11 Life Changing Habits for Health and Weight Loss
Learn what healthy habits are, why we need them, and 11 Life Changing Habits for health and weight loss.
Table of Contents
What are healthy habits
Healthy habits are the consistent actions we take every day, week or month that help us get closer to reaching and maintaining our health and weight loss goals. They are things we think, feel or do – that bring us closer to the result we want to create.
Habits are activities that we’ve practiced for so long, or with enough repetition, that we’ve created a new neural pathway in our brain. These actions become almost easier to do than not to, they’re automatic and take much less effort and energy, making them easier to maintain.
In “Atomic Habits,” written by James Clear, he emphasizes the transformative potential of these small, consistent actions and how they can help us create and sustain the health, weight and life we truly want.
(Use my affiliate link to get a free audio version of Atomic Habits!)
Why do we need habits for health and weight loss (and life!)
- Automation of Positive Behaviors: Habits help automate positive behaviors, or behaviors that help us work towards our health and weight loss (or any) goals. When an action becomes a habit, it requires less conscious effort and decision-making. This automation makes it easier to consistently engage in healthy and beneficial activities without relying on constant motivation or willpower.
- Consistency in Behavior: Habits provide a framework for consistent behavior. By repeating actions regularly, habits create a stable routine, fostering predictability and stability in daily life. This consistency is key to achieving long-term goals and maintaining positive changes.
- Efficiency and Time-Saving: Habits contribute to efficiency. Once a behavior becomes a habit, it takes less mental energy and time to execute, making it easier to incorporate positive actions into a busy lifestyle.
- Formation of a Routine: Habits help establish routines. Having a set routine makes it easier to prioritize activities, such as exercise, healthy eating, and self-care. Routines provide structure, reducing decision fatigue and making it more likely for us to stick to our goals.
- Long-Term Change and Goal Achievement: Sustainable habits create a foundation for ongoing success, as they become ingrained in our lifestyle. Unlike short-term efforts, habits contribute to lasting transformations and continuous progress.
- Behavioral Reinforcement: Habits reinforce positive behaviors through repetition. When actions are consistently associated with specific cues or contexts, the brain forms neural connections that strengthen the behavior.
- Improved Self-Discipline: Building habits enhances self-discipline. As we commit to a routine and prioritize positive behaviors, we develop the discipline needed to overcome challenges, resist temptations, and stay focused on our long-term objectives.
11 Life Changing Habits for Health and Weight Loss
Habit 1: Intentional thinking
Pay attention to what you’re thinking about and make sure it’s benefitting and not limiting you! It’s what drives our actions and inactions! (See model below) Start becoming more aware of what’s going on in your brain by making a habit of thinking about your thinking and listening to your brain.
How to practice:
- Make a time for journaling (I like to do it in the morning) where you do a thought download, and get all your thoughts out of your brain about a certain goal, situation or challenge. Question if they’re true, and/or benefitting you.
- When faced with a challenge or high emotion throughout the day, evaluate your thoughts about it. Are they true and/or benefitting you? What can you think instead creating a different feeling, action and result?
- When you’re feeling stuck or struggling when it comes to taking consistent action or making progress – trace it back to the thought you’re thinking, feeling it’s creating that’s driving the action or inaction.
Habit 2: Eat Primarily balanced meals and snacks
A balanced meal or snack contains a combination of the 3 main macronutrients:
- Protein (chicken, eggs, beef, turkey, tofu)
- Healthy fats (olive oil, olives, coconut, nuts, seeds, avocado oil) and
- Clean Complex carbohydrates (fresh fruit or frozen fruits, sweet potatoes, vegetables/leafy greens, unprocessed whole grains if you tolerate them)
Grab my free sample meal plan and eating guide with macronutrient breakdowns here.
A good option of a balanced breakfast would be something like a green protein smoothie with spinach, berries, peanut butter, chia seeds and protein powder.
