Find the healthier you
Rejoice Mawire,
18th Jun 2021
Tags:
Life
Blog
Food
Health and Fitness
If you’re anything like me, then you’ve probably repeated to yourself “I need to eat healthier” or “I need to be healthier” multiple times. I’ve actually said this so much that my friends started calling me out on it.
That’s what makes this blog so appropriate for this time in my life: This week is Healthy Eating Week! It runs from the 14th to 18th June and is hosted by the British Nutrition Foundation.
They started this initiative to encourage people to go on a “find the healthier you” journey, reflecting on their lifestyles and how they can make improvements to enhance their health and wellbeing.
The foundation itself has highlighted five key themes to focus on across the week, and I think they are really good starting points that we can use to personally reflect on how we can be a healthier us.
The themes are:
- Know the facts (about food and exercise).
- Make a healthier choice.
- Plan for success.
- Be the chef, cook your own meals.
- Keep moving.
I encourage you to go through each of these points and write what action you can take for each.
After you have done that, I suggest you look at your list and pick out one or two that you’ll be focusing on first. You’re more likely to succeed if you only focus on a few of them at a time.
To give you an example of what you can do, here are here are three of the things that I plan to do for a healthier lifestyle.
Keep moving
At the start of the 2020 lockdown I downloaded and completed Couch to 5k, and I absolutely loved it. After this, I continued running and even completed a 10k.
However, I got injured after doing an 8 mile run and that knocked me off my rhythm with running. I haven’t got back into the rhythms of running after I recovered, but I really miss it.
My plan: I’ve downloaded a 10k running app and I’ll be running three times a week with the goal of hitting that distance again in around 12 weeks. I’m really looking forward to running again.
Plan for success
There’s a wise saying, “Fail to plan, plan to fail”, and I’ve seen this time and time again in some of the things I do. Whenever I don’t have a solid plan for what I’m doing, I ultimately fail at it.
This is one of my big issues when it comes to healthy eating: I always want to eat better, but after I get home from a long day work, I have no energy to cook and end up getting “quick food” (e.g. a takeaway).
My plan: I’m going to have some quick healthy options on deck in my fridge. This can be leftovers from other meals, or just lots and lots of fruit and veg to snack on. I need all the healthy “quick food” I can get.
Make a healthier choice
This is quite similar to my point above, but the second area that lets me down in healthy eating is when I’m eating out. Whether at a restaurant or just looking for some quick food at Maccies, I generally don’t ever go for the healthier option.
My plan: I’m going to consciously challenge myself to take the healthier option. Something that has more veg, more protein, will fill me up for longer, and give me more nutrition. That’s the option that I’ll try to go for.
Those are some of my plans for having a healthier lifestyle. What are you going to do to be a healthier you?
