Welcome back to The Code of Style, and this feature about How To Break Through Barriers To Your Health Goals.
Do you ever get the feeling there is a mountain of obstacles between you and your health goals?
If so, you’re not alone. Wellness is everywhere, yet hardly anyone seems to achieve it, despite all the opportunities.
While it’s true that achieving consistent health is challenging in today’s environment, it’s not impossible. It turns out there are various things you can do to improve your situation and ensure you continue to live your best life for years to come.
The trick is to find the right strategies. You need techniques that will let you sidestep some of the roadblocks modern society throws in the way of the health-conscious.
But what are they? Let’s find out.
How To Break Through Barriers To Your Health Goals
Be Kinder To Yourself
The first way to break through barriers on the road to health is to show yourself a little kindness. Most of us have the most appalling internal conversations with ourselves. We say things that even our worst enemies wouldn’t cook up, and it has a real effect on our ability to proceed.
That’s why it’s critical to be kinder to ourselves. A simple change in tone can make a tremendous difference in our ability to move toward our health aspirations. Once you feel happier on the inside, it becomes easier to make healthier choices on the outside. You’re no longer eating because you feel depressed or avoiding the gym because of the conversations you are having with yourself.
Adapt To Challenges
Another way to break through obstacles to health is to adapt to challenges as they come and accept their inevitability. If you decide to change your habits in pursuit of health goals, you will face setbacks. But knowing they are coming and rolling with the punches can make any health kick more sustainable.
Let’s say, for example, you want to dramatically increase your fruit and vegetable consumption to improve your health. Inevitably, you will encounter days when you simply can’t prepare sufficient food in advance. As such, you’ll wind up eating something just to get calories.
The key isn’t to blame yourself or tell yourself that “you’ve failed.” Instead, it’s just to accept that the world is something like that and there’s no reason you can’t get back on the bandwagon tomorrow.
If you do fail in some way, erase it from your mind. It doesn’t matter. Just get back on with your regular routine the next day.
Keep Tabs On Progress
Another pro tactic to break through health barriers is to keep tabs on progress. Making it measurable can make a difference in how you feel.
How you keep tabs on progress will depend on what you want to achieve. For instance, if you are worried about high blood pressure, you could measure your daily readings. Alternatively, you might focus on a broader suite of metrics if you are more concerned about your general health.
When you measure progress, it makes it more real. It can sometimes be hard to see improvements in health just by looking in the mirror. But measurements take a different story. And they quickly let you know if you’re off-track with some of your methods.
Skip Bad Habits
Skipping bad habits is probably the hardest part of getting closer to the health you want. Everyone has them, if that’s any solace, and they can be challenging to break because of the immediate gratification they offer. Pretty much everyone feels good sitting down to watch Netflix with a bucket of ice cream in hand.
How you break bad habits is personal and depends on your characteristics. Those who are most successful are individuals who learn about themselves first and then develop effective strategies.
One approach is to eat a big bowl of salad before you consume your entreé. It sounds weird, but it can have a profound effect on the psychology of flavor and satiation, encouraging you to make better choices.
You can also try the procrastinator’s technique, where you try as little as 1 minute of some activity you don’t want to do before giving yourself a break. It sounds stupid, but it can be highly effective. Once you get over that initial hump of not wanting to do something, the resistance fades fast.
Be Accountable
Another tactic is to be accountable. It’s something that people who go to rehab for alcohol use to ensure they remain sober.
Being accountable doesn’t mean reporting what you are doing every moment of the day to another person. But having someone there with you while you are at the gym or cooking food can be a great help. The subtle pressure encourages you to stick with healthier behaviors until they become a habit.
Manage Your Time Better
You can also try managing your time better to break through barriers to health goals. Many people spend their entire lives working instead of in activities that will help them succeed in terms of well-being. Flipping this around generates genuine economies that make every area of life more positive.
If you struggle to manage your time, try allocating 90 minutes first thing in the morning to all your health needs. You’ll notice you have more motivation to prepare food and exercise at this time of the day.
It’s also less distracting when you first get up in the morning. Nothing else is happening and work isn’t getting in the way. And you haven’t just done a 10-hour shift that’s left you feeling exhausted and drained.
Figure Out What Your Barriers Are
You also want to figure out what’s stopping you from getting to your wellness goals. This part of the process is often the most challenging because we don’t always know what’s getting in the way of success.
The most common barriers are diet, work, stress, and social relationships. Eating the wrong foods can cause metabolic dysfunction which, in turn, leads to a host of diseases. Work, too, can be a problem if it takes up too much time or has us slumped over a computer most of the day. Even social relationships can be harmful when those around us encourage us to continue with negative habits and patterns.
Once you know what your barriers are, you are in a better position to deal with them. You’ll find your unconscious is excellent at coming up with strategies that can help you navigate complex situations while keeping your friendship group intact.
Set Goals
You can also try setting goals to push through health barriers and get on the road to a healthier you.
When setting goals, make them specific. For example, you could say “I’m going to reduce my blood pressure to 120 over 80 in six weeks” or “I will run a mile in under 7 minutes by June.”
Setting goals can have a powerful effect because it makes us accountable to ourselves. When we write down and commit to something specific within a particular time frame, it makes it much more challenging to ignore.
Get Professional Help
Another approach is to get professional help. Having someone there who understands what you are going through and the difficulties of making changes can be tremendously beneficial. Tailored guidance and support are exceptionally powerful in some settings.
Don’t worry about the expense.
Professionals will only usually help you short term. Once you understand the basics, you are ready to go out and do it by yourself.
Make a Plan
Once you have all the pieces in place, you are in a position to make a plan. Having a system you will use can make your objectives feel less overwhelming and more achievable.
In Conclusion
We hope you found this article about How To Break Through Barriers To Your Health Goals helpful and that it gave you some ideas on how you can best make time to take care of your health, both now and in the future, and you can have a look here for more of our health and wellness features.
I’m Julia, the Senior Managing Editor and I can’t wait to share some more articles with you again soon! In the meantime you can find more style, lifestyle and travel inspiration on “The Velvet Runway” .
Thank you for reading
Website: The Velvet Runway , Instagram : @thevelvetrunway