Eating for blood sugar balance in addition to the tips below helps to stabilize blood sugar levels, minimize insulin and cortisol spikes, helps to balance your energy, reduce cravings throughout the day, minimize fat storage, lower body fat and belly fat, contributes to hormonal balance, can reduce inflammation and much more.
How to practice:
Familiarize yourself with each macronutrient group and the foods within it. Set a goal of having 2/3 of the major macronutrient groups with each meal and snack. Use my free sample meal plan and eating guide to do this or book a call and let’s set up your plan together!
Habit 3: Eat Clean, whole, nutrient dense foods 80-90% of the time.
Strive to get 80-90% of your energy or calories from whole, clean unprocessed foods with minimal additives or preservatives.
We want to choose foods that actually fuel us and have high nutritional value, minimizing the “non-food” ingredients in our foods allows our bodies to digest and assimilate nutrients better, reduce inflammation, false hunger and cravings that additives, preservatives and added sugar can bring. This helps us reach our weight loss goals easier and quicker, and feel better along the way!
How to practice:
Start looking at your ingredient labels. How many ingredients are there? Do you know what they are, can you pronounce them and/or would you add them into a recipe if you were making the food in your own kitchen?
Habit 4: Eat for fuel – what FOOD is for!
The majority of the time, we want to eat when hungry and stop when content or about 80% full, and minimize mindless, emotional and overeating. This helps us naturally eat the right amount of energy and calories for OUR body.
A great way to gauge whether you’re overeating or not – is to pay attention to how you feel before, during and after a meal, and consider how much you wanted to eat versus how much you actually ate.
- Were you hungry, and how hungry?
- How did you feel when you were done?
The goal is to eat the right amount for your body, eat when you’re truly hungry (feel hunger pains and would eat chicken and broccoli or another “boring” food) and stop before full.
If you struggle with emotional eating or overeating – take a look at:
- When and why you want to be eating
- Why you’re eating when you don’t want to be
- What feeling you’re trying to avoid by eating
Get support from a coach (like me :)) here.
Related: How to Stop Overeating (11 tips from a former overeater!)
Habit 5: efficient consistent movement 4-5 days/week
The main goal with this healthy habit is to get closer to moving our body for 30 min+ every day. Exercise helps improve mood, decrease inflammation, increases insulin sensitivity, helps with weight loss and fat burning and much more.
How to practice:
I highly encourage starting where you are with what you have!
You can start by setting a step goal slightly higher than where you’re currently at, and slowly adding in resistance training of some sort. My current plan and what I’ve seen work best with clients is 3-5 days of resistance training (weights, barre, pilates) and walking throughout the day everyday, with an optional day or two of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or Low Intensity Steady State (LISS) cardio.
How to make a movement plan:
- Evaluate your goals
- Determine how much time you have AND want to dedicate to movement
- Select when and where you will do it (be specific – we’re more like to be consistent then!)
- Select exercises/movement that will help you reach your goals and plan it into your calendar. Choose days and times least likely to get interrupted.
- Follow your plan for 30-60 days, evaluate and adjust
Habit 6: Drink Half your body weight in water (or More!)
We’ve all heard this habit for health and weight loss before, but combined with the others it’s key!
Drinking enough water aids in detoxification and digestion, helps us feel better, think clearer, reduces bloat, supports nutrient absorption, and toxin elimination. Additionally, staying hydrated can aid in weight loss by reducing feelings of hunger, enhancing metabolism, and supporting the body’s ability to burn calories more efficiently.
How to practice: Define the amount of water you want to drink in a day and set up reminders throughout your day to ensure you remember to drink it.
Habit 7: Get quality sleep
Strive for 7-8 hours of quality sleep per night. If this is an impossibility, work towards as close to that amount as possible and focus more on the quality vs the quantity. When we sleep our body detoxes, and our cortisol and hormone levels regulate, so it’s a key factor when it comes to both health and weight loss.
