Becoming healthier is not an overnight journey. Many of us have cultivated a variety of unhealthy behaviors throughout our lives, which can be difficult to unlearn. Instead, the best way to improve your health is to focus on a few simple strategies. These should be easy to build into habits while delivering head-to-toe health benefits in the short and long run. Here are three great examples of such strategies, which can be easily incorporated into your life for a health boost.
Sleeping Well
Your sleep is incredibly important to your health, so do not neglect it. Bad sleep can make you tired, cranky, and prone to making unhealthy decisions throughout your day, and it can also cause a host of long-term problems for your health.
First, identify your problem. You need to be getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, so if your current bedtime is not allowing for this, then you need to go to sleep earlier. If you are going to bed on time but taking a long time to fall asleep, you need to create a soothing bedtime routine and should consider leaving electronics outside the room.
Your mattress could also be to blame, especially if you’re sleeping on a worn out mattress (one that’s more than seven years old has typically lost its shape and no longer provides adequate support) or are feeling achy when you get up in the morning. If you decide to buy a new one, it’s vital that you consider spine alignment; this ensures your muscles can rest properly, which will keep you from feeling sore in the morning. This guide from Mattress Advisor may be of use in choosing the best option for your sleeping style and body type.
Yoga
By now, you have probably heard about a million people tell you about the “life-changing” power of yoga. While we can’t guarantee that it will change your life, it is a wonderful habit to incorporate into your routine for a variety of reasons. Yoga can improve strength, balance, flexibility, breathing, and mental health. It is adaptable to all fitness levels and available in a wide variety of styles.
If it’s the cost or the idea of doing it in public that puts you off, start by doing yoga at home. Yoga With Adriene is an incredibly popular YouTube channel dedicated to creating free yoga routines anyone can follow at home, and is a great place to start in private, for free, and at your own pace.
Am I Hungry?
For many of us, our relationship with food can be one of the hardest health behaviors to change. Snacking and grazing have become a regular part of many people’s lives, and this plays a significant role in the rise of obesity throughout the country.
Don’t start starving yourself or making foods off limits. The occasional donut, candy bar, or bag of chips is not inherently “bad,” but one thing you can do is to stop eating when you’re not hungry. When you feel like a snack, stop and ask yourself, “Am I actually hungry, or am I bored, stressed, sad, or coping with another negative emotion I think will be solved by food?”
If you are hungry, eat, but focus on finding a source of energy that will keep you full until your next meal, like fruit, nuts, whole grains, and healthy fats. If you are not hungry, find another way to relieve your stress. This hunger scale designed by Shape is a great tool to help you in this process. It’s OK if you indulge once in a while. As long as you keep reminding yourself to pause and ask yourself this question as often as you can, you will eventually see your relationship with snacking improve.
There are, of course, many other similar health strategies. The important thing is that they be simple. Getting better sleep, snacking smartly, and doing a short yoga routine in the comfort of your own home are all perfect because they can have huge cumulative health benefits without being intimidating or overwhelming.
Give these a go for a month and see how you feel. Then, once they have become habits, you can start building on them and creating more complex self-care routines, continuously improving your relationship with your body and mind.
Jennifer McGregor is a pre-med student, who loves providing reliable health and medical resources for PublicHealthLibrary.org users. She knows how difficult it can be to sift through the mountains of health-related information on the web. She co-created the site with a friend as a way to push reputable information on health topics to the forefront, making them easier and quicker to find.
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