Harmonize your life with healthy habits, as self-care expert, Joanne Mello explores how building simple, intentional, daily habits is the solution to creating balance and well-being in your life.
Building Balance
Are hunger, stress, and fatigue keeping you from being your best in and out of the classroom? Do you wish you had enough stamina without feeling hungry and needing more sugary snacks for all those long days?
Good news! I have a solution to energize your days without caffeine and sugar through simple healthy habits.
Hunger and fatigue show up when you are dehydrated, stressed, and tired, often due to hormone imbalances. You feel this from a domino effect of the many hormones in play from your eating, stress, and sleeping habits. Eating processed foods, starting with breakfast, activates the hormone insulin. Insulin controls your blood sugar by regulating your energy.
Too much sugar creates too much Insulin, sending you on a rollercoaster of energy highs and lows. Add some daily stress, and cortisol, the stress hormone, jumps in because your body can not differentiate good stress from negative stress and starts a fight or flight response. Cortisol causes a chain reaction every time you eat with other hormones, namely ghrelin, your hunger hormone, and leptin, the hormone that tells you you're full. A hormone imbalance can make you feel stressed, tired, and hungry!
Regulate Your Hormones
Controlling these hormones with new habits is a sustainable solution for better self-care and a healthier life. Many people create goals, and while goals serve a higher purpose for achievement, they are often temporary. For example, your students want an A on the spelling test, but do they remember how to spell long-term? Or the dieter who wants to lose 10 pounds before the event, but returns to their old eating habits shortly after.
Four habits to feel strong all-day
1. Drink 6-8 glasses of water a day: Hydration is key.
2. Balance meals and snacks with protein and healthy fats: Read nutrition labels and eat slowly.
3. Manage your daily stress with the “Take 5” breathing technique: Inhale, hold, and exhale while counting to five, then stand up and move your body.
4. Get 7-9 hours of quality sleep: Power down or remove your devices from the bedroom.
Create Sustainable Habits
Habits work to retrain your brain for new pleasure loops, and your brain loves pleasure. The problem is that many of your old habits have taught your brain that pleasure comes from the behaviors that make you unhealthy.
Remember, changing just one habit at a time will retrain your brain for sustainable results!
By, Joanne Mello | Healthy Habits with Joanne
