Actionable Switch For Sustainable Healthy Habits

We’ve all been there before: motivated by something or someone, possibly online. Then we got this sudden urge and rush to get all the salad, the new running shoes, and so forth. We were ready to change our lives for the better. But then, life happened. We broke our strike and eventually relapsed to our “old”-bad-habit-filled type of lifestyle. 

It’s honestly drooling to imagine living on a constant peak. My best bet is that more than 50% people on earth would want to have it (don’t quote me on this statistics 😄). However, growth is not exactly just about going upwards and setting up the expectation is the first step to LIVE —- instead of trying to “achieve”— a healthy lifestyle. One with more healthy habits than not. 

So what are the things that you CAN do RIGHT NOW, at THIS SECOND to change it all? Well, here are my best ones that have been again and again proven to be the actual life changing, actionable switches to plant healthier habits each day:

1. Pick The Stairs Over Escalator or Elevator

Unless for a safety reason or a specific condition, choosing to walk and taking the stairs over utilising a machine to get to where you’re going is honestly the most accessible and affordable way of living a healthier life. We now understanding more than ever (Paluch et al., 2021) that people who chose to walk approximately 7.000 steps per day experienced lower mortality rates compared to those who took fewer than that. Similarly, incorporating the habit of climbing up more than just 5 flights of stairs daily can also benefit in the same way (Sanchez-Lastra et al., 2021)

2. Spend More Time In The Fresh Produce Section

Take a second to notice your tendencies when you enter a supermarket. Do you go straight to the overly processed food aisle like the chips, and the cereal, and the biscuits? Or do you spend more time checking out the fish, the meat, bananas, and finding the ripest tomatoes? What we choose to spend more time with or at is how we program ourselves. If you wonder why you may not prefer actual potatoes over potato chips, you might be spending too much time in the chips aisle.

3. Read The Ingredients

Have you ever wondered what’s inside a carton of orange juice? Why no… it’s orange of course? Well, unfortunately in the modern world where we want to be able to store food for longer, more efficient, and cost effective… tossing out the fresh ingredients might be the way to do it. Check again! It’s not uncommon for a product being sold for a type of fresh food while not exactly containing that exact fresh food within the product. 

As you may have noticed, these actions don’t require us to change our personalities in a dramatic way but rather inviting us to choose the way we live a little more mindfully. 

Have you chosen to live mindfully? 

References

• Paluch AE, Gabriel KP, Fulton JE, et al. Steps per Day and All-Cause Mortality in Middle-aged Adults in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(9):e2124516. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.24516

• Miguel A. Sanchez-Lastra, Ding Ding, Knut-Eirik Dalene, Borja del Pozo Cruz, Ulf Ekelund, Jakob Tarp. Stair climbing and mortality: a prospective cohort study from the UK Biobank. Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and MuscleVolume 12, Issue 2 pp. 298-307. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcsm.12679