5 Healthy Habits That Changed My Life & Helped Me Lose 30kg - Habits for 2022

Well, hello and cheers to the first video of 2022. I thought we'd keep it nice and simple today and I would take you through five of my top healthy habits that I used when I was losing weight and that I still use today. All right, so we may as well get stuck straight in. And the first one I wanted to talk about is increasing my general activity. Now, I'm not gonna bore you with all the science behind non-exercise activity thermogenesis because quite frankly, back then, I didn't have a clue about it. But I feel like when people are losing weight, there's a huge emphasis on what you're eating and your exercise. Now, of course, there's a reason for this, but I feel like general activity, or NEAT, is often overlooked and is pretty underrated as well. But not only that, the benefits of it are multifaceted. Obviously, in relation to weight loss, you're gonna be burning more energy, so that's always gonna be beneficial. And it's an easy way to put more activity into your day. But I find that the more active I am and the more proactive I am in doing things, it just gives me a little bit more motivation and a little bit more energy. You know, if I put my clothes away regularly or if I choose to walk instead of drive, if I stand to do certain things rather than sit, I just feel better and I feel like I have way more energy throughout the day. So for me, increasing my general activity kind of holistically improves my life in terms of having more energy in general and wanting to do things and therefore feeling more motivated and healthy overall. To give you a bit of an idea as to how I would increase my general activity throughout the day, it was such simple little things, like things that I might neglect or ignore or maybe put off, I would just do. So if it was taking the bins down or if it was picking something up off the floor or if I had to put my clothes away, I would just proactively do it rather than wait and do it a little bit later. There was even smaller things, such as if I was drying my hair with a hairdryer in front of the mirror, I would choose to stand instead of sit or if I was on the phone, I would stand. Now I have a stand-up desk with a little extender. It cost me, I think, like 70 pounds off Amazon and I always pretty much stand at my desk when I'm working. I started cooking heaps more, which meant I was standing up in the kitchen and moving around a lot more often and then there was even tiny little things that you wouldn't even consider, such as if I was taking a load of laundry or something from one room to another and I had my hands completely full, instead of just trying to ram it all into one and dropping stuff, I would make two trips and it was tiny, tiny changes like that, which I think had more of a mental benefit in terms of feeling like I was being more proactive or generally active person, but obviously also it was increasing my non-exercise activity. So if you wanted to start putting this into your life and seeing if it made a benefit to you, just start to think about what you're doing throughout the day and ask yourself, is there a way that I could make this a little bit more active, whether that's ditching the car or parking a little bit further away, the ones that we've probably all heard of loads of time. If you're doing something at home, is there something that you could do to increase the activity level of what you're doing? Even tiny little things, like when you're watching TV, is there something that you could be doing, like I sometimes will color in and it's just a little bit of activity, which makes me feel like I'm not just slobbing out on the couch watching TV or I'll do some basic stretching or I'll just walk and go and get myself a glass of water and walk back. So just tiny little things like that, just generally improve how you feel about yourself, but of course, also you're adding to your non-exercise activity. Now, number two is a healthy habit, which I still have a bit of a rocky relationship with, and that is stopping comparing yourself to others. Now, obviously, it's quite hard to do that, especially nowadays with social media and the abundance of information that you're constantly being bombarded with, but once I found ways and methods in which to stop comparing myself as much, I found that I just felt so much better and I also felt a lot more balanced in my approach. Comparison's a bit of a weird one because I think when people often talk about comparison, it comes from a place of relating it to negativity, so the person that we're comparing ourselves being bad-meaning or ill-meaning, or we're comparing ourselves to someone who isn't a good example, but that's really not always the case. In fact, sometimes you can be comparing yourself to someone who you find super inspiring and super motivating. How that usually manifests for me is that I start to draw back on myself and doubt myself severely, and then I'll stop doing things, and in the past, that was more related to exercise-related things or maybe dieting myself in terms of what I was doing and my consistency, whereas now it's more so to do with dieting myself work-wise or feeling like I'm not good enough for my job, so it is a little