Healthy Living and Good Habits
A healthy lifestyle is important for absolutely everyone. When we look after our physical health, we feel better too – fitter, more relaxed and better able to cope with stress. Healthy living means developing and maintaining healthy habits while changing those habits that are not supporting your health and wellness.
It can be very difficult to change old habits, but there are steps you can take to become healthier. The key to developing positive habits are to
1. Change just one thing at a time
2. Make small changes
3.Go slowly
4.Build on what you already do
Technology can help you on your journey! In this issue, we have included two apps which are available on iPhone and Android that will help support you to replace your bad habits with good ones all while staying organized and keeping track of your on-going progress. Habit tracking apps work because they give you a visual representation of your progress. You get to see all the times you’ve done (or skipped) the habit lined up as an unbroken chain.
Nomo Developed by someone in recovery, this is a simple but effective tracking app to help you say goodbye to bad habits. You can create as many clocks as you need for whatever habit you are trying to say “nomo” to. Track your days and hours and money saved. There is also the option to add “accountability partners” – other app users that can help support you in your progress.
HabitBull You can view habits based on a daily calendar, a weekly calendar, or a monthly calendar. If you perform a habit successfully more than one day in a row you’ll create a streak, and the app can track on a weekly or monthly basis how long your streaks are.
We like that it has flexible options for goals, rather than having to achieve a goal daily – helpful if you want to, say, go to the gym three times per week, or drink 3 glasses of water every day. The free version allows you to track up to 5 habits, while the paid version allows up to 100.
HabitShare (iOS, Android) Habits are easier to build when you’ve got a friend along for the journey. HabitShare connects you with your friends to track your habits together and motivate one another. While it’s part social network, you can control HabitShare’s privacy settings easily, and choose what to share and with whom, if anyone at all.
Tracking a habit with friends lets you see their last check-in date and send messages to them commenting on their performance, hopefully with something encouraging. Its options for habit customizing are pretty barebones, though you can set reminders and specific tracking days.
Read more stories in our Summer Newsletter here