5 Healthy habits to improve your life

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5 habits that can improve your health 

There are certain things that we never think of. We are so busy scrolling through the screens of social media on our smartphones that we never realize we have a body and we should take care of it.

You can simply take good care of your body by adding these simple habits to your daily routine.

What is a habit?

A habit is a routine or behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously over time. When you do something over and over again, your mind thinks of it as an important task and it happens automatically.

How do you create a new habit? 

Adopting a habit is a challenging task, but it is not an impossible task. It begins with a thought that you want to change. Anything is possible if you have a desire to accomplish something.

Here are some healthy habits that you should adopt:

1. Wake up early

Waking up early is one of the most challenging tasks that I see people face. It’s not easy to leave your cozy bed and all your dreams - especially when it’s winter. You don’t want to leave your blanket.

If you want to be successful in your life, you need to get up earlier. We are more likely to be productive in the earlier hours of the day and we are more likely to do unhealthy or destructive things late at night.

The Bible says “He who loves to sleep and the folding of hands, poverty will set upon you like a thief in the night." (Proverbs 24:33-34)

How can you wake up earlier?

I am here to tell you the easiest way possible. I will not ask you to set an alarm for 4 AM or 5 AM in the morning.

Let’s suppose you go to bed at 1 PM and wake up at 9 AM. All that you have to do is set an alarm of 10 minutes earlier than you usually do.

This will save you 10 minutes. Do this every day. You’ll see that you are getting up earlier without any trouble. 

It may be possible that you fail at some point. That’s OK. Don't criticize yourself. Just move on and focus on the next day.

Remember that failure is a teacher. Try to learn from the mistake you’ve made and try not to repeat it again. This will help you to improve a little bit every day.

Waking up early has many benefits and it will keep your body healthy. You will see that you are being more productive and more successful in your work after a few days.

2. Exercise everyday

As you already know, exercising is very important for your physical health. Exercising has many benefits. Exercise everyday if you don’t want to go to the doctor too often.

Exercise will keep your bones, heart, lungs and all internal organs healthy.

The best time to exercise is in the morning after waking up. If you can't do it in the morning then you can do it in the evening.

I encourage you to exercise every day. Some people start exercising but they quit because it hurts at first. I know that it hurts at first. Remember that the pain is temporary. It will last for a day or for a week but quitting lasts forever. The more you sweat the better.

3. Drink fresh fruit juice

There are amazing benefits to drinking fruit juice like detoxification, weight loss, vitamin and mineral consumption and prevention of unhealthy cravings.

It can be any fresh fruit juice like orange juice, Aloe Vera juice, lemon juice, kiwi juice, cucumber juice and many more.

Try to make it a habit to stay healthy. If not every day, then try to have fresh fruit juice at least 3-4 times a week.

4. Drink water while sitting

I see a lot of people drinking water while standing. Drinking water this way can be harmful.

Since the water moves directly, the required vitamins and minerals don’t reach the liver and digestive tract. This also disturbs the oxygen levels and you risk placing a burden on your heart and lungs.

It is better to drink water while sitting. Sip on it slowly to reach maximum hydration. We should drink 2-3 liters of water every day. Drinking room temperature water is recommendable over cold water.

5. Schedule your time 

If you want to be productive, it is necessary that you manage your time well. Doing the same good things at the same time everyday will increase your productivity.

When it’s the time for lunch, you should do lunch. When it’s the time to rest you should rest.

This brings efficiency in our work because our body gets familiar with it. Your body will adapt to your schedule and prime itself for digestion at lunch time. Your brain will prime itself for relaxation if you relax at the same time every day.

Try to plan your schedule to get the best out of the day.

Thanks for reading! I hope it helps you.

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Gratitude improved my life.

I kept a gratitude journal for 30 days

I have heard a lot about how beneficial writing in a gratitude journal can be.

Gratitude is a great long term strategy to cope with depression and mental lethargy because it trains your brain to focus on the positive aspects of your life.

