Make Living Well Sustainable

The wellness community is littered with fad diets, crash cleanses, and weight loss products—all with empty promises.

Unfortunately, there is no get-in-shape-quick scheme that works without significantly damaging your body and mind. And any sort of program that promises results in a month is unsustainable for the long-term; many people even have difficulties making it through the first month alone because of the rigorous demands.

Living well isn’t—and shouldn’t be—a 30-day fix. Wellness is a lifelong adventure of learning, changing, and discovering what works best for you.

On your wellness journey, it’s up to you to figure out what motivates you to get up and get moving. You can explore various forms of movement to find what you like to do most, then create a sustainable plan to execute.

The keyword here is sustainable. 

So many of us have made “get in shape” a New Year’s resolution in one year or another. The first week of January, you’re hitting the gym like there’s no tomorrow, and you end up doing more than your body can handle. Then when tomorrow inevitably comes, you feel too sore to move. You decide to skip a day, then one day turns into two, and so on. By February, you’re back to your old habits, and not much has changed.

The same thing goes for eating well. You decide to cut carbs and sweets out of your life cold turkey in the name of weight loss. But the next time you go to a party with snacks laid out, you can’t resist the salty chips or the sweet cupcakes. It’s entirely possible that you’ll overeat, feel guilty the next day, then undereat to try to compensate for it.

Living well doesn't have to feel like a chore or a punishment.  It means making choices that will enrich your life and help you feel like your best possible self.

At KYN, we’re all about finding the most sustainable path for your nature. Because what works for us may not work for you. But we can offer some tips on how to create a sustainable wellness plan.

Start Small

Don’t expect to change your life overnight. 

While a “change everything in two weeks” advertisement may seem appealing, just remember that slow and steady wins the race. Baby steps are the best way to move towards lasting change. 

Start with the tasks that feel the most attainable for you, then introduce new habits every week or month. 

For example, if your goal is to reduce your overall calorie intake, you don’t want to jump to only having one meal a day (which is terrible for you anyway). Instead, you could create a meal plan for yourself that features recipes you’ve wanted to try and limit the number of times you eat out in the week. 

The following week, choose recipes with a lower calorie count and remove another day of eating out. You can continue to taper off the overall daily caloric intake until you reach your target number.

Or, if you’re working towards a fitness goal, you could start with a couple of days in the gym a week or shorter workouts multiple days a week. If you’re looking to reduce stress, begin with two-minute meditations after you brush your teeth in the morning or evening and work your way up.

As you accomplish the tasks you set for yourself, you’ll gain confidence and want to keep moving forward incrementally.

Find Your Balance

We don’t just mean in a yoga pose, but in everything you do.

Too much of anything is never great, so it’s crucial to find where your personal happy mediums are. 

For example, you may want to plan your fitness schedule to rotate between yoga, HIIT, low impact, and strength training sessions instead of only doing HIIT. Or, if you’re working towards eating well, giving yourself permission to have “unhealthy” things you love on special occasions will help you stick to your meal plan on the other days.

Balance also refers to finding the mind-body balance to ensure you don’t experience mental or physical burnout. Listen to what your body and brain tell you, and don’t be afraid to make changes. 

Since a healthy lifestyle is all about finding inner peace, your balance should enable you to still feel happy when you venture off the path you set for yourself.

Evaluate and Adjust

Living well is an ongoing process, and as we’ve said, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The best thing you can do for yourself is to stay open and continue learning about what works for you to make your lifestyle sustainable. 

Take time to evaluate how the choices you’ve been making are affecting your mind, body, and spirit. If everything is good, you may want to up the ante of intensity. If you find that you’re tired, you may want to reel it back. If you’re bored, you may want to shake things up.

At KYN, we’ve developed some holistic health fundamentals to help jumpstart living well. Let us know how we can help you adopt viable steps to make changes that become habits and ultimately change your life.