Good Health: What’s Getting in Your Way?
Good health is easy to take for granted, but the moment we experience a sore throat, headache, stubbed toe, or something more serious, we are suddenly made aware of just how important good health is. When it comes to health, prevention is better than a cure. As the saying goes, if you don’t make time for your health, you will have to make time for illness. So why do we always find it so hard to prioritise our health and to consistently keep a healthy lifestyle? Let’s take a quick look at the foundations for good health, the barriers and some ideas to overcome these barriers.
Foundations for Good Health
Just like a car needs good fuel to run well over time, our bodies and minds are designed to need the following:
· Good nutrition
· Regular exercise
· Adequate sleep & rest
· Social connection
· Healthy mental habits (like healthy thought processes and a sense of purpose)
Barriers to Good Health and their Antidotes
We’re sure you read that list above and thought - I’ve heard all those before! So why is it that we know all these things, yet struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle? What are some of the barriers getting in our way? Here’s a few things that you might not have considered with some helpful antidotes.
Barrier 1: No time buffer
Antidote. Purposely create a little space in your schedule each day so that you are not run off your feet and have time to deal with the unexpected. If you can learn to discipline yourself to create these buffers then you will help reduce stress and have time to invest in an area of your health.
Barrier 2: Using or restricting food as an unhealthy emotional regulation strategy
Antidote. Instead, learn skills to healthily recognise and manage your emotions and to healthily tackle challenges in your life. We don’t intuitively have these emotional regulation skills at birth, we learn them, and often as adults we need a little help fine tuning these skills. A psychologist is a great support in this area.
Barrier 3: Technology addiction
Antidote. Screens are addictive and consume time like a vortex. Challenge yourself to monitor your screen usage and notice how often you reach for a device. The more time you spend on screens, the more sedentary you are, the more cortisol (stress hormones) may be building up in your body, the less connected you are to others, the less sense of purpose you feel, the less quality rest you are actually having, the poorer quality of sleep you may have later, and the more it can affect your mental health. Come to think of it, screen overuse really affects every pillar for good health. It doesn’t mean you need to get rid of screens to be healthy, just start by making sure you are truly in control of your technology use and technology is not controlling you. From there, you can decide how you want to best use your precious time.
Barrier 4: All-or-nothing thinking
Antidote. When we finally tune into our health, we can run the risk of being “all in” and making goals that are too extreme and not sustainable in the long run. We tell ourselves that we will go to the gym at 6am, 5 days a week and strip our diets back to the bare minimum. A healthy lifestyle is one of achievability, consistency and flexibility. Look at developing just one small healthy change in your life at a time and build on that once it has become a healthy habit. If you lose motivation from not having extreme rules and regulations on yourself, perhaps it is worth exploring with a psychologist why that is?
How did you go?
Can you identify with any of these common barriers? We encourage you to make one small change today – a small step in the right direction is still a meaningful step forward towards creating a healthier lifestyle for yourself. And if you need help, we are here to support you and provide the tools tailored to your needs.