Our minds are constantly adapting to the information that we feed it.

Left to its own devices, the brain will naturally focus on negativity

It is natural to focus on the negative instead of the positive. In fact, it helped us to survive many years ago.

Obsessing over possible dangers helped us to avoid situations that could potentially kill us. Focusing on the things that were wrong with our lives helped us to fix them so that they did not become permanent.

Focusing on the negative helped to keep us safe and build a life that had as little resistance as possible.

In today’s world where survival isn’t that hard to accomplish, the things that bother us mentally aren’t matters of life and death.

They have morphed into less consequential things like what other people think of us and what our future will look like.

Although the things that bother us don’t threaten our survival, our minds will still fixate on them with the same measure of intensity.

By focusing on the positive, we give our minds a break from negative emotions that can destroy our health. 

We slowly learn how to enjoy the comforts that we do have: good food, beneficial relationships and enjoyable activities.

Positive emotions improve our health and negative emotions cause health issues.

Happy brain, happy body

Positivity is physically good for your health

Positivity has a whole range of health benefits.

Good feelings increase physical energy and learning ability.

They also help us to avoid bad habits and stick to good ones. You need less motivation to do something when you are in a good mood.

Serotonin, the happiness hormone that is associated with comfort and feeling good, helps to regulate mental function. It increases the rate at which your body can recover from injury and facilitates the resting process.

This can lead to better sleep quality and feeling more refreshed.

Dopamine increases the brain’s learning capability and increases the length of time that we can spend doing certain tasks.

Dopamine release, for example, explains why we can focus intently on a series that we enjoy, but struggle to pay attention 5 minutes into a work meeting.

Dopamine is also a major contributor to the kind of habits we have. Addictions like smoking, drug and alcohol abuse keep us coming back for more because they stimulate dopamine release (but decrease it over time). 

People with naturally lower-than-usual levels of dopamine are more likely to partake in addictive behavior.

People who naturally produce higher amounts of dopamine are more likely to make better life choices and gravitate towards healthier activities like exercise, self-improvement and learning.

Improve your mood.

My experiment: How I felt to begin with

My story is less extreme than many who would typically benefit from keeping a gratitude journal.

I don’t struggle with depression.

You might be wondering why I would try this experiment if I don’t feel any urgency to reshape my emotions.

I wanted to see if keeping a gratitude journal would show me any noticeable differences in the health benefits that I described above.

The rules of my experiment

To make sure that I stayed on the right track, I chose to abide by the following rules:

1. Write a gratitude journal once a day

I decided to do this at night because I could focus on it without being distracted by all the tasks that I had to get done.

Doing it at the end of the day also meant that I had an entire day’s worth of thoughts and experiences that I could be thankful for. 

2. Write in two separate sections every day: Things I feel thankful for and things I should be thankful for

I decided to separate the list into two parts.

The first part consisted of things that I am actually glad about.

If I needed to think of something that I should be thankful for just because some people don’t have the privileges that I do, or simply to fill up the page, I’d add it to the other side.

3. Write a quick anecdote about any changes that I experienced because of the gratitude journal

I thought that it would be very interesting to see how my experience changed over the course of the month.

Would there be any differences between day 1 and day 10? The anecdotal notes would make up the report that I could share with you.

Hold yourself accountable.

The results of gratitude

Here are some of the highlights of the notes that I took about this experiment.

Day 1

I was planning to spend 5 minutes on this, but it ended up taking just under an hour. It was easy for me to think about things that I am thankful for.

I feel a little guilty about not feeling thankful for things that I take for granted. I’m worried about whether I can think of new things to write down tomorrow.

Overall, I feel really energized and happy. I’m in a much better mood than I thought I’d be!

Day 2

I was in such a great mood last night that I struggled to fall asleep. I was too excited about how well I'm actually doing to calm down.

I’m not grateful for that! I slept lighter than usual. It was easy for me to get out of bed this morning.

A few people asked me why I was so happy. This is weird because I have only done this once so far and haven't told anybody about my experiment.

