5 customizable habits to fit your lifestyle and needs Part 2
I often feel pressured to follow all the “health habits” out there. However, I rarely find the time to follow them, and I end up feeling discouraged and giving up easily.
Besides, not every habit works for everyone. That’s why I want to introduce some habits in this article that I think are beneficial and customizable, to make them fit your needs, lifestyle, and time.
If that sounds interesting, feel free to keep reading!
You can find the first part of this article here.
Extra Information:
- Reading time: Around 7 minutes
- Optional: Paper & pencil
- Set the mood: Grab something to drink, find a quiet place, and make yourself comfortable
- My recommendation: Take your time to read slowly and mindfully, don’t rush through the article
5 customizable habits
1. Food 80-20 rule
An overall healthy and balanced diet is essential for your energy, health, strength, and mood.
The 80-20 rule gives you a good guideline on how to eat. 80% of your diet consists of healthy and nutritious meals, and the other 20% are treats like sweets.
Here are some tips to help you follow this approach:
- Make a list of balanced meals you could eat during the week
- Schedule one regular day to go food shopping for the recipes you’ve already collected
- Find time in your current schedule to cook
- Meal prep: If you don’t have much time to cook, you can prepare meals for the next day or make some side dishes that last you during the week
- Keep it slow: If you’re rarely cooking, start with only making one nutritious meal per week and work yourself up mindfully, without immediately planning 7 meals for 7 days!
Important: Allow yourself to eat something “non-healthy” if you crave it and don’t restrict yourself all the time. The longer you forbid yourself to eat a specific food, the more you’ll want it.
Tip: My favorite breakfast idea for a bus morning is overnight oats. You only have to mix oats, milk, chia seeds, and yoghurt and put them in the fridge overnight!
2. Slowing down during the day
How many times do you find yourself rushing from one thing to the other, without taking a moment to pause? Are you hurrying from work to home, from one appointment to another, and from school to home again?
It feels like your mind is always racing and rarely staying in the present moment. So, what can you do to slow down during the day?
Focus on the present:
Look at your surroundings and focus on what is in front of you, instead of reliving past embarrassing moments and daydreaming about possible future scenarios.
Here’s a practice that shifts your attention to the here and now: Look around, and name the following things in your head:
- 5 things you can see
- 5 things you can hear
- 5 things you can feel
- 5 things you can smell
3. Journaling
Journaling regularly has many benefits, like:
- Helping you understand your feelings
- Letting go of your feelings or past situations
- Reflecting on yourself
- Finding more about yourself by (for example) answering questions
- Practicing gratitude
You don’t have to write many pages daily‒ It’s about including journaling into your current lifestyle and respecting your time limits.
You can start by writing 3 things you are grateful for daily, and brain-dump about your feelings regularly. By actively writing down how you feel, you can release these emotions, making you feel better.
Tip: You can start with a blank journal and decide on your own what you want to write. Or you can follow a guided journal that provides a structure for you, this can be helpful for beginners!
4. Doing something you enjoy
Finding time for yourself and doing something you like makes you feel better.
A hobby could be:
- Creative: painting, drawing, writing, knitting, playing an instrument, cooking, …
- Sporty: tennis, dancing, baseball, football, yoga, pilates, gym, hiking, running, walking, …
- Intellectual: reading, learning about any topic, buying a course, or following free lessons on YouTube, …
- And more
When choosing a hobby, follow what you naturally like or think sounds interesting. Don’t go running if you truly hate running; find an alternative like walking or hiking.
Here are some questions to help you find a hobby:
- What activities are you naturally drawn to?
- What hobbies did you have as a kid?
- What do you currently do in your free time?
- Look at the people you follow on social media; what are they doing that you admire?
- What activities did you always want to try?
5. Taking real rests
We live in a world where everyone is focused on working hard and being productive all the time. But taking rests is so important and productive.
Look at your brain as a muscle you train at the gym. After an intense workout, it needs rest, and in that time, it can recover and grow. Your brain needs recovery time, too!
I often used my rest time to scroll on my phone. But I ended up feeling more tired than before. That’s why it’s important to rest properly.
Here are some things I do to get the most out of my break time:
- Not using my phone
- Making myself a cup of tea and doing nothing, just being by myself in quiet
- Doing some stretching
- And of course, prioritizing sleep at night
Reminder
When reading articles like “10 top healthy habits”, it’s important to keep in mind what being healthy even means or who decides what healthy habits are. Here are 2 of my answers:
- Science and Medicine:
- There’s research about how certain habits influence our well-being.
- For example, eating a balanced diet, sleeping enough, and exercising regularly are considered healthy and come with health benefits
- You and your body:
- You are very important! Healthy habits are supposed to fit you and your lifestyle, they are supposed to make you feel good mentally and physically
- You don’t have to wake up at 5 am if you function better at 8 am
- You don’t have to exercise every day if you don’t have the time and energy
A healthy habit should:
- Leave you happy, not exhausted and annoyed
- Make you enjoy moving your body instead of hating every minute of exercising
- Feel good
- Fit your needs, your available time, and your schedule
Important: Introducing a new habit can be uncomfortable, uneasy, and not always fun. That’s normal and can be minimized by starting slow. But it needs time.
My experience
Like many of us, I fall for it too. I copied many habits from other people on the internet, thinking that when I did it, I would live a healthy lifestyle.
I tried many things like:
- Waking up very early
- Walking 10k steps daily
- Quitting sugar
It didn’t work long because I couldn’t find the time to do them all at once, and I got discouraged.
Besides, I started treating these “Healthy habits” like a chore I had to do, and didn’t enjoy them. It felt like I only did them to check it off my to-do list.
Thinking back, this was not healthy.
Now, I learned to get inspiration from other people’s habits and only implement them into my life if they benefit me and if they align with my goals.
For a long time, I forced myself to walk 10k steps daily because I saw it everywhere on the internet. But by doing so, I lost the joy of walking. I’m currently walking around 6k steps, and it suits my schedule and time much better!
Conclusion
- Healthy habits are essential for your emotional, physical, and mental well-being
- The 5 habits mentioned here can help you create a healthy and balanced lifestyle for yourself
- You have to customize a habit to fit your own needs, schedule, and time
- A habit is not healthy if it doesn’t fit you and makes you feel bad, even though many people around you do it.
What do you think? Have you already tried some of the habits mentioned here? Did they help you, or were you often feeling stressed because you couldn’t fit them all into your schedule?
Feel free to leave your opinion in the comments or write me an email via my contact page!
Read you soon, Lou 😊