How to practice:
- Evaluate your current schedule and prioritize 7-8 hours of sleep/night. What can be moved or removed to get closer?
- Practice the quality sleep tips: Eliminate light in your room, remove blue light 1-2 hours before bedtime, avoid caffeine 5-6 hours before bedtime, sleep in a cool room, create a nighttime relaxation routine, and practice the other habits here!
Habit 8: love yourself along the way!
This is something I definitely didn’t start my journey with, and it was a big part of why it took me so long to actually reach my weight loss goal. When we think negatively about ourselves and our goals – our feelings, actions and results follow.
When we decide to love ourselves and build up our confidence and pride along the way – our journey is way more enjoyable, feels better, and we get further faster. How we treat our past and current self determines what future we create.
How to practice:
- Decide now that you’re done beating yourself up and putting yourself down (there’s NO benefit!)
- Pay attention to how were talking about and thinking about ourselves throughout the day, acknowledge it and decide to think something different
Habit 9: Make Decisions ahead of time
Any time I’ve actually accomplished a goal – making an official, real decision (ahead of time) was key. The decision to do it, to go for it, to commit to it. Any time it was a vague interest – I usually quit or it took me way longer to accomplish.
Why does this work? Because when we make decisions ahead of time, we leverage the prefrontal cortex’s cognitive functions. By utilizing this brain region responsible for planning and decision-making, we can proactively structure their meals, workouts, and responses to potential challenges.
This deliberate approach not only minimizes impulsive choices but also enhances self-discipline and consistency, harnessing the power of the prefrontal cortex for a more thoughtful and successful weight loss journey.
How to practice:
Make a decision! Make a full decision to commit to the goal, yourself, the process and identity transformation that comes with accomplishing any goal. Make a plan and decide ahead of time which actions you will take, feelings you’ll feel and thoughts you’ll think before you’re in each situation.
Habit 10: Create your plan one week ahead and follow it
Building on the above habit, we want to create, commit to and decide to follow our plan ahead of time with our prefrontal cortex. Here we create a specific healthy eating and weight loss protocol or plan, that clearly lists what we’ll eat, think and do for the week ahead. Having a clear plan, decision and commitment ahead of time makes it much easier to follow it.
Habit 11: Build the skills of Emotional strength and resilience
When we have emotional resilience and strength, it builds confidence, self trust and a relationship with ourselves like nothing else. When we’re willing to move forward with the actions that will help us accomplish our goals regardless of a possible negative feeling, we stop holding ourselves back.
For example, pretend you’ve been wanting to apply for a promotion or new job, but haven’t because you’r afraid you’ll get rejected. What if that did happen and you knew you would still be OK? We stop trying to control the world and stop holding ourselves back to avoid negative emotion, and on the other side we don’t hide from it.
That’s emotional strength and resilience. With this skill, we can truly accomplish anything.
Building Emotional Strength and Resilience
There are two parts to building this habit:
- Believing we can handle any emotion. Although uncomfortable – we can handle it.
- Learning to allow discomfort, embrace all the emotions, feel and process through them – so we don’t feel the need to eat through them. When we’re wiling to feel and confident we can, our life changes because it removes our fear of situations, circumstances and feelings and we don’t try to hide, avoid, react or distract from them.
How to practice:
Believe that the worst thing that can ever happen is an emotion, simply a vibration in your body. Although uncomfortable, we can handle it. Be willing to sit with and feel your feelings. Decide not to numb them out with food or alcohol. Set a goal of embracing uncomfortable situations look at them as a challenge that every time you overcome you get stronger
Work these habits for health and weight loss into your daily life, practice + repeat! Evaluate after 30-60 days of consistent practice. What’s working? What’s not? What would you like to improve on?
Need help with HOW, coming up with a PLAN OF ACTION and actually FOLLOWING IT? That’s where I come in 😉😀
Let’s talk, and create your path to living your healthiest and best life ❤️
