Making big changes is hard but a lot of tiny changes go into making those big ones happen and tiny changes are easy. In your quest for health always look at your big goal, the big change you want to make as a series of small, easy changes. We’ve outlined six easy health habits you can incorporate into your daily routine, one a week for six weeks.
Week 1: Invest in a Slow Cooker
Most slow cooker recipes are pretty easy, you dump all the ingredients in the night before, flip it on in the morning before you head off to work and when you come home ta-da! Dinner! This will help reduce the temptation to eat out because you’re exhausted after work.
Week 2: Trade in Soda for Flavored Sparkling Water
If you’re a heavy soda drinker, quitting cold turkey and substituting soda with water might be pretty hard. Water just seems so…blah. Solution: try substituting a can or two of your regular soda intake with flavored sparkling water. It’s water, which is all kinds of good for you, with a splash of flavor and the fizzy goodness of soda. Slowly increase the number of flavored sparkling waters while decreasing the number of sodas you drink. Before you know it, you’ll be soda-free!
Week 3: Stretch for 5-10 Minutes Every Morning and Evening
Learn a few simple yoga moves and get your stretch on after you wake-up and before you go to bed at night. Stretching lends some pretty great health benefits such as increased circulation, decreased muscle stiffness, can improve posture, and more. Plus it feels so dang NICE!
Week 4: Do 10 Push-ups and 10 Sit-ups Every Morning
It doesn’t take very long to knock-out 10 push-ups and 10 sit-ups every morning, you’ll get the blood flowing and the groggy post-wake-up cobwebs out of your head before you start the day.
Week 5: Eat Slowly
We get it, you’re busy, it’s a miracle you even had time in the day for eating but please, slow down. Eating too fast makes it easy to eat more than you need to. Once you start eating, it takes about 20 minutes for your noggin to send out signals of fullness. Feeling full = eating less.
Week 6: Pick-up a Resistance Band and Bring it to Work
Resistance Bands are great for quick bouts of physical activity. They’re extremely portable, light-weight and incredibly versatile. Bring one to keep at work, pull it out when you have some downtime or when you get those stress inducing, head exploding emails/phone calls – remember, exercise helps relieve stress too.