Hi everyone and welcome to a new blogpost!
Today I'm going to show you guys some tips on how to live a healthier lifestyle and motivate you to actually make it work this time. So without further ado, let's get into it.
WHY?
First of all you've got to know why you're doing it. We're going to look at this partially scientific and partially out of your own point of view.
As for the scientific part, it's really simple. A healthy lifestyle is crucial for your life in general. Eating healthy is WAY better for your body. It decreases the chances of several illnesses and diseases and it makes you look better in general. I'm not talking about being skinnier or anything like that, you're weight doesn't determine whether you're beautiful or not, I'm talking about smaller things. For example, drinking a lot of water makes your skin shiny and fresh as well as your hair. It also gives you more energy and a better mood/
But those are facts that most of you already know. The thing that is more important is your opinion. Why do you want to live a healthier lifestyle or even lose weight. What is making you uncomfortable about your lifestyle right now? Why do you want to change?
TIP #1: MAKE A LIST
This is one of my MAIN tips on getting motivated. Take a piece of paper and write down EVERY reason you can think of that you'd want to lose weight. And I mean anything. It might be for that one guy you like or to fit in that awesome skinny jeans. Maybe because you want to feel better or look in the mirror and smile. Think about it and you'll be left with 20 reasons or so.
That's a great idea on it's own but we're going even further. Take three different colour pencils or highlighters. Highlight the main reasons in one color, the normal reasons in another color and the not so important reasons in the third one. You'd be surprised to see that most of the reasons you highlighted in the first color are reasons for yourself. Because YOU want to feel better, because YOU want a better body image... That's a real eye-opener
WHEN?
With "when", I mean your goals. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to feel better? Do you want to lose fat? Do you want to have more muscles? Do you want to be more fit? Those are all examples of goals you might have. But now you need to make them more concrete. How much weight do you want to lose? If you want to be more fit by for example running, how fast and for how long do you want to be running by the end of the month?
For this I also recommend to write it down and set out the details. This is a scheme that I made to keep track of my goals, I filled one in as an example but you can use this for any goals you have.
You have to make sure your end date is achievable though. You can't go from never running to running 10km in an hour in a week, that's not a good goal since it won't happen and you'll just feel worse. So try being more realistic.
WHAT?
Now it's time for the "what?" in this whole situation. What are you going to do to achieve your goal. As you can see I made space for that in my "my goals-scheme" and I recommend you write them down too. I also saw people putting those "steps" on post-its and sticking them all around their house. It's all up to you, just remind yourself to actually do it.
Well that was it basically for the whole goal related part. Now I'm going to give you some tips on how to actually live healthier and how to STAY healthier.
TIPS
2. If you don't like water, add fruit like lemons into it to make it taste better
3. Find an excercise you like. Think about dancing, ropeskipping, cycling etc.
4. Save motivation pictures. Apps like pinterest, instagram and weheartit are great for this
5. Make goals
6. Reward yourself
7. Keep track of what you eat, you'll be less likely to eat bad when you know you'll have to write it down in the evening.
8. Keep a step counter. Make sure you have at least 9000 steps a day
9. Sport with friends, it's always more fun and if they're just as serious, they'll drag you of the couch when you're having an off day
10. Make homecooked meals. When you cook it yourself, you know what you're putting in your body and using fresh products is so much better for you.
11. Replace things. You like chocolate? Eat dark chocolate. You like coffee? Try tea. Hungry and want a snack? Try yoghurt, nuts or fruit
12. Try something new. The entire internet is filled with ways to be healthy but you soon realise that you haven't tried most of it. Most people have seen avocados, hummus, chia seeds and coconut oil in healthy recipes but haven't really tried it. Just go for it, you might love it.
That was all for this blogpost. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
If you want more info about this topic, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
For now, I hope to see you here again sometimes, bye!
x Hanne
