10 Essential Healthy Lifestyle Habits

A healthy aging lifestyle demands more from us than exercising 🏃‍♂️ and eating ‘clean’ 🥒. While these are excellent tools for health, from a holistic perspective we require more to cultivate a healthy lifestyle. Here are some additional ➕ habits we can incorporate into our days for a richer life experience.

Are you in? 😎

If so, let’s learn about some healthy lifestyle habits to start TODAY! 📅

Healthy Habits To Create

So, what are some healthy lifestyle habits we should be adopting? Since healthy aging is about more than just appearance, we need to approach it from a more holistic ☯️ perspective. With that in mind, here’s a list of…

10 Essential Healthy Lifestyle Habits:

~Drink plenty of water 💦

~Eat antioxidant-rich foods 🥗

~Get moving 🚵‍♂️

~Take care of your skin 👒

~Get sufficient sleep 💤

~Engage in a hobby 👩‍🌾

~Create a social network 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

~Challenge your brain 🧩

~Practice positive affirmations 💌

~Rest, relax, rejuvenate 🧖

Now, just for fun, :o) let’s break each of these down into a bit more detail.

Drink Plenty Of Water

This one comes as no surprise as we’ve been hearing this 👂 our entire lives. But…why do you think that is? Because it’s THAT important, that’s why!

Our bodies are made up of approximately 60% water 💧 and its consumption is essential to our very survival. How much is the right amount to consume, though? That’s a good question ❓ and one with an answer that has varied over the years. The best current answer is: it depends on a variety of factors.

As a general rule, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggests an adequate daily fluid intake of:

About 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids a day for men 🥤

About 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) of fluids a day for women 🥤

While these amounts may need to be adjusted depending on factors such as age, activity level 🥾 and environment, for example, it’s a pretty decent estimate. Keep in mind that all your water intake doesn’t necessarily have to come straight from the tap 🚰 (or bottle); it can also be squeezed into your diet in other forms such as teas 🍵 or produce 🥒, to list a couple options.

Sources:

—https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/water/art-20044256

—https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-much-water-should-you-drink

Eat Antioxidant-Rich Foods

You’ve probably heard the nutritional advice to ‘eat the full rainbow’ 🌈 for optimal health. This simply means to eat a wide variety of fresh produce 🥬 to include ALL the colors. Think:

• Red–radishes, red bell peppers, strawberries, cherries 🔴

• Orange–carrots, orange bell peppers, oranges, mango 🟠

• Yellow–yellow bell peppers, yellow squash, lemons, bananas 🟡

• Green–kale, spinach, kiwi, green apples 🟢

• Blue–butterfly pea flower, blueberries 🔵

• Indigo/Violet–eggplant, purple cabbage, grapes, plums 🟣

This is ideal because you not only get a wide variety of flavors, but you also get a wider variety of nutrients 🔠 to keep your body healthy. Things like phytonutrients 🥗, antioxidants, fiber as well as macro and micro-nutrients are jam-packed into fresh produce, so expand your palate and reap the benefits!

https://amzn.to/3W6Dyau

Try my recipe for homemade, creamy dreamy blue vegan ice cream!

Ingredients:

~1 cup creamy milk alternative (coconut 🥥 milk, oatmilk)

~1 Tbsp. 🥄 blue matcha powder (butterfly pea powder)

~3/4 cup granulated sugar (I used Whole Earth 🌍 Allulose Blend)

~2 cups plant-based 🌿 heavy cream

~1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract 🧴

Directions:

~whisk the milk 🥛 with the blue matcha powder and sugar until well combined.

~stir in the heavy cream and vanilla.

~pour into ice cream machine* and freeze according to your user manual’s 📑 instructions. Mine took 25-30 minutes.

ENJOY! 🍦

*I use this Cuisinart version:

https://amzn.to/3xW74Yu

*This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn small commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.

Get Moving

Get a little movement 💃 in every day for optimal health. It doesn’t really matter how you do it; just be sure to pick something you enjoy to ensure you’ll stick with it. You’re not limited to just walking 🚶‍♀️, either. Think of all the activities you like and maybe try a variety each week to keep your body guessing what’s coming next!

Some ideas to try:

It’s important to know your personality when choosing an activity. If you’re an introvert 🏡 and/or self-motivated, walking, swimming or online classes 💻 at home might be good options for you. For more extroverted types and/or those who need a little external motivation, doing a group activity 🏸 or going to a class might be more appropriate. Think dancing, martial arts or going to an aerobics class in a gym.

Let me know what your favorites activities are!

Take Care Of Your Skin

As an Esthetician 💆, this is one of my favorite topics! It seems like people tend to ignore their skin or treat it as an afterthought. Many people simply don’t pay enough attention to the fact that the skin is an organ…and the body’s largest one at that! It does so much for us, and from a medical perspective 🔍, we need to keep it healthy!

How do we do this? By keeping a consistent 📅 skin care routine, eating a healthy diet 🥭, drinking sufficient water 🚰 and getting enough ZZZ’s 🛌!

