3 Healthy Habits to Start Your Day

Give your whole day a makeover just by starting your morning in a healthier, more relaxing way with just three habits: exercise, meditate and eat a good breakfast.

Exercise

We’ve all read a hundred times that waking up and exercising is monumentally good for our whole body and outlook on life, but why do some people have a hard time sticking to it?

Cedric Bryant, PhD, from the American Council on Exercise says, “If you workout before your day distracts you, your chances of exercising regularly go way up.” If you’ve tried and failed at a morning exercise routine, examine what went wrong, make changes and start again.

Is the gym too expensive or you feel self-conscious in front of Joe Bicep? Skip the gym and walk around a park or your neighborhood.

Is working out boring? Find a workout buddy or something more engaging; dancing, boxing and climbing are exercise too.

If you’re too pressed for time to exercise, find short routines you can squeeze into your morning or wake up 10 minutes earlier.

Most importantly, keep trying and remind yourself why you want to exercise: to fight disease, lose weight, and improve health.

Meditate

In recent years, research supporting the practice of meditation to relieve stress and maintain an overall healthy outlook has been pouring in, and more and more people and businesses are trying it.

Morning meditation can help you control impulses and strengthen self-control, relieve stress, focus your mind and change how you think about others.

If waking up to chant and “meditate” isn’t your thing, try taking 10 minutes alone to write in a journal, stretch your body or enjoy nature without any other distractions—which are shown to have similar effects as meditation.

Eat Breakfast

Start with a good breakfast, not just a cup of coffee while walking out the door. Whether or not you’re eating carbs or eggs or milk, find something that fills you up and packs a healthy punch.

A good breakfast doesn’t have to be elaborate, either; a bowl of oatmeal, scrambled egg whites with salsa or a big green smoothie.

If you don’t have time to make something when you wake up, prepare everything before you go to bed.