There’s no point in your life where your health should be lower in priority - it’s ultimately more important than anything. Sadly, it’s far too easy to fall behind on that responsibility when your life becomes hectic and your hands are full. If you’ve put your health on the back burner while you focus on what you feel is more important, it’s time to change that and start putting the pieces back together. Building up healthy habits can take time and effort, but if you pace yourself properly it can be easy to work into your life.

Schedule your appointments

If you’ve been busy non-stop, it’s easy to forget to book your necessary appointments. Like your routine health checkup, or an appointment at the dental clinic. Even if you don’t feel like there’s anything wrong, it’s good to get a second opinion from a healthcare professional, as well as keep your doctor up to date on your health. Consistent health records and a good relationship with a primary care physician make it much easier to keep track of any underlying health issues that you might have. Infrequent appointments may make certain symptoms difficult to diagnose. 

Managing your portions

Dieting is one of the more difficult parts of letting your health go. For some people, food is where they turn when they’re under a lot of stress, and that can really take your diet off of the rails. Simply trying to cut all of your poor eating habits down in one go can be very difficult, and for most people, that’s just not going to work. Instead, working on your portion sizes little by little can help you to cut down on what you’re eating. Buy smaller bowls and plates, and prepare less food. Temptation can’t push you to make an unhealthy decision if there’s nothing to choose from.

Record everything

Working into good habits is tough, but a lot of the issue is having no great way to track your efforts. If you start recording your progress, it’s a good indicator of how much you’re doing for yourself, and it puts pressure on maintaining it. For example, if you’re trying to cut calories, logging everything you eat can really help. You can keep a daily count of what you’ve eaten; that way, it’s much easier to visualize days you’ve gone wrong and days where you’ve done it right.

It doesn’t have to be just dieting that you log either, but recording how much you’re working out is also highly recommended. Start by doing a short workout, and make sure you’re not pushing yourself too much on your first day. Even if it’s just for a few minutes, do what you feel is enough. Once you’ve done that, mark down what you did and how long you did it for, and see how long you can do it the next day. Timing it and marking it down can really help you to keep up the momentum.