How to Make Exercise a Daily Habit: 12 Science-Backed Strategies That Work
Instead of vague goals, make SMART goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. So, use a simple habit worksheet to keep track of your daily progress and build up momentum that will last. When you sleep deeply, your brain works to get rid of the toxic metabolic waste that builds up during the day. If you don’t get enough sleep for a long time, your chances of getting obesity, dementia, and heart disease go up a lot. So, for long-term health, getting seven to nine hours of good sleep is not up for debate. Physical activity on a regular basis might be the closest thing we have to a pill that stops aging.
You can encourage each other on hard days, try new activities together, and share your wins along the way. It’s easier to follow through when you know exactly what you’re trying to do. Instead of saying, “I’ll be healthier,” make your new healthy habit clear and concrete. If you’ve never jogged before, you don’t need to run several miles on your first day. Factors like stress, lack of sleep, or a busy schedule can drain your enthusiasm.
Relying on Motivation
Changing your workout environment, equipment, or even clothing can re-motivate you to stay consistent in reaching your goals. This can help you know what it is you should work on improving, and what you already have down. Although you may be used to exercising solo, having a workout buddy can do wonders for motivation and accountability [15]. Find a friend or family member who is also on their exercise journey and suggest working out together to make exercising a more social activity. You can go to the gym together, join running clubs, and even just share workout tips and tricks. Social support often strengthens internal motivation and self-efficacy [16], which is why this may help maintain your exercise habits.
How to Make Taking Days Off a Habit
Studies have shown that on average, it takes roughly 66 days to solidify a new exercise habit [2]. Stay consistent during these first 66 days, even if you are taking things slow. Remember, consistency is better than intensity, especially when it comes to exercise [3]. Doing 15 minutes of light exercise every day will be more effective in forming a habit than doing an hour of intense and strenuous exercise once every 2 weeks. You don’t have to be perfect or very disciplined to make a routine that lasts. Instead, you need to make small, consistent choices over the course of many years and decades.
Take Regular Walks
Completely get rid of all the ultra-processed junk food in your kitchen. If you only use willpower and not design your environment, you will eventually fail. Water makes up most of your body, so staying hydrated is important for every metabolic process. Drinking the right amount of fluids helps your kidneys work properly, keeps your body temperature stable, and keeps your joints lubricated. Even mild dehydration can make you very tired, make it hard to think clearly, and cause painful muscle cramps. With the right strategies and a little patience, you can make exercise a regular, enjoyable part of your life.
When you feel tempted to skip your habit, you can remind yourself of the “why” behind it. Connecting your habits to your values is a powerful way to stay motivated — even when progress feels slow. Whether you’re just beginning your fitness journey or a seasoned veteran, setbacks can happen.
Eat Mindfully
If you were planning an exercise-heavy day and feel unable to follow through, modify your plans to align more with how you feel. For example, if you were planning on going for a 5-mile run, but woke up feeling sluggish, go on a 15-minute casual walk instead. You can even just show up to the gym without the intention of doing a strenuous workout—chances are that once you’re there, you’ll feel motivated to complete a light workout. A healthy lifestyle means eating whole, unprocessed foods like vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats. It also means drinking a lot of water every day, watching how much you eat, and staying away from too much sugar and alcohol. Healthy lifestyle habits are things you do every day that help your physical, mental, and metabolic health over the long term.
- Continue reading to learn some tactics and tips you can implement to support your fitness goals.
- A bad daily routine can cause a lot of damage that expensive topical creams can’t fix.
- Once you’ve found an effective program that you enjoy, make the choice to trust it.
- Healthy lifestyle habits are things you do every day that improve your physical, mental, and metabolic health and lower your risk of getting sick.
- The American Heart Association says that people should do at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise every week.
- These include eating a balanced diet, getting regular exercise, getting enough sleep, managing stress, not smoking, drinking in moderation, and keeping strong social ties.
What Are Healthy Lifestyle Habits?
Auto-regulation is a skill you’ll refine throughout the course of your training career. Essentially, it’s the ability to adjust your training volume and intensity based on how you’re feeling at the moment. So, you need to learn new, hard skills every day to keep your brain active. Reading, playing an instrument, or learning a new language all help you build up your brain’s cognitive reserve. Aerobic exercise also makes your hippocampus bigger by releasing a protein called BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor). Also, make big changes to your physical environment to make it easy to make good choices.
How to Set Realistic Fitness Goals and Stick to Them
My favorite light-weight face SPF is the Naked Sundays CabanaClear Water Gel Serum SPF50. Experimenting with new healthy recipes keeps your diet exciting and varied. It also introduces you to different ingredients and cooking techniques that can enhance your nutritional intake and culinary skills. For example, lay your gym membership card out next to your car/house keys to remind you to go to the gym. Or, keep your sneakers out instead of putting them away with your other shoes.
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To get the ball rolling, try doing push-ups or sit-ups for only 2 minutes a day until you feel yourself wanting to exercise for longer. You can even go to the gym, stay for 2 minutes walking on the treadmill, and then leave. Chances are, once you start exercising for 2 minutes, you’ll want to continue the action longer since you’ve already made the effort to start. By gradually scaling up your workouts, you work up to your workout goals without overexerting or intimidating yourself. Laying down the foundation of healthy habits both in and out of the gym can help tremendously as you progress toward your goals.
On the other hand, men who want to live a healthy lifestyle often need to pay a lot of attention to preventing heart disease early on. So, men need to keep a close eye on their cholesterol levels, deal with stress at work, and get regular prostate screenings. It is important to start building a foundation of health very early in life.
Build Strong Social Connections
The feeling of being bored (cue) causes you to reach for your remote and turn on the TV (routine), which leads to entertainment (reward). You can also stack other healthy lifestyle habits onto the same routine. Once you form the walking habit, you might add a 5-minute stretch or a simple breathing exercise afterward. Intrinsic motivation, or the desire to do something based on personal goals or interests, creates more successful long-term habits than extrinsic motivations, like rewards [5]. This is why intrinsically motivating yourself to exercise may be more effective than exercising in hopes of gaining external rewards or approval from others.
And if you’re not into extreme eating habits either way, listening to your hunger cues is still an incredibly valuable tool online fitness coaching for staying consistent with your nutrition. When people are just starting out in strength training, it’s common to hear folks making goals of working out a certain number of times per week. To form sustainable and healthy training habits, you need to balance a lot more factors. Of course, everyone has those days when they just don’t feel like exercising, no matter what they try to do to motivate themselves.
Each time you complete a small step in your journey, your brain releases dopamine, which makes you feel rewarded and accomplished [7]. This makes you want to complete more and more of these steps until you reach your long-term goal. The common belief is that it takes twenty-one days to change a behavior, but clinical psychology shows that it actually takes an average of sixty-six days. So, you need to be very patient and consistent during the first two months. Most importantly, you must apply a broad-spectrum sunscreen every single day, rain or shine. UV radiation physically destroys your skin’s collagen network, causing deep wrinkles and dangerous melanomas.
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And the more engaged you are with your programming, the more sustainable it’s going to be. If you’re starting a workout routine, begin with a simple 20-minute walk every day at the same time. Focus on sticking to this routine without worrying about the type of workout or intensity. As the habit forms, you can vary the exercises, adding strength training or increasing cardio intensity. Habits aren’t just formed randomly; there is actual science behind our ability to form routines and habits. For example, if you often watch TV when you feel bored, you’ll automatically reach for the TV remote whenever you lack mental stimulation.
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