Lifestyle Changes for Improved Health

Your lifestyle includes any choice or action you make that influences your life in some small way. Taken together, these choices and actions reflect your attitude and values.

During a wellness program, you’ll be encouraged to make changes to your lifestyle. While medications can help you lose weight, overcome pain and reduce some symptoms of aging, making changes to your lifestyle will allow you to maintain those benefits long-term.

What are Lifestyle Changes?

Lifestyle changes are behavior modifications or habit changes that encourage positive changes in your life. These are a fundamental component to any wellness program.

Examples of lifestyle habits include:

• Sleeping patterns
• Eating tendencies
• Level of physical activity
• Stress management practices
• Hydration habits

Making changes to these habits can create lasting effects on your personal well-being. The foods you eat, the amount of sleep you get and your exercise habits can all influence your weight, hormone health and level of pain.

How to Make Healthy Lifestyle Changes

Healthy habit formation requires practice and routine. After approximately 21 days, engaging in a new behavior begins to feel natural. This means you could form a healthy habit in just three weeks.

Habit replacement is the most effective method for making lifestyle changes. Instead of just stopping an unhealthy habit or simply starting a healthy one, find a behavior that needs improvement and replace it with something related. For example, the habit of snacking while watching TV can be replaced with basic hand-weight exercises, or walking on a treadmill while watching TV.

There are three primary categories of lifestyle changes. They are:

• Psychological changes: This includes changes to your attitude, your mood and the way you manage stress. To make healthy psychological changes, you may find it useful to join a support group or keep a journal.
• Behavioral changes: While all lifestyle changes are technically behavior, this category refers to things like your sleeping habits, activity level and planning efforts.
• Dietary changes: Making healthy changes to your diet can help you lose weight, balance hormone levels and manage pain. These changes will include controlling portion sizes, drinking more water and following a nutritious diet.

The most effective way to make lasting changes in your life is to start small. This includes approaching each habit you have and evaluating the way it is impacting your lifestyle. Then make simple, realistic changes as needed.

Changing just one behavior at a time can lead to lasting changes in your life, and is much less intimidating than attempting to completely overhaul your current lifestyle.