Building HealthY Routines to Meet Your Needs

We’ve all seen the recommendations. You’re supposed to eat three balanced meals a day, work out for thirty minutes, and somehow still get eight hours of sleep. If just reading this is stressing you out, not to worry, as we have a solution.

You should work to combine activities to accomplish multiple things at once, as well as learn ways to structure your day to make the most of it. Read on to learn more about building healthy routines to meet your needs.

1. Decide What You Will Prioritize

First and foremost, you need to decide what aspects of a health routine are a must for you, and which ones you want to have, but it’s okay if you miss them on certain days. For example, many people choose to prioritize sleep and exercise, swinging through the drive-thru instead of cooking themselves a healthy dinner.

While it’s easy to look down on these people, it’s also important to recognize that we all only have the same 24 hours in a day. So, you need to choose what matters to you so you can create your own healthy routine and recognize that you also may fail at some aspects of it from time to time.

2. Look For Trade-Offs

Let’s pretend that above you decided you wanted to focus on your job, healthy eating, and sleep. This means exercise didn’t make the cut. But don’t toss it aside just yet. Instead, spend some time looking for compromises you can utilize to try to schedule some exercise back in.

Although you might fall short of the official recommendation of 30 minutes per day, maybe you can spend your Sunday meal prepping for the week. This way, you come home to healthy dinners and can exercise for 30 minutes afterward. This may mean sacrificing your exercise on Saturday and Sunday, but as mentioned above, you decided healthy meals were more important.  

3. Do What You Can While You Work

As we said in the beginning, we truly don’t think there’s a way to meet all the official health recommendations while working a full-time job, especially as a caregiver. That being said, as a caregiver, you might have options that don’t exist for those working in an office.

For example, on a nice day, your patient may enjoy a walk in the park. Not only is this exercise for you, but if it’s a nice day, this will surely boost your mood. (If you aren’t a caregiver, a walk at lunch could work exercise into your workday!)

Although meal prep serves a bit harder, there are some patients whom you may have to prep meals for. If this is the case for you, there is no harm in bringing your groceries from home and prepping your meals alongside theirs! (Just be sure the food used comes from the respective budgets unless you’re caring for a family member!)

4. Don’t Leave Free Time Unutilized

Caregiving is a lot of work, but you also have some free time, so while you can’t leave work, you can utilize that time to boost your bottom line.

For example, many caregivers have an extra hour here and there as their patient is napping or in a private doctor’s appointment. You can use this time to meal plan for the week (making a grocery list) or to plan your exercise routine. This is time that would otherwise be lost, but thanks to technology, you can take it back with a little bit of determination!

(Just make sure that these activities never take away from the person you are caring for!)

5. Use Habit-Stacking

Habit-stacking is a new term, but we think it’s a great aspect to focus on as you try to build healthy habits in your life. It basically is the practice of building new habits on old ones. For example, if you are already good at making a list and sticking to it at the store, continue to do that, but research meals first—so you can streamline your meal prep.

Or, if you already love a walk in the park every evening, but have a course you need to take for work, see about getting an audio version, so you can listen to your coursework without ruining your excellent workout habit!

Basically, this requires a bit of creativity, but with habit-stacking, you should be able to easily form new healthy habits!

6. Be Flexible

Life doesn’t always go according to plan, and this can result in feeling shame when you miss a positive habit for a single day. Unfortunately, this shame can continue, causing you to miss a second day, and a third, until you’ve lost the habit completely.

Don’t give in to this shame. Life is life; we all miss a day, and if you do, just go back the next day.  You’ve got this, and you’ve worked hard to build this habit; you can afford to be flexible.

7. Incorporate Friends and Family into Your Routine

We all know that even if you are super-human and able to be a caregiver, eat healthy, exercise, and sleep eight hours a night, there comes a time when you wish you had a social life. Honestly, you can achieve all of this and have a social life, as long as you incorporate your friends and family into your healthy habits.

Instead of going out on a Friday night, invite them to come with you on a nightly walk. Have friends who want to hang out on Saturday? See if they want to meal prep with you. Honestly, the people who build and maintain healthy routines are those who have friends and family with them to achieve their goal. And you never know, your sister might be just as desperate for some exercise as you are.

All in all, it can be hard to balance healthy routines with caregiving and social lives. But if you take the time to prioritize, habit stack, and incorporate your friends and family, you’ll be surprised at just how healthy a routine you are able to maintain!