Why is it important to get healthy habits?

Everything you eat or drink has consequences on how you and your body feel. The more balance you create in choosing healthy options compared to unhealthy options will benefit your future life significantly. Being overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health. In adults, a body mass index (BMI) over 25 is considered overweight, and over 30 is obese.

How healthy are we really?

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the number of overweight and obese people has almost tripled since 1975, causing the death of 2.8 billion people each year.

In 2019, 38 million children under five were overweight or obese. One wonders what their eating habits will be when they get older.

The effects of obesity in adults

According to WHO, obesity in adulthood is a major risk factor and leading cause of poor health and early death, including these problems:

• cardiovascular disease
• several common cancers
• diabetes
• osteoarthritis

If you have any illness or medical conditions, talk to your doctor before you change your eating habits.

Three life-changing benefits of a healthier lifestyle

With all the changes in the world – big and small – it can be frustrating that so much is out of our control. Therefore, it is important to equip ourselves with the ability to create the life we want, and to handle future challenges better.

The healthier your lifestyle you create, the more energy you get, and this vitality will help you change several areas of your life. For example, an increased desire to do fun things, easier to do boring things, better at solving problems, increased stress management skills, greater ability to help others and better quality of life. Here are three major benefits of a healthier lifestyle.

• Healthy habits will increase your energy

• Your problem solving and stress management skills improve

• Your quality of life will increase with healthy habits

1. Healthy habits will increase your energy

As you create healthy habits, your energy level will increase. You provide your body with more nutrition, and you get better and better at moving. As a thank you for taking care of yourself, your energy level will increase.

If we ignore our own needs, we will not have the energy we need to create a good quality of life or help others in the long run. So, the important thing is to meet your needs first, then you can also help others.

Thanks to increased energy with healthy habits, you become more positive. This means you will see more opportunities, creating a good balance between your negative and positive thoughts and feelings.

2. Your problem solving and stress management skills improve

With healthier habits and increased energy levels, you can also create more positive thoughts and feelings. This means you will see more opportunities to create a good balance between your negative and positive thoughts and feelings.

Positive thoughts help you see more possibilities and solutions. This means you will feel better equipped to handle stress, worries, such as future events and crises. The stronger you feel mentally and physically, the more you can accomplish.

Positive thoughts lead to more positive emotions. That will help you generate ideas to solve your problems
and make stress easier to manage.

3. Your quality of life will increase with healthy habits

By choosing to eat and drink healthier options every day, you’ll get fitter. The reason is that you give your body the important nutrition it needs to function optimally. Your brain receives the right doses of vitamins and other useful ingredients to perform at its peak. With a body that is healthier and a brain that works better, you can do more, and want and do more, of what you want. Let’s look at an example of eating a pizza or a salad

When you choose to eat and drink unhealthy options daily, your body has to work much harder. It takes a lot of energy, and this affects how you feel.

Example of a comparison

Compare a meal to eating a pizza and a salad. After eating a pizza, I feel heavy and tired and want to go to bed. After eating a salad, I have more energy and desire to do things. How does it make you feel?

The difference after a meal of pizza or a salad

The difference between choosing to eat a pizza and a salad is the energy level afterwards. Low energy increases the risk of doing nothing, high energy increases the chance of wanting to do something. Which day do you remember best?

The day you didn’t do anything special because you were so tired, or the day you did a lot of both fun and things you needed to do?

Quality of life is the desire to do the things you want, and the energy to do the things you need/must do. The challenge for all of us is to choose the food and drinks in everyday life that are a little healthier than what we are used to. Then we take small steps towards a healthier lifestyle.

Nutritional knowledge is a good start

It is common for children to continue with the same eating habits into adulthood, regardless of whether they were healthy or unhealthy. Or it can be the other way around, as in my case. Despite healthy habits from home or maybe because of, I still created new unhealthy habits.

Regardless of our childhood eating habits, we can change them and choose to be healthier. To get started, we need more knowledge about nutrition to understand the differences between drink sodas (sweetened or 0% sugar) to quench our thirst and eat fast food.

Our body then has to deal with unnecessary amounts of sugar (which makes us want more sugar), as well as other unhealthy additives such as dyes, preservatives, high amounts of salt and fat, and flavorings… You probably already know a lot about this.

