How to Cultivate Healthy Habits in the New Year
FOOD & HOME
How to Cultivate Healthy Habits in the New Year
By: Tessa Kauppila
After the ball has dropped and all the champagne flutes have been stored away, our mindsets naturally shift from celebratory to contemplative. What are my goals for the year ahead, and in what ways can I work to accomplish them? How can I ensure my ambition doesn’t fizzle out in a month from now, leaving me feeling defeated?
This time of year (and always), people come to us for a variety of reasons, from looking to incorporate more whole foods into their diet, to increasing their protein intake to hit new performance peaks at the gym, to elevating the nutritional composition of their go-to family recipes.
Whatever your wellness goals may be for the year ahead, we’ve compiled three ways to help you bring them to life in 2024 and beyond.
3 Tips for a Healthy New Year
1. Set Yourself Up For Success
Start by setting a clear goal, like “I’m going to cook a veggie-forward dinner at least three times a week,” or “I’m going to run three miles without stopping.” Now, write it down in a journal or on the Notes app of your phone—a place that is easy for you to reference often. Schedule self check-ins after 30, 60, and 90 days in your calendar, then another at six and nine months. Allow your written goal to energize and excite you, returning to it on days when you crave a little extra motivation.
Once your goals are outlined, streamline the effort needed to accomplish them. Perhaps that means blocking out every Sunday afternoon for meal planning, grocery shopping, and prepping, or laying out your workout clothes before you head to bed. Habit stacking, or building new habits by taking advantage of old ones, is also a handy tool in cultivating healthy rituals, one borrowed from behavior psychology. You could say something like, “After I fix my tea each morning, I will meditate for one minute,” or “After I make my bed, I’ll immediately slip into my workout clothes.” Your brain builds a strong network of neurons to support your current behaviors, and the more you incorporate something into your routine, the stronger and more efficient the neural connection becomes (therefore making it easier and more natural for you to do).
2. Surround Yourself with Support & Joy
Find an accountability partner, someone to update with your progress and chat through any roadblocks with. When we team up with someone, it can make the pursuit more fun, and it’s more challenging for us to back out of if we have a friend expecting daily or weekly run-downs.
Speaking of fun, joy is an important component to achieving your wellness goals. If you’re looking to be active everyday, incorporate movement you actually enjoy. (This is your sign to sign up for that dance class you’ve been eyeing.) If you’re looking to eat healthier, you shouldn’t settle for flavorless, colorless, soulless food; mealtime should be delicious, vibrant, and leave you feeling strong, energized, and radiant. We love these recipes for just that: Vibrant Green Dinner Salad, Easy Southwestern Gnocchi, and Sweet Potato & Charred Onion Salad with “Chorizo”. Invite over a few friends and whip one up to really maximize on the joy factor.
3. Give Yourself Grace
It’s never too late to start (or restart) your wellness journey, so be gentle with yourself and know you can lean on us; we’re here to support you wherever you’re at on the seesaw of wellness. Our protein-rich products make it easy and delicious to nourish with an abundance of plants and reap all their benefits; we recommend keeping your fridge stocked with our variety of plant protein choices to quickly create a flavorful, clean, and wholesome meal.
Nutrition is the foundation for vibrant total-body well-being, and therefore instrumental to many of our 2024 endeavors. As you venture into the new year, remember that Abbot’s will be with you every step of the way.
Want to learn more about how to optimize your health? Read more in Our Journal.