What does “Healthy Habits” mean to you?

The word “Habits” means consistent, daily behaviours that impact your physical, mental and emotional well-being.

I have currently been in recovery for over 2 years and the key for me was to make changes to my current habits. The habits and choices that I used to make were not serving me well. I had to change my habits into habits that will support my recovery journey and my growth day by day.

Healthy habits, as with recovery, are personal to each person and there is no one size fits all approach. Exploring what you would like life to look like or the goals you want to set yourself is a great starting point. The next step would be to make a plan.

Ask yourself “how will I achieve the goals I have set everyday?”  then it’s time to start. To start and start moving forward and moving forward does not mean being able to hit everything immediately; it’s about mindset and consistency. Most importantly it’s about self awareness, listening to your mind and body whilst being kind to yourself when the day hasn’t gone to plan.

Personally for me my plan was to get healthy, eat better and with the overall goal of running a marathon. I made my plan, I worked towards this with a  training structure. This actually was so important in supporting my recovery as I had structure and routine and worked towards a goal. Some days my body and mind didn’t want to run and that was ok I just rejigged my plan and listened to my body, whilst being kind that I haven’t failed or let myself down. This goal and new daily habits led to me making better food choices and cutting out alcohol and smoking from my life. This ultimately led to the repetition of making different choices meant that my bad habits had eventually become healthy habits.

Setting your goals, being kinder to yourself, holding yourself accountable and being consistent will help you achieve anything, be that better sleep, healthier diet choices, quitting something, starting something, health, boundaries, being present with friends or family.

Blog post by Chris Smith– Recovery Officer