bit different now compared to then, but in terms of how I identify it and how I fix it is exactly the same. A huge one is to either prevent or reduce how much you're seeing what you're comparing yourself to, so as a great example, on social media, I'll just simply unfollow people. I follow only people pretty much that I've met in real life or someone who works in a completely different field for me. There's a few reasons I do that, but a huge one is if I start to consume more than I create, I notice that I fall into the comparison trap very, very quickly, and I start to doubt myself, and everything comes to a grinding halt, so I just try to minimize that as much as possible. Another huge tip is just to compare yourself to you, so it sounds very easy to do, but it's not actually in practice. I'm gonna talk about progress tracking in a second, but if you can look back on where you've come from and use yourself as a form of comparison or motivation, then that is usually a fantastic tool into minimizing the negative impacts of comparison. All right, I just mentioned it, so we may as well talk about it. Point number three is making sure that you track your progress in whatever you're trying to achieve and be motivated to do, and reflect on it regularly. So this is something that's taken me a long time to get good at doing, but I wish I had started sooner, because when I finally did, it made such a huge difference in terms of my motivation and making sure that I feel fulfilled and like I'm on the right track, and realistically, when I'm talking about healthy habits, we're not singly talking about weight loss or exercise goals, we're talking about living a happy, fulfilled, and healthy life, so I feel like it definitely comes under this umbrella, but you can track your progress in whatever you're doing, so whether you're trying to improve your career, whether you're trying to improve your mindset, whether you're trying to improve your physical health, your exercise goals, whatever it might be, you can track your progress in multiple ways, and then you can reflect back on what you've been recording and use that to keep you going, to keep you motivated, and not only that, but realize pretty much how awesome you are. I often get asked, do I have any bad days, and oh my gosh, do I have bad days. Of course I do, like there's days where I'm so down on myself, I feel really negative, and basically I feel like I'm in a bit of a hole, and something that I find that really helps to motivate me and just get my butt in gear to get going again is to reflect back on my progress, and so that could be looking back at what I've achieved in my fitness, if it was a fitness goal, for example, looking back at myself, just photos of myself, or maybe journal entries, or things that I've written from about five or 10 years ago and reflecting on the person I was then and how much everything has changed and how much I have changed in that time just gives me so much motivation to just keep going forward, and you look back and you think, if I've achieved that so far, then think how much I could achieve in the future. It's so easy when you're in the moment to just focus on the present and be down on yourself, be negative, maybe be trapped in some negative thinking patterns, or you could be looking into the future and thinking that it's hopeless, or there's no end in sight, or just not really know where you're going, but if you can actually reflect back in a positive way and look at the lessons you've learned, look at how you've developed in multiple different areas, it can be such a big driver in terms of just getting that motivation back and feeling positive and empowered. It may sound a little bit kooky, but honestly, once you start doing it and you have the ability to go back and look at actual data, or information, or photos, or whatever it is that you have to see how far you've come, you appreciate just what you've achieved, and it really goes a long way to helping you stay positive, stay motivated, and moving forward. Okay, so the next one is probably the hardest to do, and it takes some time, but probably the most influential, and that is surround yourself with the right people or a good community. Now, again, it's not easy to do, but having the right people around you with an attitude that aligns with what you want and who generally are positive, proactive, and just want to get out there and make the most of life, it just makes such a difference than being around people that are, let's face it, energy vampires. Now, of course, we can't always choose everyone that's directly around us in life, but we can influence some of the people that we let into our lives. The best way I have found to make friends is to find people that are doing something similar to what you enjoy, and then just touch base with them. So for me, obviously, I do a lot of calisthenics, I do some bouldering, some hiking, I like going to the gym, and I'm a pretty open person. I will talk to anybody if they come up and talk to me, and that's how I've met a lot of my friends, either through just meeting them in those places, or when people have reached out to me on Instagram, I will always be the first one, if I find them a particularly positive or inspiring person, to