I thought that I acted normal - just like any other day.

Whenever something good happened to me, I felt good about having something to write about later.

Today made me realize that a lot more good things happen to me than I realize.

I was tempted to write some of these things down so that I don’t forget, but decided to limit this experiment to my nighttime routine.

Day 3

I struggled to fall asleep for the second night in a row because of the excitement.

I’m wondering if I should do this in the morning instead.

I felt sleepier during work – most likely because I haven’t been sleeping as well as usual.

Day 9

My sleep has finally returned back to normal. I might be sleeping better than usual now, but not sure.

I get sleepy when I start writing in my journal - probably because I associate it with bed time. Maybe it lowers my stress level (which is known to interfere with sleep).

I have noticed that I am a lot calmer and I don’t stress about certain things like I used to. Everything else feels the same.

Day 10

It is just me or is my life actually improving since I started this!?

Not intrinsic like my energy levels and stuff, but more good things are happening to me.

I’ve had really great opportunities come my way the last few days. People are being super nice and generous towards me for no reason. Maybe being positive has somehow set something off?

It's worth the effort.

End of gratitude notes

The other days were typical ‘I feel good’, ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ and ‘I like the way I feel’, etc.

I must say that my life has improved in ways that I didn’t expect.

I was more successful at things that I was trying to accomplish with work and people seemed to gravitate towards me.

Maybe they sensed the positivity and wanted it for themselves?

It has also been a lot easier to stick to my workout and diet plans. I’ve made less bad health decisions during the last 30 days than usual.

The last two benefits are definitely worth the time that it took to complete this task.

Last word on gratitude

This experiment was a big eye opener for me. I get why gratitude journals are all the rage right now.

I have since decided to keep doing this - but in a slightly different way.

Instead of writing in a journal, I am going to make an effort to think about the things that I am grateful for throughout the day.

Every time that I do this, I must mentally list all the good things that have happened to me since the last time that I did it.

I highly recommend that you try this for at least a few weeks to discover the benefits for yourself.

Gratitude is awesome.

Preventative measures that encourages a healthy lifestyle

Preventative measures for a healthy lifestyle

What are the four preventative health measures and how do I implement them? Let's find out:

Preventative measures that encourages healthy lifestyle

1. Avoid excess sugar intake from food and beverages
2. Do not consume alcohol, nicotine and other addictive substances
3. Keep processed food consumption to a minimum
4. Balance out stressful situations to protect your overall health

If you can follow all 4 of the preventative health measures, you can encourage a healthy lifestyle within your daily life. Each of these preventative measures will help you to protect yourself from health complications that occur directly because of unhealthy living.

1. Avoid excess sugar intake

Sugar is the body's primary source of energy. Every cell in the human body needs it to survive. If you took all of the sugar out of the body, you would die. Too much of it, though, can have disastrous effects.

Sugar is not as prevalent in the natural world as it is in today's modern diet. In nature, sugar would be very hard to find.

Our brains are hard-wired to find the best sources of sugar. The sugar content of food is a key indicator of what kind of foods are edible and what foods are not edible. If something had a lot of sugar in it, it was a good source of energy and nutrients.

Sugar triggers the release of a brain hormone called dopamine. It is known as our reward hormone. The brain does this to tell us to return to the place where we found the sugar-filled food so that we can get all of its nutrients before the food source is depleted.

Food with lots of sugar in nature (like fruit and vegetables) is always accompanied with important vitamins and minerals.

Food manufacturers have taken advantage of the dopamine-releasing effects of sugar. They dramatically increase the amount of sugar in their products so that we choose their product over other competitors. This leads to a rapid increase in the sugar content of processed food because products with more sugar are rewarded with higher sales.

Companies add as much sugar as they can to their products - just before the sweetness gets too much and negatively affects the taste. This is known as the bliss point.

Our bodies were never made to handle such high amounts of sugar.

