a huge pat on the shoulder.
What got you here? Are you fatigued? Overweight? Lost connection with the kitchen? Want to take better care of yourself and your family? Or perhaps you’ve started to develop some medical symptoms, and you’re afraid that it’ll get worse?
It’s never too late to change, so it’s awesome that you’re here!
Okay, now you’ve made your decision to start a healthy lifestyle… How are you going to do it?
I’ll share the top 5 steps I take with my clients, to coach them towards a healthier lifestyle.
1. Clean out your pantry and fridge
The quickest way to make sure you’re successful in creating a healthy lifestyle is to start in your home with your pantry and fridge. A well-stocked pantry with healthy food is a must for busy people. It will help you make better choices. If you don’t have crap foods in your house, you’re less likely to eat them.
Look at the quality of the ingredients. Do you recognise the names? Can you pronounce them? Would your grandmother have used these ingredients? How many ingredients are there? If it’s 25, that’s not a good sign. You can read more about processed foods and what to look out for here.
Ready to give your pantry a healthy makeover? This blogpost I’ve written about it will help you on your way.
If you need some help with cleaning out your pantry and fridge, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I offer a live 1.5hr one-on-one Healthy Pantry Makeover to help you get started on your healthy lifestyle journey.
2. Meal planning and grocery shopping
After you’ve tackled your pantry and fridge, you’ll need to look at the way you shop and prepare your food. The best way to stay calm, organised, and get nutritious meals on your plate, is…. planning. It will also save you lots of time and money on your grocery bill because you’re getting super-efficient.
Choose a day of the week to fill out a meal planner, ideally the day you go grocery shopping or the day before you go grocery shopping. Consistency is key, so if your workdays don’t change and there are no major life events happening, stick to the same day of the week.
Get my optimal healthy meal planning guide and free weekly meal planner here.
Meal planning
Fill out all your meals for the whole week on the planner. Are there any major things happening this week? Big sports events? Are you having people over for dinner? Are you going out for dinner? Fill it all out.
It’s also super important to keep things simple. You don’t need 21 unique meals. Don’t put any unnecessary stress on yourself. Repeat the meals you like. Invest in some good storage containers and cook up a storm, so you don’t have to cook every day.
Grocery shopping
Then, when you’ve filled out your meals on your planner, look at the ingredients you need for these meals. Do you already have any of these items in your fridge and pantry? Now your pantry and fridge are cleaned out, that’s should be really easy to determine and it will prevent so much food waste from double bought ingredients.
Write any items you don’t have on your grocery list. I’m super organised, and put a shopping list together in the order of the layout of the store. Yeah, I know… I’m a weirdo, but I’m not a big fan of grocery shopping and this cuts my grocery shopping time in half. Try to always stick to the periphery of the supermarket, that’s where you can find most of the stuff you’d want to be eating, real food.
3. Move
This should be a no-brainer, we need to move our bodies to stay healthy. Exercise can reduce the risk of developing chronic illness and it keeps you fit and young. Remember this – You don’t stop moving from growing old, you grow old from stopping moving!
For a healthy lifestyle, move your body at least 30 minutes, 5 times a week. Find a good trainer who can match you with the right kind of exercise for your body and health. There’s no one-size-fits-all exercise. I can’t stress this enough. What works for you, can be really bad for your best friend and the other way around.
For example, where I live, Bootcamp and Crossfit are extremely popular. Not the right fit for me though because of my Hashimoto’s. It would actually have an adverse effect on my health. Find the exercise that’s right for you, and move, but not overtrain your body.
4. Drink water
On average, about 60% of a human body is water, and we need it for a lot of our body processes like digestion, absorbing nutrients, and keeping our body temperature stable. If we don’t drink enough water, it will affect our physical and mental performance.
How much water you should drink on a daily basis depends on your exercise habits, the climate in which you live, and your health status. Generally, you should be drinking your body weight divided by 30 in liters. That means if you weigh 60kg, you have to drink 2 liters of water per day.
Although soft drinks, cordial, and sports drinks count towards your fluid intake as well, you’d want to stick to water and herbal tea. No sugar and nasty chemicals, so you’re really supporting your body and health.
5. Sleep
Sleep is super important for your health. When you sleep, your body heals itself. It gets a proper time-out and gets re-energised for the new day to come. If you don’t get enough of it, it mucks with your appetite hormones which may lead to overeating and eventually obesity.
How much sleep you need is different for everyone, but ideally you’d want to get somewhere in between 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night.
If you’re not even close to getting these hours of shuteye, you might be making one of the sleep mistakes I’ve written about in a recent blogpost.
If you need some help to find a healthy lifestyle that works for you and you can realistically maintain for the rest of your life, please don’t hesitate to contact me to get more information about my coaching programs.
Good luck with your new healthy habits!
