I’ve always been interested in health and wellness. Growing up in the 80s and 90s meant wellness mostly looked like fast walking, low-fat snacks and trying to make your body smaller. There is always some new trend in the mix and I’ve tried them all. I’ve spent the last 20 years deep diving into health, and it has shaped my midlife into something much different than what I was expecting as a teenager.
I can vividly remember cutting out a picture from a swimsuit catalog in the teens and taping it up next to my mom’s treadmill. I would gaze at it while trying to make my body smaller. I would chomp on all the low-fat snacks and Lean Cuisine meals in the house while planning workouts that I would inevitably give up on a week or two in.
I could go into how we, as a society, are conditioning girls to have unhealthy habits, but the point for me is more about my own journey here and helping someone it resonates with to feel a little less alone. I spent years thinking I was on an island alone in these feelings and don’t want that for my daughter.
Over the years, both as an RN and someone deeply interested in health and wellness, I’ve realized sustainable habits matter far more than perfect ones. I am also a midlife woman who has spent the better part of 40 years trying to make my body do things it just doesn’t see fit to do! If you can relate to any of that, you’re in the right place!
It took the world shutting down for me to get serious about my health in a sustainable way – it forced a slowdown I wasn’t able to see clearly before. I began some of these habits during a shutdown where I still had to show up for a very stressful job and needed a stress reliever. We were afraid and needed an outlet!
So here are my top 5 habits I have managed to keep going in some way or another, even when life gets in my way:
Walking after dinner. I walk after dinner almost every day. It’s a perfect habit for regulating stress hormones and blood sugar, but I also couple this one with connection and often take this walk with my husband. We chat about our day and head down the street to look at our local ducks and horses. Weather has to be pretty bad for us not to go and during the shutdown it was the thing we looked forward to the most.
Consistent bedtime. It doesn’t mean that I never stay up late, but it’s few and far between these days. I get to bed consistently at 10pm and I make no excuses. As an RN who often has to be to work at 5:30am, I need those hours in bed! Sleep is where your brain resets and cleans up the messes of the day, so I prioritize it! I even recently got diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea and my new CPAP machine has been saving my life!
No More All-or-Nothing. Missed the walk today? Oh well. Ate ice cream before bed? Tomorrow is another day. I used to let those things get in my head and it was a slippery slope to giving up all my habits. I no longer allow that to happen. I just restart every day as needed. Perfection is the enemy of progress – I’m not who said that first, but it’s so true!
More Protein – I know, I know... it’s having a moment right now, but that’s for good reason. As a woman deep in the throes of perimenopause, it’s not something I can skip out on. My mindset is to keep my day protein forward. For me, that looks like protein focus early in the day and eating protein first at meals, so I make sure to get enough in. I could go on, but that will be for another post.
Focus on energy, not weight. I have had a lot of changes in recent years to sort through for this one, more to come on that later, but it’s one of the biggest shifts for me and one I’m teaching my teenagers. While some days those thoughts still creep in about looking a certain type of way, I always come back to reminding myself what my body has done for me – and it’s a lot!
I hope you’ll find these helpful in your own life. Small habits can lead up to real change.
Let me know in the comments what you think about how helpful these have been in your own life, or what you’re struggling with these days – I’d love to have more conversations about these in midlife and beyond.