As this series of my Healthy Habits comes to a close, I'd like to look back on some of the key messaging and also help you create a plan of action to move forward successfully implementing these habits into your life. Reflection is super powerful and circling back on the last 2 months will increase your self awareness of these habits, help you process what's most important, and potentially help you understand your motivation behind applying these tactics.
I personally love making lists and staying organizing with my goals, but its not until I have a look at the list as a whole that I understand what I truly want, and what my plan of action is moving forward. So I highly recommend keeping a journal, tracking your progress within each field along the way, and to start prioritizing these habits based on your immediate and long term needs.
To recap, the lifestyle factors that can really help make a difference in improving your overall health are: learning how to train smarter, dialing in your nutrition, cheat days that won’t destroy your progress, channeling your inner child and “playing” more, proper rest and recovery tactics, and maybe most important - getting great sleep.
I would give each of these habits its own page in a journal, highlight key points in my blog entries that really resonated for you, create goals for each and then keep track of your progress. This will really help you keep some structure, help you maintain your plan and potentially even fast track your success.
Here are some key points to reflect on and add to your list:
Training Smart
Training smart is about understanding your stress response threshold and focusing on low impact training methods. If you are just getting back into a workout routine, my best advice is to keep it simple with slow and controlled low impact workouts. Examples of low impact training are resistance training (weight lifting), walking, hiking, cycling, yoga, pilates, swimming and playing fun sports or doing activities you love. Pick 3-4 of them and put together a weekly schedule for yourself. Great results can come from a slow and controlled, mind-muscle connection approach, rather than something fast paced that ramps up epinephrine, adrenaline and cortisol. You have to learn to flex that “Patience” muscle, and be ok with doing a lit bit each day to reach your goals.
Proper Nutrition for You
The right nutrition is a very loaded topics these days but there are definitely some staples that everyone can benefit from living by. In my opinion, a very important pillar of nutrition is to prioritize protein. Getting more complete sources of protein in your diet will do everything from helping you build and maintain muscle mass, to improving bone mass and strength, reducing cravings, to help you to feel fuller longer, promote healthier blood sugar levels, boost your metabolism and increase calorie burning, improve your recovery after exercise and reduce age-related muscle deterioration to help you age more gracefully.
My other favorite pillars of nutrition are concentrating on nutrient dense foods and avoiding heavily processed junk food, eating a well rounded source of easy to digest carbohydrates like seasonal fruits and roots, concentrating on stable saturated fats like grass-fed butter, ghee, tallow, coconut oil, and avoiding polyunsaturated fats like vegetable and seed oils, focusing on nutrient dense leafy greens and low toxin veggies, getting more gelatin like foods in my diet like collagen and bone broth, and making sure I'm staying super hydrated!
Cheat days
There are 2 ways in going out your cheat day or cheat meals that will definitely help you out in the long run. One way is if you are dead set on having a real meal, the best thing you can do is completely let go, be present and enjoy it. Don’t stress and ruminate over your decision but instead just really enjoy it. Your thoughts are powerful and the impact won’t be as bad If you aren’t stressing over it. Once its over, get right back on track with your routine without any shame. You can also create ways to feel like your cheating all the time by making the proper ingredient swaps and still have your favorite cheat type meals.
Play
Use play as a way to get your workout in for the day by doing something active that you really enjoy. This is going to flood your body with a bunch of good mood chemicals and help you manage healthy hormone levels. Tapping in and channeling that inner child can be a very effective way to exercise more often and get in great shape!
Rest & Recovery
Its absolutely paramount for your physical, mental and emotional well being to understand the importance of proper rest and recovery. Burning the candle at both ends with this go, go, go mentality can leave you chronically fatigued and really mess with your hormones. Develop a nice self care routine and be ok with doing absolutely nothing sometimes. Your body will thank you the next day when you actually have a full tank to work with. This goes for work, exercise, and relationships. Grant yourself permission to have selfish me time and do something rejuvenating.
Deep Sleep
There any many factors that can influence deep restful sleep and when you start implementing these tactics, everything gets better. Getting adequate sleep is one of the most important factors responsible for the maintenance of good health. Getting morning sunlight to turn on cortisol will help set your circadian clock to produce more melatonin in the evening. Evening melatonin also improves when you limit blue light screen time. Your diet can also be very influential. Opting for foods higher in tryptophan, serotonin and magnesium will encourage your nervous system to start calming down and will improve your ability to get to sleep easier.
Thanks so much for following along on my Healthy Habits to kick off 2024! Please stay in touch with me at @crosbytailor and @lakanto to see what we have in store for you this year. We have partnered in a major way and have some exciting things coming very soon. If you love Crosbys Baking Co and Lakanto’s monk fruit sweetener than you won’t want to miss what's coming next!
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