Top 7 Tips for Getting and Staying Healthy
Unlock Your Best Self: 7 Practical Tips for a Healthier Lifestyle | Making Monica’s Holistic Living Guide
Hello, and congratulations-you’re here! I am so excited that you have decided to become healthier. Welcome to MakingMonica, your one-stop shop for living a holistic life. Learning to balance it all can feel daunting. Sometimes, you might even wonder where to start. I get it, we have all been there. Thankfully you have me to walk you through living a well-balanced life, body, mind and spirit.
Maybe you wonder: “Should I follow a vegan diet, a whole30 diet, paleo, vegetarian, Mediterranean?” It’s ok, let’s begin by starting with what you know.
Don’t know if you should use paper or plastic because they are both harmful to the environment, or should you eat wild-caught fish, or farm-raised, or neither or both? Maybe don’t start there? However, do you love gardening and want to learn how to grow indoor plants that help clean the air? That would be a great place to begin.
So let’s get into how to begin your amazing journey to a healthy spectacular life. Go grab yourself a cup of coffee and settle in for all the ways to learn how to live a healthy, well-balanced life.
Let’s begin with With your mindset
- Don’t overthink it. Whatever healthy choice you make is the right choice. Whenever my kids have to make a difficult choice, I always tell them to start with what they already know and go from there.
- Go easy on yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day- give yourself some grace to start with what you know.
- Patience. Sometimes when you make that decision to start living a more healthy life, one is tempted to go all in. While that works for some people I wouldn’t say it works for most. Start with 2 or 3 areas you feel most confident in. Don’t like to cook? Then maybe don’t start with going 100% vegan. Changing your way of eating is not always eating especially if you already don’t like cooking. This will set you up for failure, maybe choose something you feel like you can be successful at. Maybe you can bike to work rather than drive, or shop at a thrift store rather than that new sweater? There are lots of ways to live a healthy lifestyle. Choose what works best for you.
- Get the family or friends involved- there is nothing more rewarding than to have support. Ask hubby to learn a new vegan dish with you, or ask your bestie to sign up for that 5k you’ve been thinking of doing
- Challenge yourself, and start believing in yourself rather than telling yourself you can’t do it because it’s just too hard. Nothing worth having was ever easy you are worth it.
- Set a goal
- Subscribe to my blog for lots of tips tools and resources to be your one-stop shop for resources and recipes.
1. Start with what you already know- choose 2-3 categories you either already know or like.
How do you decide what your top 3 starting points are? Let’s evaluate your lifestyle:
Do you love hiking in the woods and feel connected to the earth? Maybe choose to begin with sustainability. Here are some ways to do so:: https://sustainability.uconn.edu/2020/04/07/the-three-rs-order-is-important/
Hey, maybe you’re like me and you love food- I mean I love food so much I am working on a cook book to share with everyone! Food is my drug, Start by choosing one night a week to make a healthier dinner. Once you begin to have enough recipes under your belt and you can find different ways to cook using healthier ingredients, add one more night and so on. It takes a while to change the way you eat. Foods are emotional check out this article explaining how we are emotionally attached to food: https://embracingnutrition.co.uk/emotional-attachment-to-food/
Stress eating and addiction to foods isn’t just for adults. Many pre-teens and teens along with their families struggle to eat a well balanced diet. With all the available junk food and sugary drinks disguised as coffees are hard to resist, and can become overwhelming.
What is emotional eating? https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/emotional-eating.html
You can also check out a few of my recipes here: ( this is where i don’t know how I share recipes?)
Love swimming? Start by reducing your plastic use and find was to conserve your water use. Read my blog on ways to reduce plastic use.
Well, I am sure you are getting the idea-do what you love- and this will help set you up for success. Don’t know which one you are? Thanks ok, that can happen when we are already feeling overwhelmed, don’t sweat it, I can help you determine where a good place to start would be for you-send me a message and we can chat.