Sugar is hygroscopic. This means that it attracts and holds onto water. Too much sugar in the blood stream will pull water out of cells. Cells then die of dehydration. This is why people with diabetes (too much sugar in the blood) start to have poor blood circulation and, eventually, end up with rotting limbs. Blood sugar prevents cells from getting the water and nutrients that they need because they are stuck to the sugar in the blood stream.

Too much sugar is bad for you.

2. Don't consume alcohol, nicotine and other addictive substances

Addictive substances also cause the release of the reward hormone, dopamine. This will have serious consequences for your mental health and physical health. Your brain will adapt to the constant release of dopamine in two ways. 

Firstly, it will try to control the access release of dopamine by secreting less of it each time. The more often you do something that releases too much dopamine; you will get less and less dopamine. You will need to do more of the activity to get the same amount of dopamine (or pleasure). That is how these substances become addictive.

Secondly, you brain will lower its sensitivity to dopamine in order to restore a state of balance (the body's drive to restore balance by counteracting certain behaviors is called homeostasis). When your sensitivity to dopamine decreases, you don't feel as much pleasure from certain activities as what you used to. You won't enjoy a hot bath, a good conversation with friends or the pleasure of achieving something great in the same way as other people who are still sensitive to dopamine. This is why people who are addicted to substances almost always have less motivational drive than those who aren't.

Low dopamine levels, for the reasons listed above, can lead to depression, disturbed sleep, low energy and a lack of motivation to live your best life.

Addictive substances also have withdrawal symptoms of their own. Did you know that nicotine, for example, throws you into a state of withdrawal within 30 minutes - and can last for over 6 months? Imagine having to go through withdrawal every 30 minutes that you don't smoke - talk about a ball and chain!

You lose more than you gain.

3. Keep unprocessed food consumption to a minimum

Sugar is not the only negative side effect of eating too much processed food. Preservatives in processed food kill your body in the same way that they kill germs. They just take longer to do it because you are much bigger than a germ.

Artificial flavors and artificial colors are unnatural chemicals. Our bodies were made to eat natural food exclusively. These chemicals load our bodies with harmful toxins that block important processes.

Artificial sweeteners are worse than sugar and lead to high blood pressure, obesity, sugar addiction, cholesterol, heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

My life is too important.

Negative health risks from processed food:

1. Heart disease
2. Cancer
3. Diabetes
4. Metabolic syndrome
5. Obesity
6. Insomnia
7. Headaches
8. Depression
9. Lack of energy
10. Low libido
11. Hormone imbalances
12. Weak bones that tend to break more easily
13. Muscle weakness
14. Low immune system that is susceptible to all kinds of illness
15. Early death

Read more about the health risks of processed food.

List of processed food examples:

1. Cereal
2. Canned food
3. Crisps
4. Condiments like ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise
5. Fried food
6. Fast food
7. Sweets and candy
8. Chocolate bars
9. Soda
10. Instant noodles
11. Bread
12. Pies
13. Pasta
14. Processed meat (sausages, corned beef and cold cuts)
15. Sausage rolls
16. Bacon and salami
17. Cheese
18. Cake
19. Biscuits and cookies
20. Sparkling water

Don't hurt your health for convenience.

4. Balance out stressful situations to protect your health

Too much stress is harmful to both your physical and mental health. The body responds to stress by reducing some of its bodily functions (like digestion, rest and recovery) and ramping up others (like inflammation, muscle tension and adrenaline) in order to prepare for the stressful situation.

Stress causes the release of a stress hormone called cortisol. It can sharply reduce your brain's ability to do any kind of mental work, decrease testosterone production and stop your muscles from growing.

Stress is one of the leading reasons why people struggle to sleep at night. If your body can't recover from the damage that it goes through during the day, the damage will start to accumulate. This leads to a variety of health complications.

Negative health effects of stress:

1. Headaches
2. Upset stomach
3. Stomach ulcers
4. Digestion issues
5. Insomnia
6. Muscle tension
7. Anxiety
8. Depression
9. Chest pain
10. Lack of motivation
11. Low energy
12. Excessive food cravings
13. High blood pressure
14. Heart disease

Read more about the negative side effects of stress.

