What are Important Lifestyle Changes and How to Implement Them?

Many health conditions can be treated just by implementing some lifestyle changes. Changing your living, eating, sleeping habits and social behaviors along with incorporating some physical activities prove effective for improving your overall health and preventing several health conditions such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity. This means your lifestyle to your routine activities, behaviors and responses all affect your living conditions and your health as well. Doctors usually recommend making lifestyle changes to adopt a healthy life. They suggest these lifestyle changes to support your physical, emotional, and mental well-being. These changes also help manage some chronic conditions.

According to research, your lifestyle is based on six pillars including:

• Diet.
• Harmful substance avoidance.
• Physical activity.
• Sleep.
• Stress management.
• Your well-being and social connections.

Making lifestyle changes proves challenging for you as it requires support, commitment, determination and time. People commonly take 5 to 6 months to develop a new habit as a change in their lifestyle.. So you can try this by starting with a motivation. Yes, motivation is the key element that creates an urge to adopt a specific habit. You can rely on your intuitive thoughts to bring change. If you think the change will bring positivity in your life you can remain  stuck to it.

No doubt, the journey is difficult and full of hurdles but when you come to know about the pillars to which you have to focus, you learn to set specific goals. After setting goals you will search for support so that you may stay motivated and stuck to your goal throughout the journey. This struggle will imprint an overall impact on your health and well-being. 

Keep reading the article to find out thorough information about the all stages of adopting new habits to bring changes in your lifestyle, the six individual pillars to stick to your goal, and how to fund support and motivation especially if you’re experiencing symptoms of certain underlying health conditions.

Stages of Laying Foundation for Lifestyle Changes

Many studies have claimed that the process of making lifestyle changes is divided into four basic stages. Each stage is recognized on the basis of its specific purpose, challenges and functions.

Here are the four stages of making lifestyle changes:

1. Contemplation: When you start thinking about bringing some change in your lifestyle, you step into the first stage. At first you think about a change due to your health. You think that the change will prove positive for improving your health. Therefore, you make yourself determined and active to make the change. Sometimes, the thought comes from a doctor’s suggestion. For example, when your doctor suggests you take a specific nutrient regularly to fight against certain underlying health conditions.

2. Preparation: This is a determination or decision stage. Here you finally decide to make a lifestyle change. You set a goal first and then start making efforts to break the old habits. The next step is about introducing the new habit and making a determination to stick with it.

3. Action: At this stage, you’re completely prepared to implement the new habit. This may be eating a healthy diet, taking a 30 minutes walk daily or reducing your screen time before gouging to bed.

4. Maintenance: After introducing the new habit and breaking the old one, the main challenge is to stick to the new one and get motivation to achieve the goal you have set before. So here it is important to implement new healthy behavior for over 10 months. Now you may feel it like a part of your routine life.

You may face many challenges, hurdles and road-blocks during these stages. Obviously its natural but after practicing these habits for a few months, your body and brain get used to these habits and then adopt them automatically as their regular routine.

However, some important points to get success in this journey include:

• Setting realistic goals.
• Making plans to overcome the challenges.
• Showing kindness for yourself.
• Waiting for results patiently.

For example, if your goal is to reduce screen time and use your time in health activities that may improve your physical and mental health, you can find different hobbies to replace your mobile or laptop. You can read books, go to the gym, plan a hangout with your friends and join support groups to share your thoughts. These traits may help you forget the habit of using screens. 

One more thing, when you get successful and start going to sleep early with reduced screen time. This is good. But never be hard on yourself. If the efforts are taking time, be kind to yourself and take time. Continue to practice your new habits every day. After a few months it will surely become a habit. 

The four stages will teach you how to make long-term lifestyle changes.

Top Lifestyle Changes Almost Everyone Needs

1: Add Some Physical Activity

Moving your body on a regular basis in the form of a workout, exercise or simple walk is the most important lifestyle change. It not only brings positive changes to your health and well-being but also increases your life span. 

Research shows that practicing almost 180 minutes of regular exercise for a week with at least two sessions of strength training workouts can help improve your muscle strength. This is not necessary to perform exercise throughout the week, you can break your total recommended time for exercise in 5 or 6 days. And the remaining days will be considered as rest days. But simple walking is good for daily routine. You can set your workout schedule according to your health conditions, work schedule, environment and personal choices.

In addition, you cannot make physical exercise a part of routine at once. So, it is good to start with just 20 to 30 minutes of daily exercise sessions where you just perform some bodyweight exercise with minimal tools. You can use yoga mats, running shoes and resistance bands. Your primary goal is to incorporate regular exercise into your daily routine. Therefore, it is not necessary to do more than two workouts a day.

You can get help from different social media platforms to perform some simple workouts at home or gym. To get started, try:

• Low impact cardio exercises.
• 15-minute workout as a beginner.
• Specific moves to build cardio and improve strength fitness.
• Certain moves to make most of your at-home workout.

