Growing up I had a real sweet tooth. I had a sock draw filled with sweets and there was hardly a day in which I wouldn’t buy a load of penny sweets on my journey back home. Most of us can recount our youthful days eating eggs and marshmallows with friends but some of us haven’t outgrown the sweet sugar fix just yet.

In this post, we will look at how you can change negative food habits and begin a healthy fitness lifestyle. My name is Hanif of CriterionFit.com. We help men with fitness goals and coach clients using exercise and trusted nutritional knowledge so they can realise the health and confidence they know to be within. Thank you for taking the time to learn from us and now, what you’ve come for.

Habit changing doesn’t come easy for anyone. Have you ever thought about the specific fruits and veg or snacks you eat, at what times you eat them and the quantities you knock them back in? Habits creep upon us day-by-day and in a subtle fashion so much so that when we look at ourselves with a true reflection we see how much we’ve changed. Habits grow upon us and the change can be noticeable physically in the form of weight gain/loss or internally in how our heart and bodies react to certain stimuli.

When making changes we will often start off so strong that we can’t maintain the momentum we set ourselves. It’s great to have enthusiasm for change but it’s important to build up the momentum over time because the small changes over a prolonged time will be easier upon you and become like second nature as the saying goes.

If one were to set the pace too fast and come to a halt due to the many obstacles that may arise we will remember our failures a lot easier than we remember our successes and this can put a block on us making further changes we know we need to make. There are three basic ways we can go about change as explained by Dr Stephen L. Kopecky (Professor of Medicine – Mayo Clinic) and they are: 

• Epiphany
• Change the environment
• Take tiny steps

An epiphany would be a light bulb moment that gives you all the dedication, motivation and knowledge you need to get out of the gate. This sounds great but its hard to maintain as we’ve said. What would be easier and more sustainable would be to change aspects of your environment such as putting your running shoes by the door and bringing your alarm clock closer to bed so when it goes off you’re up and head out for a morning run before your family wake up. It could also mean working in a quiet office room at work rather than with the whole work team as they share biscuits and doughnuts. The third change is the easiest of them all and that would be to take small steps in your habit-changing plan, eating an extra portion of fruit each day and reducing the cups of fizzy drink for example.

Rewarding yourself with healthy food that you like is a great step because you feel satisfied and you do justice to your body which is a trust from Allah azza wa jal. The more you do this the more you change for the better, the more confident you’ll feel and you’ll increase in energy God willing.

Habits stay with us for life. You need to move past bad habits because you can’t break them, you just learn to avoid them. Untangle the knot one at a time and reward yourself regularly until you’ve found yourself to be a changed man.

I hope you’ve found benefit in this article and will share it with someone that really needs to read it. CriterionFit offer online nutrition coaching and kettlebell training sessions for men, we can help you increase your confidence and health so get in contact with us via email or our social media networks.