Tips to help you stay on track with your healthy habits during lockdown
It’s no secret: lockdown has made it infinitely harder to keep up with certain habits. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re sitting 15 feet from our fridges all day long or that we’re binge-watching everything. But we’ve found it all too easy to start replacing healthy habits with not-so-healthy habits. Hello, dessert for breakfast, sedentary days, and refreshing the news obsessively (to name a few).
And while we’re feeling sanitized from head to toe and our homes have never looked tidier, other important rituals can be harder to keep up with. So here are 9 tips to help you stay on track with healthy habits and stop less healthy habits from creeping in!
9 Tips for sticking with your eco-friendly, health, and wellness habits during lockdown
1. Don’t be afraid to adjust
Sometimes tweaking habits helps us make space for new things that charge our lives with just as much joy. So maybe you can’t make as many meals with fresh produce, but you can experiment with new equally nutritious recipes that involve pantry staples. (We’ve got you covered with these 10 must-make plant-based recipes).
Same goes for your workout routine. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re not getting in as many steps as you’re used to. Instead, take advantage of the many online workout classes or find your favorite morning stretch routine that you can do from the comfort of your home. Whatever it is, if something isn’t making sense for your life — rather than forcing it, we’re believers that it may just mean it’s time to adjust.
2. Nourish your body with food that makes you feel good
If you’re like us, what we eat plays a MAJOR role in how we feel. Here are some simple tips to make eating nutrient-rich food easier:
- Make healthy food accessible in your fridge/cupboards (aka try not to bury produce in the back)
- Put sugary or salty treats in cupboards that are hard to reach or require some extra digging
- Eat everything on real plates — even small snacks (this helps avoid mindless munching)
- Find healthier alternatives to your favorite treats
- Eat veggies first
- Meal prep with freezer-friendly meals that you can grab in a pinch
Looking to boost your life with more plant-based cooking inspiration? Check out The Wholesome Culture Cookbook. You’ll get 80+ recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert —plus snacks and side dishes!
3. Find happiness rituals (and do them regularly)
Whether your feel-good ritual is reading before bed or looking out the window while drinking your morning coffee — do whatever makes you feel good (and normal). And if you can, carve even more time in your routine for these rituals.
Here are some of the small and simple pleasures helping us maintain balance in our lives:
- Watching clouds
- Taking baths
- Dancing
- Wearing slippers
- Doodling
- Feeling fancy in a bathrobe
- Reading poetry
- Petting a furry friend
- Reaching our arms up to the sky
- Skimming a few random pages of our favorite book
- Putting on hand lotion
- Sending a “just thinking of you” text to a friend or family member
4. Create a separation of space
Even with all the perks of working from home — no commute, coffee machine within reach, sweatpants — it’s easy to feel swallowed in remote work when your office is your kitchen table. We recommend creating a separation of space between your work life and personal life. (And even if you’re not working form home, we still think it’s smart to create pockets of space for productivity.)
Of course, we don’t all have room for home offices or gorgeous work desks, but even shutting down your laptop and putting it in a separate room while you eat dinner is a good way to set some boundaries.
5. Stay connected with others and yourself
Between Zoom happy hours and FaceTime family reunions — there are so many ways to stay connected with not only our loved ones, but also with ourselves during this time. We’ve found that dedicating time to calling our friends and writing in our journals helps us feel grounded and invigorated with new purpose. Sometimes it’s just a matter of having a conversation with yourself to find motivation to stick with things that are important to you.
6. Embrace new eco-friendly routines
We’ll admit, we’ve used more single-use wipes in the past two months than we have in two years. And the bans on reusable bags certainly changed up our routine. But there are still so many ways to maintain eco-friendly habits from home.
For starters, we’re making extra effort to be mindful of water usage and food waste, and we’re starting more DIY projects like making our own cleaning products and self-care essentials. So instead of focusing on what we can’t do, we’re trying to invest our time in all of the things we can and want to do.
Read more ways to be eco-friendly during this time: Real ways to continue to help the planet from home
7. Get moving *every day*
Getting our bodies moving makes us happier and healthier humans all of the time, but especially now as we’re hunkering down at home. Tip: make it a point to exercise every Monday. That way, you’ll start off your week on a good note!
Here are some fun and easy ways to get moving from inside, wherever you are:
- Go for a walk while maintaining physical distance — only if it’s safe in your neighborhood
- Do jumping jacks
- Stretch. We love this 13 min. yoga video from Morgan Tyler
- Have a dance party (yes, this is the second time we’ve mentioned dancing in this blog post, but it’s really the best mood booster)
- Take advantage of virtual workout classes
- Hold a plank for a minute… or two!
- Pace around the room. Yep, we’re big fans of pacing to juice our brains, particularly as we wait for tea to brew
8. Learn the art of replacing
One of our go-to ways to stop doing something that we don’t want to do anymore is replacing it with something else. For example, if you want to stop drinking caffeine after 3pm — make decaf or an herbal tea instead. Or if you want to slow down your Instagram scrolling during the day, get a different app on your phone that distracts you or (even better) find a new activity altogether! Need some inspiration for things to do besides scroll on your phone? Read this post.
9. Celebrate the wins
On the other hand, if you’re trying to maintain good habits, it’s important to celebrate all the wins. Small and big. Gretchen Rubin wrote in her book Better Than Before:
“When we give ourselves treats, we feel energized, cared for, and contented, which boosts our self-command — and self-command helps us maintain our healthy habits.”
So go ahead and treat yourself! The positive reinforcement will make you more likely to keep crushing your goals and keep building momentum.
Find out more fun tips on how to keep up with goals at this post: All the tricks you need to stick with eco-friendly goals
