Why You Struggle With Healthy Living

The concept of healthy living is simple; you choose habits, routines, and lifestyle adjustments that allow you to be healthier mentally, emotionally, and physically. So, why does it feel like such a struggle? Aside from the fact that you might be making some considerable changes in your daily routine and lifestyle, there are a few other reasons you may be making it a little more difficult than it needs to be.

Here are some helpful tips for when you are struggling with your healthy living journey.

You Have Too Many Restrictions

Restrictions often seem like a good way to stay on track and reach your goals faster, but more often than not, they end up being what keeps you from reaching your goals. Think about restrictions from the point of view of someone changing their diet. If your main objective to eating healthier is to simply remove everything that could ever be deemed “unhealthy”, you aren’t improving your diet as much as you are taking away from it.

Giving yourself a big list of what you can’t eat, instead of looking at all the amazing things you can eat, is the wrong way to look at health. Think about what you are adding to your life when you focus on healthy living, not on what you are taking away and telling yourself will make you “unhealthy”.

You Don’t Have Enough Flexibility

In addition to not having a lot of restrictions, you also need flexibility in other ways. No two days will ever be exactly the same in your life, so while it is great to try to stick to your routines as much as possible, you have to prepare for days that aren’t perfect. When you forget to set your alarm, when a kid is home sick from school, when the weather is too bad to drive to the gym. These are the moments you need to prepare for, because they will absolutely happen.

Your Goals Are Too Strict

Look at the health goals you have, or the reasons why you are focused on healthy living in the first place, and decide if they are too strict or too difficult to accomplish. Did you go a little overboard? Are your goals a bit unrealistic?

It is great to have big dreams you want to accomplish, but if your goals are so big that they are mostly out of reach, you are only setting yourself up for disappointment. It doesn’t mean you can’t reach these big goals, but start with smaller ones that are more realistic, and you won’t find consistency as difficult as you move along this journey.

You See Health as Black and White

Health and wellness is subjective, even if science has data and stats to back up certain aspects of what is deemed healthy or not. Overall, your healthy living is what you define it as, not what the experts say or what a healthy guru tells you. If you keep seeing health as black and white, right and wrong, yes and no, then you are only setting yourself up for failure.

Try looking at health as more of a spectrum. There are different ways to be healthy, and you don’t have to do them all. Choose what best fits your lifestyle, and give yourself some grace when things in your life change, and you can’t always do everything exactly the same.