Time To Ditch Your Unhealthy Habits for 2013

We all have them, even tiny little secret ones, those bad habits we wish we could beat once and for all. After the debauchery of the holiday season, it can feel as though our unhealthy habits have gatecrashed our party and are refusing to leave. If you want to reclaim your body again, it’s time to follow some simple steps. I can’t claim your body will be a temple afterwards, but it will certainly be less like a squat.

Change Your Environment

Making unhealthy choices can be linked to environment. Do you go past a bakery on the way to lunch? Do you mix with smokers during a break period? Changing where you lunch or what you do with your spare time can be enough to break a habit. Think about the circumstances when you make an unhealthy choice. Are you often with the same person or group of people? A friend I knew who was trying to reduce drinking alcohol found her attempts scuppered by the group she socialised with who encourage her to drink and proclaimed her ‘boring’ when she tried to make a positive change.

Set Realistic Goals

Just take it all a week at a time. Setting a huge goal when you are feeling positive will have you feeling like you have a mountain to climb when willpower fails you. Follow the ‘SMART’ rule; ‘small’, ‘measurable’, ‘achievable’, ‘realistic’ and ‘targetable’ when setting your goals and you will reach them every time.

Be Well Supported

Trying to quit a bad habit all on your own can be daunting. If your goal is weight loss, think about joining a weight loss club where you can get help with nutrition, exercise and gain support from other members. If quitting smoking is your goal, make sure that you have back up. If you haven’t thought about how you are going to control those cravings or nicotine patches or gum have not quite done the job, take a look at electronic cigarettes as a way of helping your body wean off tobacco cigarettes. There are some great online retailers, such as http://www.ecigwizard.com/, who sell starter kits for newbies to the e-cig experience.

Get More Than 40 Winks

Many of our bad habits are a reaction to stress. Comfort eating, smoking, having a drink of alcohol, have you noticed how these things are tougher to avoid when you’re tired? We turn to our bad habit as a way of de-stressing and underestimate the amount of sleep we need and the effect that a lack of it has on our wellbeing. If you are going to be fit to fight the bad habit cravings, you are going to need your rest.

Eye On The Target

Sometimes when the going gets tough, it can be difficult to remember why on earth we started on this journey, my bad habit isn’t that bad, is it? To help remember your goal, write yourself a letter. Make it detailed, why you want to stop and what makes you sad about your habit. It just might give you the extra strength you needed.