Make sure that you do something every day to reduce the negative effects of stress. Exercise regularly, find a hobby that you enjoy, take some time to look after yourself and connect with other people.

Choose happiness.

Activities that reduce stress:

1. Exercise
2. Take a hot bath or a cold shower
3. Spend time with friends and family
4. Write in a journal
5. Play a sport
6. Start a hobby like painting or gardening
7. Take care of a pet
8. Laugh and smile
9. Use essential oils
10. Cut out unimportant tasks to make more time for yourself
11. Don't leave tasks or projects to the last minute
12. Do some prayer, meditation or yoga
13. Read a book
14. Avoid the blue light from screens (that can make anxiety worse)
15. Connect with someone special
16. Talk to someone you can trust
17. Help somebody else out
18. Get involved in your community
19. Listen to music that you enjoy
20. Practice deep breathing

Promotive measures that encourages a healthy lifestyle

1. Eat whole foods
2. Exercise regularly
3. Drink enough water every day

Health is more than simply avoiding the things that are bad for you. It is just as important to do the things that are good for your health. The following promotive measures with dramatically improve your health and encourage you to live a healthy lifestyle because you will feel so good from the first day that you do them.

1. Eat whole foods like fruit and vegetables

Fruit and vegetables have the nutrients that many of us lack. Our bodies desperately need these nutrients to function properly.

Vitamin C, for example, helps to keep the immune system strong and prevent the buildup of cellular damage.

Fiber, on the other hand, feed good gut bacteria that fight off the bad kinds of bacteria that make us sick. It also helps to keep our digestive systems regular by adding bulk to our stool movements. Fiber stabilizes blood sugar because it takes longer to digest.

Antioxidants in fruit and vegetables prevent cellular damage and help to clear out existing damage.

Protein is equally important as a promotive health measure. It is needed for muscle, bone, joint, tissue and brain repair. Proteins are used every time that your brain makes a new memory.

Eat good to feel good.

2. Exercise regularly

Exercise is one of the most important promotive measures that you can take for your health. It strengthens the entire body against disease, weakness, depression and other forms of resistance that we deal with on a daily basis.

Exercise is one of the best ways to fight depression. It clears away stress and promotes the natural release of happy hormones like serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. The release of dopamine from exercise is not as addictive as it is with harmful substances because exercise is completely natural to the body. We were meant to exercise every day - we weren't meant to take any substances besides water and whole food.

Benefits of exercise:

1. Disease and illness prevention
2. Stronger immune system and less chance of getting sick from the flu or the common cold
3. Improved appearance
4. Better concentration and focus
5. Higher quality sleep
6. Better energy levels
7. Fewer cravings for unhealthy food and unhealthy substances
8. More motivation to succeed in life
9. Elated mood
10. Improved confidence
11. Stronger muscles, joints, bones, ligaments and connective tissue
12. Look younger for longer
13. Better skin, hair and nails
14. Faster mental and physical recovery times

Move more. Feel great.

3. Drink enough water

Three quarters of the population in the Western world is chronically dehydrated (according to a study). Almost all of us aren't getting enough water.

One of the biggest reasons why we are so dehydrated is because of the fact that we use non-water beverages to quench our thirst. Soda makes you even more dehydrated. Anything with artificial ingredients will increase the body's need for water because it needs to clear these toxins away.

Dehydration makes fatigue worse than it actually is. Your low energy and lack of ability to concentrate can be the symptom of severe dehydration.

Dehydration can inhibit mental function as much as getting drunk.

Symptoms of dehydration:

1. Lack of energy
2. Inability to concentrate
3. Dry skin
4. Rapid breathing
5. Sunken eyes
6. Headaches
7. Dry mouth and dry tongue
8. Irritability
9. Feelings of anxiety or depression

What if you're just thirsty?

