Hi guys! So... it's been awhile since we last posted and after a few weeks of a summer break, we're back! Today's post is all about steps we're taking to live an overall healthier life. We have this broken down into two different sections: the first being mindset and the second being more tangible items that have helped us along the way.
Mindset
You don't need an all or nothing mentality. This is probably the single most important thing I have learned with maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I think a lot of us tend to have the mindset that if you don't do something perfectly or 100% then it means you failed. For me personally, I used to have days where I would eat healthy the majority of the day and then go a bit off track at some point. My mindset in those moments was to automatically discount all the good I had done already that day or week, and to say I might as well just start over tomorrow. Overcoming the thought process that "messing up" ruins progress is SO important in my opinion. Missing a workout or eating a candy bar will absolutely not destroy progress, and chalking up a whole day as a miss because you slightly veered off track is a mistake. It's not something that happens overnight, but changing your mindset to understand that if you're overall making more healthy choices than not, you are absolutely heading in the right direction.
Small changes are meaningful. This ties in closely with the last one. Similarly to an all or nothing mentality, many of us have the tendency to cut off bad habits cold turkey, or attempt to completely change our lifestyles overnight. Don't get me wrong, some people thrive with that type of pressure, but most of us need these lifestyle changes to be more incremental in order for them to really last. It can be really overwhelming to try to completely overhaul your eating habits or jump into an intense workout program overnight. What has worked best for me personally is to start small. You 100% don't need to change your entire way of living on an arbitrary Monday. Pick what's going to be easiest for you to change first. If you're someone that's intimidated by the gym, pick some at-home workouts you enjoy, or commit to walking outside every day. If you drink a diet soda a day, commit to cutting back to a couple a week. Living an overall healthier life can be really overwhelming, especially if you attempt to take everything on at once. Remember that Rome wasn't built in a day, and tiny tweaks really do add up.
Make the process enjoyable. I know there are a lot of people out there that will say something like achieving a health goal isn't always about having motivation, it's about having discipline. While I agree with that to some extent, motivation is inevitably going to come and go and honestly I think the same can be said about discipline. Of course I think it's really important to hold yourself accountable but in my opinion, most change in behavior doesn't last long if it feels completely unenjoyable forever. As I've gotten older, being healthier becomes more about actual good health and less about just looking a certain way. So if I want to maintain these healthy habits for a lifetime, I need to not feel that I'm living in a constantly unenjoyable process. Enjoying the process is kind of an arbitrary thing to say because it's going to look completely different for everyone. For myself, enjoying the process looks like finding new ways to exercise that are actually fun for me. Who new there was more to cardio than the StairMaster? It also looks like finding new healthy foods that I love, and learning ways to incorporate them into my diet. It also looks like having people that I stay accountable with. The bottom line is this: you have to go through some trial and error but learning how to make this process feel more enjoyable will allow it integrate into your life a lot easier.
Helpful tools and Habits
Olivia and I both started using the app "Lose It!" last spring during quarantine, and I honestly cannot say enough about it. I lost 12 pounds last year, and I really attribute a lot of that to tracking my food in this app. I know for some people, tracking calories can really be a slippery slope so you of course need to decide if doing so is going to impact your mental health negatively. For me, I used it as a tool to stay accountable. The app will have you enter your metrics, your activity level, and a goal weight (if you want to lose, gain or maintain) and will calculate the calories you need from that point. It will allocate the suggested amount of calories between three meals and snacks, but as you log your food, it will reallocate to other categories if you don't use them all in that meal. What I love most about the app is that you can also connect your Apple Watch or other fitness bands and it will seamlessly integrate workouts if you want to deduct your cals burned from your bank for the day. Of course there's more to overall health than calories and of course not all calories are created equally, but from the standpoint of wanting to lose weight and shed actual pounds, your body does need to be in a caloric deficit at the end of the day. Since losing the initial weight, I continue to use the app, but have taken a few breaks from tracking. I also think it's really important to acknowledge that sometimes breaks are necessary, and I was really happy to learn that after taking a few weeks off from tracking, my weight remained constant. That's another major benefit of tracking in my opinion - you learn more about the food you're eating and how to eat more intuitively without actually tracking. Also, if you're going to track, I highly recommend grabbing an inexpensive food scale. Weighing what you're eating makes it so much easier to accurately track foods that aren't pre portioned.
Everyone probably saw this coming, but let's talk about water. This is something you just gotta get on board with. For some reason I am a person that struggles with drinking enough water and even still, it's somewhat of a forced effort. With that said, here is what we find most helpful to reach your water intake intake goal (we use the guideline of needing to drink at least half your body weight in ounces per day). Get a water bottle that has measurement markings so you easily know how much you're drinking and at what rate. Also, I find using bottles that I can easily pop into the dishwasher makes everything more convenient. I've been using old protein shaker bottles (with the shaker ball left out) and it's worked great. Also, don't underestimate using lemon, strawberries, etc. to keep plain water from getting boring. I also use Mio flavoring which helps switch things up too!
Don't underestimate the power of walking. This is something that I always thought, "yeah whatever" about in terms of exercise. I couldn't have been more wrong. Olivia and I have both become huge fans of doing what we call our outdoor power walks. It burns calories, gets you outdoors, and honestly doesn't feel like that much work because we're just chatting the whole time. If I'm ever walking alone, I love listening to podcasts (my faves are Fun on Weekdays, Gals on the Go; and But What's Next with Michelle Reed). Also, here's an interesting article to all the benefits of walking if you're interested!
Plan out your meals and snacks for the week/work week: I've always been fairly used to doing this just because I think it saves money to plan ahead, and is obviously more time effective. I like to keep a rotating list of my favorite meals and snacks so I'm not questioning what to buy when I go shopping on Sundays. Doing this will allow you have things pretty well mapped out for the week and gives you the flexibility to include a night of going out or ordering in.
I just want to add (and I'm not sure if anyone can relate) but I used to read a lot of posts about this same topic and would often get annoyed because they all essentially said the same thing. I was hoping that if I read enough, I would find the "secret" to losing weight fast and magically keeping it off forever. I think it's important to mention that at least in my opinion, there's a difference between losing weight and achieving overall better health. As I've gotten older I realize that all these lists to be healthier look the same because there really is no secret. That's good news and bad news. The bad news is that there really are no short cuts or secret formulas to this thing. Obviously there's ways to lose weight at a faster rate but again is that really being healthy? The good news is also that there's no secret formula. There's really nothing about being healthier that you probably haven't already heard or learned about. It's a process, but one that's 100% attainable if you invest in it. I'm a firm believer that our health is the absolute most important thing we have and learning how to take better care ourselves needs to be a lifelong process and commitment. We hope some of you related to this and we are excited to share more healthy lifestyle content in the future!
