Your Wellness Lifestyle Starts HereAlmost everyone agrees that having a routine is a good idea, and that it is needed in order to develop health-promoting habits. But there is a lot of resistance to following through and developing and sticking to routines. A friend who does not like routines says that if forced to do everything in a routinized way, he would lose the ability to be creative, since spontaneity would be gone from his life. The reality is that usually the adoption of routines creates more time for spontaneity, not less. The reason is that when life is organized, chaos is reduced, and chaos interferes with getting many things done, including creative endeavors.
One of the keys to success in adopting health-promoting diet and lifestyle habits is establishing a daily/weekly routine. Routines provide structure, and structure is needed for organizing your life.
"Success doesn't come from what you do occasionally, it comes from what you do consistently."
How can you develop a health promoting environment? The key to good habit formation and maintenance is routine. I was away over the holidays and went off of my routine. But when I came home with a cold, I went back to my routine because I knew it would help me heal quickly. Once your health promoting routines and habits are developed, they are easier to resume.
Habits are defined as actions that are triggered automatically by environmental or contextual cues. Examples would include fastening your seatbelt as soon as closing the car door, or flossing your teeth after you brush. The cues (shutting the car door and brushing your teeth) remind you to perform the good habits (fastening seats belts and flossing). About 40% of the things you do every day are performed in the same situations and in response to the same cues. In fact, a considerable amount of research shows that performing any action again and again, under the same circumstances and in the same context, turns it into a habit.
As we enter a new year, we tend to want to set goals. There is something about the newness and excitement of starting over. The danger lies in falling for the trends, the new magic bullet for weight loss, the introduction of "super foods", the confusing and unsustainable diets, etc. Advertisers jump on the bandwagon to convince us of these magic formulas. The results are usually temporary. Trendy diets are not sustainable.
"New goals don't deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results."
The key is patience. Research shows that it takes between 15 and 254 days to form a new habit, depending on the person and the habit the person is trying to change or form. You can't just "break" a bad habit. You need to replace it with a good habit.
Honor yourself-body, mind and spirit-by establishing healthy routines and good habits which lead to a healthy lifestyle.
Sources:
Atomic Habits
Wellness Forum Health
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