Conclusion

The preventative measure that encourage a healthy lifestyle are avoiding excess sugar, saying no to alcohol and addictive substances, cutting out processed food and balancing out stressful situations with healthy ones. Promotive health measures include eating whole foods that benefit our nutrition, exercising regularly and getting enough good old water.

A little goes a long way.

Small, simple life changes like these will benefit our entire lives in so many ways. We will have more energy and feel better. This will lead to less negative coping behaviors and more of the productive behaviors that will benefit us for years to come. Remember to always practice everything in moderation.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it on social media or leave me a comment. Stay Strong!

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How to make or break a new habit - the easy way

New resolutions can be scary: You know you want to change and become healthier, but you are not sure whether you are going to like the change or be able stick to it. Any habit takes time to form, and in a matter of time you will no longer need to force yourself to do a new task - It just becomes a part of your daily routine. The hardest part of creating a new habit is the starting phase. After the first week, it is a lot easier to maintain the habit. The second week gets even easier. After about a month, it starts becoming automatic.

The voices in your head that lead to failure

One of the biggest reasons why we cave in and stop doing what we planned to do is because of the little arguments we have with ourselves before we do a new task. There is a battle between what you want now, and what you want in the future. In most cases, the feeling of deprivation gets the better of you and you end up going back to your old habits. If you feel like you are losing out on the deal in the moment, you will have to fight that feeling until you eventually give up and go back to your old ways.

Think of Sally. She is trying to switch out her daily fast food lunch with a healthier alternative: grilled chicken and veggies. As long as Sally feels like she is deprived of something that she wants, she will have to fight with herself until her new habit becomes a norm. Most people won't last through the first week or two. Ironically, after the first two to three weeks, people forget about what they are giving up and the habit sticks.

Moral of the story: If you feel like you are losing out on something, the battle for change will be a lot harder.

After some time, the voice in your head that tells you that it wants something else will fade away because the craving does not lead to any reward. Our brains are astonishingly capable of adapting to change very quickly.

Eliminate the option to fail

If you have no choice but to change, it actually gets a lot easier because you eliminate the little arguments in your head before you do something. If Sally leaves her lunch money at home and brings the grilled chicken and veggies in a lunch tin, her changes of failure will decrease dramatically.

Look for the ways that you could fail, and eliminate those channels so that you have no choice but to change. If you are trying to stop an addiction, cut off accessibility to that addiction. Tell your friends and family about your proposed change so that you feel the social pressure to keep to your goals. Bring a healthy meal and limit access to money to buy fast food, disable your internet connection for a month of you struggle with internet porn, order a taxi two hours after work so that you have to wait at the gym until they arrive, or make a bet with a friend that you just can't lose.

Stop the argument in your head before it starts

Resistance to change starts in your head and leads to an eternal back-and-forth, weighing out the pros and cons, until you finally give up and resume the negative behavior or quit a positive one. Failure starts way before you finally give up: It starts when you start to question your decision because you don't feel like it anymore. If you can stop this internal argument with yourself, you may end up creating the habit with much less mental resistance.

People who don't exercise regularly, for example, often associate exercise with pain and suffering. This mental association is not as bad as the reality. We imagine that we are going to suffer through exercise until we eventually do it - and then start to realize that it is actually enjoyable. It is what goes on in our minds that stops us from achieving our goals - not what is going on in reality.

The back-and-forth arguments are often much harder that the new habit itself.

Here are great ways to stop the arguments inside your head

1) Distract yourself when the argument starts

You have decided to start exercising at the gym after work from 7-9 pm. It is 12 pm and you are still at work. The idea of exercising later in the day is starting to daunt you. At this moment, you are already experiencing emotional agony over something that hasn't even happened yet. Typically, the arguments would start now until 5 pm when you leave work. At that stage, you have been going back and forth about whether or not you should exercise for 5 hours - much longer than the exercise session itself. For that reason, you probably would have tired yourself out mentally until you have no more will power to keep on fighting, give up, and go straight home instead.

