Make the decision to create and maintain a healthy lifestyle It is not an easy task. Although we are aware that the advantages are innumerable (among other things, it helps us feel better and live longer), the laziness or frustration they often take over us.
“Although it sometimes seems impossible, if we are constant we will achieve what we set out to do”, affirms Lucía Jiménez Vida, an expert in habits and productivity from the essence.
Whenever we start a new habit, we do it with enthusiasm, motivated. But suddenly, a day comes when we don’t feel like putting it into practice at all, and nothing happens. And if laziness invades us one day after another, in the end we end up giving up (since it requires minimal effort and a lot of perseverance). Talk later with several psychologists to find the keys on how to generate a new healthy habit and maintain it:
From an emotional and psychological point of view
Rocío Rodríguez, specialized in eating psychology, eating disorders, self-esteem and body image, talks about the importance of establish healthy routines from an emotional and psychological point of view. An essential step before establishing a new habit.
“Self-care is a topic that has resonated a lot lately. In this case, we are talking about creating routines from love of oneself and not from obligation. From the idea of listening to me, respecting myself …”, he states.
Likewise, he maintains that part of this self-care lies in be flexible with routines: “Allowing me not to do it exceptionally also favors adherence to routines because we live it as a way of taking care of ourselves, not as an obligation”.
Rodríguez remembers that what makes us unable to establish a routine is to feel that we are forcing ourselves to do it. “Many times we consider being very rigid with routines to comply with them. However, the moment we open the option to skip them is when we stop seeing it as an imposition. What I choose is what is maintained over time, not what I impose on myself “.
The psychologist guarantees that establishing routines from emotion can be of use to us for everything. “In the case of food, for example, we would have to consider how we eat and for this we have to go into the emotional hunger and how it affects our diet “, adds the expert in online psychotherapy.
Calibrate your capabilities with respect to the goal you want to set (be realistic)
It is not easy to go from intention to action. “The first thing you have to calibrate are your capabilities with respect to the objective you want to mark. You have to be optimistic and motivated, but also realistic. If you set yourself too ambitious, you will end up giving up, “explains psychologist Lourdes Infante Cerezo.
Define your goal well
Cherry Infant He explains that if we do not define the plan well, it will surely remain up in the air and we will look for any excuse or setback for not doing it. Therefore, the next step is draw up a plan that is well definedFor example: “I’m going to start exercising two days a week (Tuesday and Thursday), from 6 to 7 in the afternoon, at the gym near my house.”
Set your times
Another of the advice that this expert gives us is not be carried away by the law of “all or nothing”. If one day you fail in that new habit that you want to establish, that does not mean a free way to stop trying for the rest of the week.
“Set goals for short, medium and long term. This is well understood with the weight loss example. Don’t expect to lose 8 kilos in a week. That may be your final goal, but along the way you can set small goals for yourself, in this way you will see your progress without getting frustrated and you will keep track of your improvements “, he adds.
Although it seems silly, it reminds us that sometimes we do not do what we had in mind because we directly forget. For that I recommend that set an alarm or have an agenda where you write down hours, days, schedule or whatever you need, depending on what your new habit is.
Don’t establish more than one habit at a time
Finally, the psychologist recommends not establishing more than one habit in our routine at a time: “Focus on one and, until you have been with him for the necessary time where you feel that he is integrated (between one and two months), start with the next one “.
Seek help from a professional (the therapeutic process)
The success in achieving a healthy goal, such as nutritional treatment, is that the patient can make a long-term change and can introduce into your life as one more habit.
“From psychology, strategies are provided to understand what leads to a bad relationship with whatever it is, in this case, for example, food, and try to heal it. It is useless to go on diets for a couple of months and then abandon them,” they warn from the Gaztambide team of psychologists 17.
For this reason, from this center it is committed to Psychonutrition, the combination of psychological therapy with nutritional treatment (Actually, it can be applied to any habit): “To consider losing weight from the requirement is not Psiconutrition, because you are not educating yourself on eating habits from permission, enjoyment or flexibility”.
And they assure that it is not taking into account what has led that person to relate to food since the restriction, demand, binge or social, educational, family conditions, even social media. “The therapeutic process does not have to be focused per se on weight loss, but rather what has led the person to generate bad habits. The psycho-emotional and social aspects are also worked on.”
There are things that simply escape from our hands (like the speed with which you lose weight, the ability to gain muscle mass, genetics, etc). However, it does depend on oneself to eat, train, rest and, above all, change or improve habits …
In short, the ability to improve our lifestyle and thus the results are guaranteed. However, whenever it leads to excessive disgust, we can choose to ask for help from a professional.
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