3 Proven Strategies To Create Healthy Habits That Will Make You Healthier
One of the biggest complaints I hear from busy mamas who come to me to help them lose weight is that they don’t have time to create new healthy habits. And Mama, I. Get. It. I’m a busy mom too, and I don’t have any extra time to devote to something that may or may not work. But I’ve also learned that creating healthy habits is worth my time.
Yes, learning new habits is HARD. But in the end, most of the healthy habits I’ve learned to implement have given me time back!
For example, meal planning is a huge barrier for busy moms who want to eat better. There’s a myth circulating about meal planning that says you have to spend a ton of time to meal plan, that it will be hard and horrible and you’ll hate it.
But Mama, that’s just a myth. I’ve been meal planning for years and it takes me 15-30 minutes a week to meal plan - and that includes online grocery shopping!
Not only does meal planning save me time each week, but it makes every day less stressful! Because I meal plan I don’t have to worry about not having the right ingredients on hand to make what I want to make. I also don’t have to spend a huge portion of my day coming up with an idea of what to eat based on everyone’s mood and food preferences.
All I have to do is wake up and prepare the food I planned. And if my kids don’t like what’s on the menu, I usually have leftovers in the fridge they can have instead.
Now, meal planning wasn’t always like this. For a while I struggled, but I took the time to learn how to meal plan and implement the habit into my life, it’s made meal times so much simpler!
Today, I’m not going to tell you what healthy habits you need to implement, but I am going to help you learn how to start adding healthy habits to your life in a way that will last. Because let’s be honest, we’ve all said we’re going to start working out or start cooking at home more often, but following through is the hardest part!
Some of these tips may require you to change how you think about yourself, but that may be the best habit change of all.
Envision the healthy life you want
I know that “envisioning the life you want” feels a little woo-woo, but hear me out. In order to create a healthy life, you need to know what that looks like for you! If you don’t have a clear vision of who or what you’re working towards, then you will not get there.
This quote explains it perfectly: “A goal is achieved twice, once in the mind and once in the physical world.”
If you want to lose weight, learn how to cook, or start lifting heavy weights you have to change your “I can’t” to “I can!” And the first place that starts is in your mind.
Literally, everything starts with our thoughts. Think about it, you don’t take action without a thought! Some thoughts are less conscious (like we don’t actively think about breathing, but we keep doing it) but it still requires a thought.
If you aren’t familiar with dreaming or envisioning your goals try this: close your eyes and imagine yourself as if you’ve already accomplished your goal. What does your life look like? Answer the following questions to help determine what life looks like once you’ve accomplished your goal.
What is different now that you’ve accomplished your goal?
How do you feel about yourself?
What do your relationships look like?
Do you have more energy?
How has your attitude towards yourself changed?
How do you show up for yourself?
How do you show up for others?
How do you feel now that you’ve accomplished your goal? (Peaceful, productive, adventurous, excited)
What does a day in your new life look like?
This next part is the secret sauce to envisioning your life: write down your answers! It doesn’t matter how you write your dreams down. You can write it was bullet points, or like a story you want to live out. Whatever works best for you! But the key is that you put it down on paper.
You’re much more likely to accomplish your goals and dreams if they live in the physical world and in your mind. (Did you see how that came full circle? haha!)
Map out your goal
Now that you have an idea of where you’re going, you need a plan to get you there. I always say, “What you can measure, you can manage” and I want you to remember that as you’re mapping out your goals.
One of the biggest problems I see women make when they’re setting goals is setting outcome-based goals; like, I want to lose 20 lbs. This seems like a great goal, it can be measured, so it checks that box. But there are two problems with outcome-based goals, first, you can’t always control the outcomes and second, they don’t tell you how to achieve your goal.
Instead of saying “I want to lose 20 lbs” you could set habit-based goals. With habit-based goals, you can actually control the results!
For instance, if you want to eat healthier, you can set a goal to eat 30 grams of protein at each meal. That’s totally controllable! Or you could say, I’m going to do 5 strength training workouts a week. Again, you can easily control what workouts you do! And these habit-based goals are going to set you up to lose the 20 lbs you want to lose!
Implement habit stacking
One of my favorite tricks for implementing healthy habits is habit stacking. It comes from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. Which, if you haven’t read you absolutely should! I reread it every year, it’s that good!
Habit stacking is a super easy principle to understand. You start with a habit that you already do every day and “stack” the new habit you want to add on.
This is the formula James Clear recommends:
After/Before [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].
Let’s walk through an example so that it makes more sense. Let’s say you like to wake up and drink a cup of coffee every morning. That’s a current habit that is already well-established in your life. And let’s say the new habit you want to start implementing is planning out your food for the day.
When habit stacking after you make your coffee, you would sit down and meal plan for the day. Combining the two activities makes it easier to make time for your new habit and it’s more likely to stick.
There’s a lot of science behind how the brain creates connections that make habit stacking successful and you can learn more in Atomic Habits or from James’ website. The most important thing is to be consistent with your habit stacking so that the brain can create those connections and you can create healthy habits.
Now, I completely understand that it’s easy to read a blog post like this or listen to a podcast about how to create healthy habits but it’s a whole other thing to actually push through the discomfort of actually creating those habits.
I’ve given you a great groundwork here, but if it’s not enough, then let’s chat! I help busy women shed 40-65 lbs without resorting to shakes, pills, shots, or sacrificing their love for food. And I do all that while helping women let go of food guilt and shame so that they can live happy, fit lives.
If you’re ready to achieve your dreams, then schedule a Healthy Mama Blueprint call, and together we can map out a plan to get you to your goals.
