Why Staying Healthy Isn't As Time Consuming As You Think

Trying to lead a healthy lifestyle whilst also juggling your career, not to mention raising a family at the same time seems like the impossible conundrum, right? Despite being in the digital age where even our food can be ordered in a couple of swipes...we never have time for anything anymore! When it comes to getting healthy, that often turns into broken promises to ourselves we will join the gym or go for that run after work. But, what if staying healthy didn’t have to take up all of your time? If you are looking for some solutions to get healthy and you don’t have all day to do it in, here are our top tips.

Switch Off Social Media Arguably, this could help your plight in one of two ways. Spending less time scrolling through social media would give you more time to keep fit, given the average person now spends 2 hours and 22 minutes on social media every day. Another reason to switch off is that social media gives us unrealistic expectations about our lives, and this is especially true when it comes to health and fitness. After all, who really has time to be in the gym more than 5 times a week, or to be obsessively counting calories? When you do any of the above, it’s easy to be under the misconception that living a healthy lifestyle is expensive and time consuming - this is simply not the case.

Baby Steps Your health can either work for you or against you. The good news is that if time is also against you too, your health journey can start at just two hours a week. Slowly building your fitness will help you build resilience as well as improve confidence. Also, in just a single bout of exercise, you will release neurotransmitters in the brain (i.e. dopamine, serotonin), these are the 'feel good chemicals' in the brain you may experience after exercise.

Start with 30 minutes of exercise three times a week. This can include walking, swimming, bike ride, going to the gym, lifting weights, or just doing bodyweight exercises.

Change Your Mindset - Create A Positivity Bias Richard Davidson theorised you can train your brain to be happy, just like you any other skill. All it requires is gratefulness for two minutes a day. If you’re reading this, then there's a good chance you've already won the human lottery. Having access to clean drinking water, hot water, internet, phone service, good supply food, living in a house - you have plenty to be grateful for. By becoming thankful for what you have - instead of focusing on what you don’t have - can hugely boost your outlook. The more grateful you learn to feel, the less you will sweat the small stuff.

Quit Calorie Counting Everything in moderation. That means less worrying about specific calorie counts, more cutting back on processed foods that we know aren’t good for us.

If you’re unsure how to go about this, try working the 80/20 ratio. It means that 80% of the food you eat is a from the perimeter of your supermarket with only 20% being up and down the middle isles (often pre-packaged foods). If you think about what a grocery store looks like, you're walking into the fruit and veggie section before you move on to the meats, the milk, the eggs, generally the less processed foods. Keep to the foods that are in their original state if in doubt.

In Summary...

Invest the time into your health now and it will save you in the long-term. It starts with just two hours a week. You’re then going to increase this to four hours a week to give yourself The Health Advantage.

Improving your health should not feel like a chore, nor it should not be an incredibly time-consuming task. It’s all about learning to enjoy exercise and healthy eating as you begin to reap the benefits, and notice the positive mental and physical changes in yourself as you do so.

Let me know in the comments section what changes to your health you plan on making, and what are your favourite exercise or healthy foods you’ve tried so far.