Get Sufficient Sleep

In our modern rush-rush society, sleep 😴 is an area where people tend to skimp on in order to fit more into their busy schedules. While it seems like a necessary way to increase our productivity, it ends up doing the opposite. It depletes energy ⬇️, disrupts normal hormonal signals and ends up causing weight gain, elevated blood pressure and a host of other health problems!

How much sleep is enough? According to the CDC the amount of sleep that the average adult needs will depend on various factors, but 7-8 hours a night* is a pretty good estimate.

Experiment with various sleep schedules and see what works best for you. Some people find they have more energy 🔋 and can get more done during the day if they go to sleep relatively early and wake up before dawn. I know that’s the case for me. The night owls 🦉find they’re more productive at night. Test your own natural tendencies and decide what works best for you.

*Source: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/work-hour-training-for-nurses/longhours/mod2/08.html

Engage In A Hobby

Make sure you’re not spending ALL of your time trying to ‘be productive’. Our minds 🧠 and bodies need various outlets of expression and finding a hobby (or hobbies!) that you enjoy is a great way for some well-rounded self-expression! Make sure to spend a little time each day (or each week) doing something that you enjoy.

Some hobby ideas are:

~gardening 👩‍🌾

~singing 🎤

~learning to play an instrument 🎷

~reading 📚

~cooking/baking 🧁

~arts and crafts 🎨

~learning a new language 🈴

What are your favorite hobbies? Are there new ones you would like to try?

Create A Social Network

Many modern societies are structured around individualism, and we’ve lost many of the benefits of tribe connectivity in this transition. We also center our ideas of health 🩺 around the physical but the trend towards a holistic approach is growing. One way this shift is highlighted is in the importance identified in having a network of friends 👭 and family upon whom you can rely. So, make sure to keep your loved ones 👩‍❤️‍👩 near and remember that healthy relationships involve give and take. Be sure to make these relationships a priority in your life!

Studies have shown a correlation between healthy social connections and a person’s overall wellbeing. The American Psychological Association weighs in: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/hea-0000103.pdf

So, call up your BFF, text 📲 your family members, plan a party, schedule a date 🍽️…whatever! Just stay involved and develop the important relationships in your life.

Challenge Your Brain

To keep the mind active, it’s important to challenge it every day. This keeps our neural synapses firing, keeps our neuroplasticity ‘flexible’ and may help to prevent early onset of dementia.

Ways to keep the brain challenged include:

~play games 🎲

~do puzzles 🧩

~use your non-dominant hand 👐

~take a different route 🛣️

~learn a new language 🈸

~read mystery novels 📚

What are some of your favorite ways to keep your mind engaged and your critical thinking skills sharp?

Practice Positive Affirmations

Too many of us regularly engage in negative self-talk. This has got to stop 🛑. We need to replace this bad habit with positive ➕ affirmations instead. Your mind believes what you tell it, so why would we feed it anything other than positivity? It’s important to repeat these affirmations to yourself every day at least 10 times. Listen to the words and allow yourself to believe them. Make them true. Absorb 🧽 them. Become them.

Some positive affirmations you can begin to incorporate today are:

There are infinite possibilities when it comes to affirmations. It’s important to listen to the stories you normally tell yourself and then flip the script by creating positive affirmations.

Feel free to list some of your positive affirmations in the comments!

Try this FREE challenge: A Month of Empowering Positive Affirmations | Health is Harmony

Rest, Relax, Rejuvenate!

Finally, be sure that your healthy lifestyle habits include time for rest 🧖 and relaxation in order to rejuvenate! Apart from your nightly shut-eye 😴, make sure to include a few minutes (at least!) each day for some relaxation. This can be anything from lingering over a cup of tea 🍵 to sitting out in nature 🌳 for 10 minutes.

Some more ideas are:

What’s your favorite way to relax?

How To Create Sustainable Healthy Lifestyle Habits

Great! Now that we know some essential healthy lifestyle habits to adopt, how do we make them sustainable? We’ve all had good intentions that died away after a few weeks 📅 (or days) of effort. Think of New Year’s resolutions 🎉. One of the most popular ones is weight loss. People are so motivated for results that they make drastic changes on day one. They go from unhealthy habits on December 31st to a complete overhaul on January 1st. This is destined to fail for the majority of us. Why? It’s too drastic of a change to maintain long enough to see results.

The trick is to create small, daily changes. This makes them more manageable.

In the weight loss example given, for instance, one method would be to change one daily meal for a salad 🥗 and do that every day for a week or two until it becomes a habit. Once established, continue this habit and build onto it. The next daily change: replace all beverages with water 🚰. Do that for two weeks before moving on to the next goal. And so on. This is a lot easier to integrate into a lifestyle than an immediate and complete overhaul.

Let me know how things are going for you in your healthy lifestyle quest! I hope these tips have inspired you to try some new things!

Thanks for joining me and, until next time…🤗