So, you’ve made the decision that it’s time to kick your health up a notch and focus on your bodies’ needs. That’s fantastic! The first thing I need you to remember is that this is a lifestyle, a journey, not a quick fix. You need to make active changes to your daily life in order to reach any healthy lifestylegoalbut don’t worry, it’s really not that intimidating! Let’s discuss the first five steps you should do when starting your healthy lifestyle journey!

Define “healthy”

You might be thinking, “I know what the word healthy means”, and I’m sure you do! However, I’m not looking for a Google definition here. What you need to do is sit down with a pen and paper and take a few minutes to determine what “healthy” means to you. This varies for every single person and for some, it may mean you reach a certain weight, for others it’s about your mental state. Define it, write it down, and tape it up somewhereyou can see it every single day!

Determine Your Goals

This is where you get to go all out. Don’t think small, think universal! Write down any and every health-related goal that you have. Are you looking to drop x-number of pounds? Are you trying to find a happy balance between your work life and your play lifeRight now, there are no limits, no boundaries, don’t doubt yourself here, just write!

Break Those Goals Down

For whatever reason, people seem to think that 90 days and 60 days is a short amount of time and that anybody can do anything for 2-3 months. Maybe you can, and that’s great, but let’s start even smaller. If you want a lasting lifestyle change, you need to create daily habits and the best way to do that is to start with micro goals and build from there. For example, if one of your goals is to run a 5k, start with a simple goal of lightly jogging ½ mile every day for 1 week!

Create a Schedule

Whether on paper, on a white board, or in your phone, it is extremely important to create a schedule for your journey! Treat it almost like it’s a job or a “must be done” task. Pencil it in, make time for it. You are more likely to fall off the bandwagon if you see it as an option rather than a priority. Also, a schedule helps you organize your thoughts, keeping you stress-free!

Try new things.

Every healthy lifestyle sho

uld involve some kind of physical activity, but not every type of workout works for every single person, and that’s okay! Take 30 days to try out different types of physical activity that you can incorporate into your daily routine. Do not judge yourself for the workouts you are doing, how you are doing them, or why Susy next door loved it and you don’t! That’s the beauty of this journey, it’s yours!

These steps may seem small, but the first steps are by far the most important to any healthy lifestyle journey. It’s like any math problem, you can’t do algebra before you can do simple addition. Take a couple of days to figure those things out, then hit that start button!