I SHOULD Live a Healthier Lifestyle | How I’m Changing My Mindset
“I SHOULD live a healthier lifestyle,” I told myself in April in the midst of a pandemic.
Ever since I’ve been staying at home, I’ve been struggled with maintaining a healthy lifestyle. A healthy relationship with food and my body seemed distant. As weeks went by during the stay-at-home order, my relationship with food and exercise became more toxic.
I’ve partnered with Halo Top Creamery on this initiative to STOP SHOULDING YOURSELF.
What does this mean exactly? It means that we are told day by day to give in to societal pressures and do things out of obligation. So instead, I’m taking the initiative to be proactive with my life and set goals to live a healthier lifestyle on my own terms.
This is so important to me because I’ve had a toxic relationship with food and exercise ever since high school. I feel like it has come back stronger than ever during this pandemic. In return, I noticed my jeans stopped fitting, and my weight gain as I saw others on Instagram getting fit with at-home workouts.
It led to me at first cutting down portions, meals, and anything I thought was bad out of my diet. Plus, I wanted to start working out 5 times a week for at least an hour.
Little did I know, this would make things worse. I was falling back into my old habits and not building a sustainable healthy relationship with food and exercise.
After doing research on health and wellness, I came to a list of important reminders to help me achieve my goal of having a healthy lifestyle.
Instead of subtracting foods, add healthy ones
Do exercises that make YOU happy
Exercise to gain strength, NOT lose weight
Don’t feel guilty and punish yourself for eating that dessert (you go girl!)
Every BODY is going to look different, so don’t compare yourself to #bodygoals you see around you (this one has been hard for me to accept)
With these tips, I hope to overcome those SHOULDS of living a healthier lifestyle for the wrong reasons and DO IT because I love my body and I want to build strength and feel good!
One of the things I’ve stopped doing is treating dessert as a “reward.” Healthier options like Halo Top has allowed me to feel good (not guilty) for eating a pint of ice cream! They have dairy-free options and amazing flavors like Birthday Cake so that everyone can enjoy a pint. Their ice creams are the perfect additions for a healthy dessert.
I’ve also been exercising in ways that I feel like is fun to me! I love to jump rope so I’ve been doing that every morning as well as getting fresh air on beach walks. Changing my mindset to exercise to make me feel happier mentally and to gain strength has shifted my perspective on exercising as a whole.
So far, it has been a week of living with a different mindset and setting goals like the below.
To have a healthy and balanced diet that will fuel my body with energy and nutrition
To strengthen my body through exercising
I’ll be sure to keep you posted on my Instagram in the upcoming weeks about my progress and how things are going! Also, excited to try the rest of the dairy-free flavors so I’ll keep you posted on that!