ask to go and do something with them, whether that might be a hike or a boulder or maybe just go to a gym session. And I have met some amazing friends through doing that. I must say that those are the people that I truly feel inspired by, and who I feel support my journey in a good way. So they're always trying to inspire me to be the best person I can be, rather than feeling like they're taking the energy away from me. I feel like I remember reading this somewhere recently, but a good way to understand whether the people in your life are having a positive or negative impact on you is to think about the last five people that you had contact with, and think about how they made you feel. If you felt like they've had a positive impact on you mentally, then that's fantastic, and that's gonna go a long way into keeping you going forwards, feeling like you have that healthy, happy, and balanced lifestyle. But if you feel like they were a little bit of an energy vampire, they took a little bit away from you, maybe made you feel a little bit more negative, it might be time to start branching out and looking for those people in your life that you could make friendships with, make relationships with, that are going to bring more to your life. Honestly, community is such a huge one, and that's one of the reasons why I love calisthenics, because I feel like, as a community, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, what level you are, or who you are, it is so inclusive, everyone is there rooting for you, they want to help, and they're just so friendly, which is amazing. But to bring that quickly back to weight loss, because I know this is something that a lot of people struggle with, I think having the right community around me was really useful in terms of feeling like I was supported, not having someone criticize what I was doing, or tell me that I was wasting my time, because this is something that comes up a lot, is that family members will be critical of what someone's doing, or tell them that they're wasting their time, or just not support them in general, and it can be a very, very challenging thing to overcome. Ultimately, the main thing is, is you have to be doing what you want to do, and I'm gonna talk about this in another video, so I won't go into too much detail, but if you have the, at the end of the day, you can't rely on other people, but you can choose who is in your life, and who has an impact on you day to day, so definitely choose wisely. Okay, and the final one is, I had to narrow it down to five, and you guys know I love to talk, so it was pretty hard, but the last one is going to be focusing on the small things, rather than only the bigger picture. So it's very easy when you're trying to lose weight, or trying to achieve something, to focus on what's lying ahead, and the goal that you're trying to achieve, rather than appreciating what you've got right now, and also the ability you have to just do the small things, and ultimately, it's the small things that make the difference. You can't build a wall without using bricks, so try to think about every single choice, and thing that you're doing throughout the day, as those bricks, which are building up to achieve whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. The added bonus is, is if you can start to enjoy doing those things, and make it sustainable, it's gonna be a heck of a lot easier to get towards your goal in the future, and this is not just related to weight loss, this is anything that you want to achieve in life. Also, another motto of mine at the moment, is just life is too short, and it's not that big. I think often we can get so trapped into thinking about the future, and potentially feeling negative about the fact that it's so far away, or that we haven't achieved what we want to achieve yet, but ultimately, the goal that we are trying to achieve when we get there, the chances are that we'll just ask ourselves, okay, we've achieved this now, what's next? It's just like an ever-moving goalpost. So if we can enjoy today, enjoy the present, enjoy what we're doing, that's going to be so much better than just focusing on trying to achieve something in the future, getting there, and realizing that it just isn't all that it's cracked up to be. So put the work in, do the small things, try to make the most of the present that you have, because you're not gonna get this time back, and don't forget, the most important thing to do is not take life too seriously, and have fun. What you want to achieve will happen if you just consistently work on those little small things. I guess just try to enjoy life while you're working towards your goals, because there is no point putting off happiness. All right guys, that was my very hard to narrow down five healthy habits which changed my life. I hope that you've got something out of this video, and it's maybe given you a few different ideas, or just a little bit of positivity, but I would love to know if you guys have any healthy habits too, or if you've had anything that's changed your life, some lifestyle hacks, anything at all, drop them down in the comments. I would love to know. Otherwise, I will see you very shortly in the next video, and I hope you have a beautiful week. Bye.