Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Make good habits a part of YOU (Part 1)

Three simple (and obvious) lifestyle tips to have great looking skin--drink plenty of water, exercise, eat right, stay happy, and know moderation.

At this point you are probably thinking: “ok, that’s what EVERY beauty expert would say, but it’s not easy to do!”  Here is my honest advice--Make them a part of you.  To adopt a habit comes down to nothing but repetition.  This is almost like having a new color to your room.  Say it’s a color you don’t like.  First month you hate it.  Second month you dislike it.  Third month you guess you will live.  After a year, you probably don’t think about it anymore.  If you keep at something everyday for a period of time, you will get used to doing it.  So let’s get down to how to start good habits and slowly make them a part of you.

Drink plenty of water
Water is 70% of our bodies.  Water takes away toxins in your bodies and helps with many discomfort and sickness, including constipation.  And...I don’t like the taste of water and I am too busy to remember something like drink a glass (1/2 pint) every 2-hour.  But I do like the taste of tea, soda, and coffee!  I also notice that I would unconsciously take tiny sips if I use straws.  So here’s what I did.  

Every morning before I drink my coffee, I drink 250 mL of room temperature water.  It begins with a rule--if I really want to drink coffee, I have finish the glass of water.  At first, it takes me...20 minutes to drink that glass of water and I hate every second of it.  Now I do it every morning without thinking about it.  I actually feel like I cannot wake up if I don’t have my glass of water in the morning.  Drinking a huge glass of lukewarm water first thing in the morning can help lubricating your throat (so virus and bacteria don’t get too comfortable hanging out there and give you a cold/flu) and waking up your digestive system (diluting excessive stomach acid and helping with constipation).

From the list of beverages I like, tea is about the healthiest one.  I make batches of unsweetened iced tea and drink it throughout the day.  I can drink about 2000mL of tea ( = 8 cups of water)  in a day.  This part of the drinking-water-habit is easy to adopt because I love tea.  It’s not all about torturing yourself to adopt a habit.  It’s fitting a good habit into your lifestyle.  I’d recommend if you don’t like water, find the best substitute for it.  There are plenty good choices other than tea; for example, carbonated flavored water with zero calories is a great substitute for soda-lovers.

I like drinking with straws (as weird as that sounds).  Instead of setting an alarm clock to remind myself to drink every 2-hour, I just use straws to drink tea.  Even as I am writing this post, I am...*sip*...drawn to...*sip*...drink...*sip*...more...*sip sip*...fluids!  What makes you wanna drink more water?

( I am trying not to write very long posts...and failing at it.  So you can stop here if you’d like or go on and read other parts of this.)

1 comment:

  1. Good information. I personally am progressing well on the exercise and eating well bit, but am still struggling with taking water. It is so filling and I keep running to the washroom. I will try and look for a mixture I can love.

    ReplyDelete