Don’t overthink it, we can sometimes get really flustered with all of the things on our to do list, that when we do have the time to sit down and research the best water filters, or do those Stanley cups really have lead in them (they don’t by the way), we can feel exasperated and wind up down the rabbit hole, convincing ourselves that we definitely should try to make quinoa bread- according the the girl on tik-tok anyone can do it.
How can you even begin to discern what diet life-style would be the right one for you. Should you go plant based? You heard on a Netflix series it was the healthiest diet-all the Blue Zones primarily have vegan diets. What are blue zones you ask?
Don’t worry that’s for another time. Or should you do the Keto diet-your co-worker lost tons of weight on that one and you’ve been meaning to drop a few pounds- or wait the Mediterranean diet is recommended by heart doctors-you read that on Reddit.
No wonder our heads are spinning and we are paralyzed with choice over load. Bombarded by so much different information, it’s like drinking water from a fire hose. How anxiety inducing that makes all of us feel.
Here is how I made my decision-I choose the one that I thought would fit my lifestyle. I have chronic health issues that I know respond well to a Mediteranean Diet and I also really like the flavor profile.
So, just choose what diet helps you reach your goal-don’t know what your goal is? Reach out, I can help you narrow down your goals and we can determine together what diet would work for you.
2.) Go easy on yourself.
We take it easy on our friends, and family, and co workers, if they make a mistake or have a small set back-we encourage them to keep going-we would tell them, ‘You got this”. So, be your best friend-speak to yourself the exact way.
Tell yourself “It’s ok if you messed up today or this week or even this month. We all have set backs”.-get up-dust yourself off-give yourself a hug or high five, and be so proud that you are not quitting. I have started and stopped so many times, I can’t even count them. I stopped beating myself up.
We are already under so much pressure to be perfect, we don’t need to put ourselves down by shaming ourselves for having a minor set back. Girlfriend, YOU are not perfect, and thank God for that-right? Make mistake, fail, just don’t ever quit. You got this! I believe in you.
3.)Patience is truly a virtue
I was one of the least patient before I decided to make a change in my life, I was always stressed and anxious. I remember needing a biopsy after my transplant, to make sure it wasn’t showing signs of rejection-and I was trying to hurry up the surgeon so I could take my family up to the lake.
However, I learned that being patient and always being busy and hurried is a sign of PTSD or CPTSD-read more about this in a later post.
When I learned how to use breathwork and meditation to help regulate my nervous system, I learned patience. It is not going to happen overnight-change is hard and it takes time. I always say if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
4.) Accountability
One of my favorite tips for being successful in reaching your health goals is find an accountability partner, If it’s that you want to lose weight, join a gym that has a great community.
Check out @burnbootcamp. I also love cooking, and a fun way that worked for my family, is I got the family involved and they got to help cut up veggies, and chop up fruits. We made desserts together, like a homemade pumpkin pie (check out recipe coming soon) There are a lot of resources these days to join a group.
Check out Meet-Up or find a group on Facebook. This will double your chances of being successful.
5.) Challenge yourself.
This one sounds a lot easier than I actually think it is. We can convince ourselves certain things are not for us. Maybe you want to go back to school and earn a degree, or you want to start a business, but you keep telling yourself that you’re too old, or not smart enough.
Change your mindset (check out my next few blogs with simple steps to help you change your thoughts) and start telling yourself you can do it. Getting over our fear is no easy feet-so start small. It might be fun to try out a new recipe you’ve never tried before.
This is a great way to start building trust in yourself that you can do hard things.
6.) Set goals.
As a runner, I had a hard time with discipline unless I has a goal to shoot for. I was much more consistent when I had a goal, with a date and an achievable time frame. Think about giving yourself a year- or if you want to reach your goal sooner and it is actually attainable-write it on the calendar.
Give yourself a dead-line. So take a deep breath, and know this is going to take a little time. There are no quick fixes to making lifestyle changes-but trust me it will be worth it.
7.)Need more ideas on where to start and how to keep going? Subscribe to my blog and I will be there every step of the way, helping you on your journey.