Why do we need more knowledge about nutrition?

The more knowledge you gain about food and drink and how they affect you, the more motivated you will be to choose healthier options. With a better understanding of the consequences of your choices, it becomes easier to choose healthier options. For example, knowing that you can’t work out after a pizza or that choosing unsweetened drinks reduces the risk of high blood sugar and diabetes 2.

With increased knowledge about nutrition, you will be more motivated to make healthier choices more often and save the unhealthy options for special occasions.

+ 30 years of unhealthy habits is not a quick fix

It’s tough to change your habits, but knowing it’s possible can help you fight on. If it took 30, 40, 50 years to create them, it’s not surprising that quick fixes, like two or four week diets, don’t work in the long term.

How long does it take to create healthier habits?

Instead of thinking it’s a “quick fix” and then being disappointed when it doesn’t go to plan, you should look at the wider perspective. The time aspect depends on the level of change required to replace your current habits with new healthy habits. It is better to decide what you want to achieve in the long run and the action required in the first month, instead of thinking about the end goal of losing 10kg in two months.

The risk when we fail is that we give up. Trust me, I’ve given up many times because I’ve set unreasonable goals. An example is when I gained 8kg (1 stone) during the tough COVID-19 period. It became proof that I chose to eat and drink unhealthy too often, which was noticed so clearly when I couldn’t exercise (quarantine in Spain) to the extent that I usually do.

The way to healthy habits is to change little by little

What helps is to choose what feels easiest to start with, and then find healthier options that you enjoy. By changing a few things first, step by step, you will create healthier habits. To succeed in the long run, it is important to set reasonable expectations for your change journey.

Healthy role models in my childhood

When I was growing up in the sixties, my parents were vegetarians, and for the first five years I did not know that meat was an option. Later meat was introduced to the menu, but we always had a lot more vegetables and cooked unusual food (healthier) than the average at that time. My friends thought we ate strange food.

My father was healthy, but suffered from depression

My father was a big fan of healthy food but did not realize that it is important to exercise. Unfortunately, he struggled with depression, which meant lying in bed for long periods and lacking energy. Then he would eat sweet treats as a consolation, which led to him getting diabetes. If I had known that exercise can help with depression, I would have tried to get him out for walks.

As I was growing up, as a teenage revolt, I ate sweets, pizza and other less healthy foods. Now I am older, I admire my parents’ interest in healthy living, and am grateful for their wisdom and regret that I did not understand and showed appreciation for it then.

My own struggle with unhealthy issues

Despite my wise parents’ healthy eating habits, I have struggled with my weight for many years. Now I have decided it is enough.

When I eat junk food too often, I get tired of myself. It’s perfectly okay to eat junk sometimes, but it doesn’t work to do it every day. Considering how unhealthy habits can lead to diseases that could be prevented, I have now decided it is time for the Great Healthy Change.

I want to get to grips with it once and for all, and to also take the opportunity to help others in the same position. It would be much more fun if there were more of us fighting and celebrating together.

I want to create a lifestyle with healthy habits to be strong from the inside and out.

The planet will benefit from more healthy people

The more people become healthier, the greater the benefits for the planet. There would be reduced meat consumption, less demand for high processed food, and increased consumption of natural food (fruit and vegetables).

When we are healthier, we can become ambassadors and spread our healthier knowledge and new habits to others. Together, we will create a healthier planet thanks to less diseases caused by unhealthy habits.

Therefore, creating healthy habits is the foundation for living a good life for us and the planet. We cannot change our previous choices, but from now on we can create new, healthier habits.

What you and I can do to create a healthier lifestyle

I don’t know about you, but I am eager to become stronger, energised and more resilient to prevent all diseases caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. I also want to help the planet by using healthier food. Hope I have inspired you to achieve a healthier lifestyle too.

Join me on the course “Healthy Habits by Johaloha”. It will take a ridiculously small amount of your time, compared to the enormous benefits by starting your journey to more healthy habits.

Hope to see you there 😊

By Ulla Lilliehöök
Trainer and Personal Growth Coach

JOHALOHA