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How to Start a Healthy Lifestyle: A Beginner’s Step-by-Step Guide
Small steps made consistently lead to big strides in your health. If you’re curious how to start healthier habits, the answer is simple: start with baby steps!
Key Takeaways
- 01.
A healthy lifestyle consists of a few key pillars: sleep, movement, balanced nutrition, and connection.
- 02.
Small, repeatable habits matter more than extreme routines.
- 03.
Anything you do to stay healthy makes a difference.
If you’re new to the “healthy lifestyle” concept, congratulations! Starting up a health-conscious routine comes down to understanding your preferences and adopting key healthy practices in ways that fit in with your individual lifestyle. Take one first step today, and keep building from there.
Understanding the Basics of a Healthy Lifestyle
It is possible to start being healthy and fit without getting overwhelmed by a challenging process.
Here’s the good news—a healthy lifestyle does not have to be a strict plan or perfect routine. Rather, it is the result of daily habits that touch on core pillars of health. Incremental improvements across these core pillars will be the foundation of a healthier lifestyle, supporting how you feel, function, and recover over time. The core pillars of a healthy lifestyle are: Good sleep, exercise, nutrition, and human connection.
The goal is not perfection. The goal is to achieve as much consistency as possible of these basic health practices, a flow that feels sustainable in your life.
Pillars of a healthy lifestyle
Prioritizing your health should not feel like restriction or pressure. It should feel like you’re doing the right thing for your body, and you should feel great about that! For instance, movement and exercise should support your energy, not drain it—it makes you feel vital and rejuvenated with endorphins. And the healthy foods you start eating should feel grounding and nourishing, not like they’re keeping you from other favorite foods.
Here are the main pillars of a healthy lifestyle:
Improve your sleep
Prioritize getting more sleep. Quality sleep supports multiple systems in the body, including hormone regulation, recovery, metabolism, and cognitive function.1
Movement & Exercise
Move your body daily—and take up strength training. Regular exercise keeps your heart and muscles strong, which are both essential to longevity. Resistance-based exercise in particular plays a key role in long-term physical function and health.2
Nutrition & Diet
Build balanced nutrition habits. Use meal times as an opportunity to support your body with good fuel. A well-balanced diet helps support your body’s daily functions and provides sustained energy throughout your day. And if you’re considering supplements to fill nutrient gaps, add a daily health drink like AG1 to your morning routine to build your foundational nutrition each day.
Human connection
Prioritizing the wellness of your mental health contributes to your overall well-being, too. Doing more of the activities you love, working towards a goal with a higher purpose, or just connecting with friends contributes to better long-term health and longevity.3
Setting Realistic Goals for Sustainable Change
Now that you know how to begin a healthy lifestyle, how do you keep it up?
The trick is to cultivate healthy habits that feel natural, enjoyable, and therefore easy. You don’t have to change your bedtime completely or stop eating the baked goods you love. The idea is to incorporate the habits that feel natural to you, because those are the most sustainable.
Here are some examples:
You love… | Try… |
|---|---|
You’re a night owl—getting enough sleep can be hard when the alarm goes off. | Night owls sometimes find it difficult to operate in a world that loves to start everything at 8:30 am. If you can’t sleep in during the week, try to catch up on sleep on the weekends to give your body more time to balance your energy. Try doing parts of your morning routine at night so you can sleep as long as possible and get things done when you’re most alert. For instance, do workouts right before dinner, shower before bed, and do chores at night that others do during the day. |
You’re a morning person | If you always wake up early, no matter how late you go to bed, let the people in your life know. Don’t force yourself to stay late at a party. |
You prefer reading to working out | Try listening to audiobooks while you do a workout like running or walking. |
You don’t love vegetables | Try integrating vegetables and greens via a fresh-pressed juice or smoothie, adding them to a more protein-based food like an omelette, pureeing them into a soup, or making quick breads or cakes with zucchini and carrots. Supplements like AG1 every morning can also help fill nutritional gaps, so you don’t have to be perfect. |
Weight lifting doesn’t inspire you | Join a workout class that incorporates weights and other movements, like strength + yoga, or a HIIT class. |
You love baking | Keep baking, just eat greens and protein for dinner. Try out some healthy new recipes with lots of protein and whole foods, so you can enjoy those baked goods in moderation after dinner. |
You love watching TV before bed | The blue light of screens can make it harder to fall asleep. Try limiting yourself to just 1–2 episodes, then read 10 pages of a book to tell your body it’s time for sleep. |
Nutrition Tips for a Healthier Eating Lifestyle
- Nutrition is about consistency, not perfection. Your goal should be to provide your body with steady, balanced nourishment throughout each day.
- Build meals around macronutrients of protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats, plus significant amounts of fiber.
- Protein is especially important as it impacts energy, fullness, and overall balance. Higher protein intake has also been shown to support satiety and feelings of fullness over time.4
- Lastly, try supplements to address nutrient gaps. Some people choose to incorporate a daily supplement like AG1 into their daily wellness routine to support key nutrient intake alongside a balanced diet. (AG1 is intended to complement whole foods, not replace them, and works best when used consistently within an already supportive lifestyle.)
Maintaining Your Healthy Lifestyle Long-Term
Many people struggle to live healthily because their goals are too extreme or disconnected from their individual daily lives. Here are some tips for maintaining a healthier lifestyle for years to come.
- Mentality-wise, think in the long term. Goals like more energy, a better mood, and feeling strong in your body can be sustainable and meaningful drivers of change. Discipline is the result of an alignment of choosing long-term well-being over short-term comfort.
- Begin with small daily choices. These will compound over time. One walk, one balanced meal, and one night of quality sleep may feel inconsequential on its own on a single day, but if you keep doing them as often as possible, over time, they become a stable equation for a healthier life.
- Some days will feel easier than others when it comes to making healthy choices. What matters most is your overall direction—not the need to be perfect.
Maintenance is all about keeping the course. And that comes down to implementing healthy habits you know that you can—and want to—repeat.
References:
- Hirshkowitz M, Whiton K, Albert SM, et al. National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. Sleep Health. 2015;1(1):40-43. doi:10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010
- D’Onofrio G, Kirschner J, Prather H, Goldman D, Rozanski A. Musculoskeletal exercise: its role in promoting health and longevity. Prog Cardiovasc Dis. 2023;77:25-36. doi:10.1016/j.pcad.2023.02.006
- Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Med. 2010;7(7):e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
- Leidy HJ, Clifton PM, Astrup A, et al. The role of protein in weight loss and maintenance. Am J Clin Nutr. 2015;101(6):1320S-1329S. doi:10.3945/ajcn.114.084038