Alternatively, you could tell yourself that you don't have an option at 12 pm when you realize that you don't want to exercise, and quickly shift your focus to something else so that you don't have to mentally wrestle with the idea for the rest of the day.

Cut out the mental argument before it tires you down

As soon as you feel the argument starting to take place in your head, try to shift your focus back on to whatever you are working on. Mentally discard the conversation until later in the day. By postponing the dilemma, you save yourself a lot of mental energy. If you struggle to shift focus back onto your current activity; get up from your desk and pour yourself a glass of water, have a brief conversation with somebody about a completely different topic or decide to think about something else.

The initial thought pops up: "I'm too tired to go to the gym today"
Squash it and move on: "Too bad I don't have a choice. I wonder what Benny in accounts has been up to?"

Depending on your personality type, planning a few ways to distract you in advance might increase the effectiveness of this method.

2) Focus on the task - not whether or not you are going to do it

Changing the 'why' or 'whether', to a 'what' or 'how', is another powerful technique to keep yourself on the right track. This can work because it shifts your focus from escaping a new reality to accepting it as non-negotiable. If you are avoiding a negative habit, think about what you can do in its place. If you are going to exercise at the gym, think about what exercises you are going to do first.

My brain: "I don't feel like going to the gym today"
My response: "But since I'm going, which exercise should I start with first?"

3) Break the task into smaller steps

New resolutions are almost always intimidating. For some reason, we tend to think about the negative impact of healthy habits, while thinking about the positive impact of unhealthy ones. People who struggle to get into the gym horrify themselves with thoughts of pain and exertion. This kind of thinking is very similar to a boy who wants to swim but spends most of his time dipping his toe into the pool and dreading the cold water. All he could think about was how cold he might feel when he was totally wet, but he only needed to focus on jumping - gravity would take care of the rest.

If you struggle to go to the gym, focus on the little steps. Pack your gym bag, then put on your exercise gear, then get into the car, then drive towards the gym one turn at a time. Don't horrify yourself with negative imagery of the future. Just focus on the little steps that it takes to get there. If you are cutting out a bad habit, break it down into weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds. Every second is a victory.

Sally (from the example above) might be craving unhealthy food instead of grilled chicken and veggies, but she can focus on the smaller tasks to get through it. She can focus on being seated with the right food in front of her. After that, she only needs to focus on the next few bites before she automatically finishes the entire meal. After that, she will be satisfied and won't desire the fast food anymore. She should also realize that her lunch-time experience was not as bad as her mind made it out to be.

4) Build positive associations with the new change

The reason why healthy habits are hard to establish is purely because of the negative associations that we tie to them. Since healthy food is so good for us, we imagine that there must be some kind of cost - desirability. In the same way, we imagine that since unhealthy habits are bad for us, we must be enjoying them if we continue doing them.

As you repeat a healthy habit, you learn that it is not as unpleasant as you initially thought. As time goes by, the negative associations that you had for a certain activity will disappear as you repeatedly discover that it is not as bad as it is in your head. As this happens, the lifestyle change becomes easier to do.

It usually takes a few weeks for this to happen, but you can speed up the process by manually attaching positive associations to a new habit. Tell yourself how much you enjoy something - even if you know that you don't. After a while, your brain will start to believe what you keep on telling it. Our subconscious minds take repetition as fact. The more you tell yourself how much you don't enjoy something, the less you will enjoy it. 

I know a lady who wanted to quit smoking and decided that she would do it by telling herself how disgusting a cigarette was. Every time she smoked, she made up thoughts about how disgusting it made her feel. She did this for weeks until her brain started to believe her. Her cravings for cigarettes drastically reduced until she completely lost the desire to smoke. On her last few days of smoking, she told me about how she had to force herself to smoke because she started to hate doing it. She never smoked again.

By making the changes that you decide to do non-negotiable, you cut out the self-bargaining and arguments that you will have with yourself along the way - and I have personally found that part to be the hardest when embarking on a new lifestyle change. Stay Strong!

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