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Anyone who has ever attempted to stick to a fitness routine or cut out junk food knows just how hard it is to put an end to bad habits. That’s because bad habits start for a reason, and good intentions alone aren’t enough to deliver significant behaviour change.
There are three necessary conditions needed to drive behaviour change: capability, motivation and opportunity. This means if you want to eat healthily, but don’t have time to prepare healthy meals you won’t have the opportunity. If you want to boost your mental health but don’t know how, you don’t yet have the capability to do this, and if you want to get more active but feel tired, you will lack the motivation to do this.
So, challenging as the recent lockdown has been, one of the positives is more time and opportunity to make better lifestyle decisions. But if you’re still struggling to make healthier lifestyle choices, here some key steps to get you started…
Four ways to make healthy choices:
1. Get more sleep
When we’re tired, our motivation to make healthy choices is severely diminished, increasing our desire to eat junk food and reducing our desire to exercise. Our hectic lives before the lockdown meant 35% of people were getting less than seven hours sleep a night, but less time spent commuting means most of us now have the opportunity to get more rest, so don’t waste this by staying up late looking at screens. Think about how much more energised and productive you want to feel the next day, set a digital curfew, avoid caffeine after lunch and try to establish a regular bedtime, to make getting enough sleep a healthy habit you’ll naturally want to do.
2. Boost your activity
Gyms might be closed, but the longer warmer days, less commuting and more flexible working means now is the ideal time to get fit. Whereas once you would have had to muster the energy and confidence to go down to your local leisure centre, now you can experiment with classes from experts all over the world, in the comfort of your own home. So, find something that you enjoy and that inspires you!
3. Fuel your body
Working from home means we now have the time and opportunity to prepare healthy food from nutritious ingredients in our own home. But, if you find yourself reaching for your favourite take-away menu over one of your five-a-day, strengthen your resolve by creating a meaningful reason to change your behaviour. This could be as simple as wanting to have more energy, taking up a hobby you have always been interested in, avoiding preventable diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, or being there for your children in the future.
4. Support your mind
Our mental and physical health are inextricably intertwined. If we feel flat, we lack the energy to exercise and crave junk food. Research has shown that exercising and eating well improves our mood. So boost your mental health in lockdown by doing active things, like calling a friend or going for a walk to connect with nature, instead of just passive things, like watching TV. Talk about your feelings and do things that give you joy.
Africa