2: Eat a Balanced Diet

Your health directly depends on what and when you eat. This means your eating habits contribute a lot in maintaining or disturbing your overall health and mental well-being. So eating a balanced diet and following a healthy nutrition pattern is essential to fight against a wide range of chronic conditions like heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer.

Research found that eating or limiting some foods can help you make important lifestyle changes, such as:

• Eat More: Fiber-rich foods, low fat dairy products, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, seafood, nuts, seeds, legumes, and lean proteins.
• Limit: Trans fats, sodium rich foods, saturated fats, ultra-processed foods, and added sugars.

Moreover, when you work on our diet, it is important to eat within your calorie range. This means calorie counting for each meal along with keeping yourself hydrated is necessary. In most cases, eating a healthy and well-balanced diet becomes a great challenge that often makes it difficult to stick to the goal. But you can try the following tips to get help for being successful in this struggling journey:

• Practice mindful eating patterns like stop using electronics during taking meals and chewing your food slowly.
• Prefer cooking your meal at home.
• Take your metals in smaller portions but frequently.
• Avoid ultra-processed foods.
• Always keep a stock of frozen vegetables, chicken and lemon proteins at home.
• Cook in bulk as meal prep.
• Store some foods in your pantry like canned vegetables, tums, salmon and unflavored beans.
• Prefer high protein snacks as evening snacks.

If you’re unsure how to start taking a balanced diet or what type of nutrients are more beneficial for you according to your health status, speak with a certified healthcare professional. They may help you make a perfect diet plan that fulfill your dietary needs and help firm new diet habits as well.

3: Make More Social Relationships and Connections

Your mental and emotional; health is judged by your social connections. Social relationships have great impacts on your lifestyle. If you enjoy strong relationships with others you can get support for your physical and dietary lifestyle changes. 

In addition, social connections with the people around you, whether they are your friends, family members, colleagues or even strangers,help you make reliable relationships for future life.

Here are some tips to become more sociable and extrovert:

• Connect: Make storing connections with your friends, colleagues and family members by having lunch, dinner or making video calls randomly.
• Plan: Plan to perform some daily activities with your friends and family memes.
• Be Present: If you’re sharing your house or room with someone, play some games with them, or go outside to enjoy the weather.
• Volunteer: You can fund many places like churches, schools and animal shelters to be a volunteer and get involved with the people around you.

4: Manage Stress

Your mental and even physical health is mostly disturbed by stress or depression. Stress also causes some severe mental health conditions like anxiety, obesity and high blood pressure.

Try these tips to manage stress:

• Connect with other people.
• Limit drinking alcohol and caffeinated beverages, using illegal drugs and smoking.
• Eat a balanced diet.
• Engage yourself in creative activities.
• Write a journal.
• Spend more time outside.
• Be active physically.
• Get high quality sleep.
• Practice yoga with meditation and mindfulness.

If you experience stress even after trying these strategies to manage stress, speak with a professional healthcare provider. Because if you leave it untreated, it may affect your routine life and ruin your quality of life quality. A long-term consistent stress leads to depression and anxiety that can cause severe mental health conditions.

5: Improve Your Sleep Hygiene

All the virtual functions occurring in your body need help to be continued properly. You can help these functions to occur in the perfect way by having a good quality sleep. Good sleep affects your physical and mental heart and also contributes to lowering their risk of developing many chronic conditions like stroke, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. 

According to research, a healthy person needs around 8 to 9 hours sleep each night but it should be uninterrupted. 

Your lifestyle often affects the quality, duration and onset of sleep. You often don’t pay attention to these factors that affect your sleep quality. As a result the bad sleep patterns or disturbed sleep cycle impact your health badly. 

You should focus on the behavioral changes jotted below to improve your sleep quality:

• Avoid using mobile, tablet or computer minimum 2 hours before going to bed.
• Avoid drinking alcohol or caffeinated drinks almost 4 hours before you sleep.
• Add physical activity to your daily routine.
• Dint eat or drink food minimum 3 hours before sleep.
• Block out noise and light while sleeping with the help of eye masks and earplugs.
• Build a nighttime routine like, showering, reading or stretching before going to bed.
• Set a routine of sleeping and waking up at the same time each day.

Conclusion

Making Lifestyle Changes is the most demanding factor from your doctor whenever you experience certain physical or mental health conditions. Lifestyle changes are actually your behavioral habits that can help your physical, social, and mental well-being. 

Doctors and professional healthcare providers have explained through research that six basic behavioral changes including diet, exercise, stress management, sleep and social connection impact your overall lifestyle.

By bringing some positive changes in basic habits, you can manage almost all types of chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease and anxiety. You can get help from a certified specialist to learn what type of lifestyle changes can help you fight against certain underlying health conditions. They may also guide you about where you can get support to be successful in this journey.