Three healthy habits to transform and improve your life during COVID-19
It is a tough world out there, and in the COVID-19 era, even tougher. With uncertain lengths of quarantine, slowed and shut down markets and economy, it is easy to lose sight of who we even were before this whole thing began. While the losing of oneself and the melting of days into the other can be troubling, this solitude can be utilized as a transformative time so you can emerge from lock down as a stronger and healthier individual. Instead of using this time to weigh ourselves down in worry and fear, we can use this time to cement better habits for our life after COVID-19 and what better launching place then with three tips for daily healthy habits by our Head Trader and Owner, Mukarram Mawjood.
1- Maintain a Daily Workout Schedule
“I have had a long history with working out, while I first started out of vanity, wanting to look good and have muscles, working out has evolved for me into something I use to create health and discipline in my life.”
A daily workout schedule is something we all can struggle with. Finding the time in the day, getting to the gym, finding the energy and motivation, all of it can be very hard to achieve. But with the quarantine, we have less excuses than ever before. Between so many Zoom classes streaming right now, workouts we have provided here and having more free time now, we really have no excuse not to start a healthy workout routine.
When we say a daily routine we do not mean hours of cardio and lifting weights, but simply 20 minutes a day. Twenty minutes is nothing. You spend that time scrolling through your email or procrastinating to make a call, everyone has twenty minutes. The secret is to have a plan on how you will use that 20 minutes so you don't lose precious time figuring it out. Luckily, we have created a daily 20 minute workout schedule for quarantine here. But even a brisk walk or jog is enough to get the blood pumping and to give you a fresh start on the day. By adding these short workout sessions you are not only improving your physical health and mental clarity, but you are also building your discipline, making it easier for you to be disciplined in other facets of your life.
2- Cut Sugar from your Diet
“I am not a diet guy. I don't fall into those fads and hypes, but I do believe in making lifelong changes to how you eat. For me it was cutting sugar from my diet. Sugar is essentially poison to your body and with too much sugar you will lose not just your physical health but your mental motivation.”
Before quarantine it was easy to fall victim to splurging on snacks and sweets. A little pastry on the way home from work, a fancy coffee in the morning and so on. Now with so many places closed or only open for essential take out, a lot of temptation is cut out for you already! Now is a great time to start removing unhealthy options in your life. Healthy eating does not come from fad diets or crashing. It doesn't come from loading protein or going into ketosis or any of these other tricks for quick fixes. None of that is sustainable or even healthy for your body, you are essentially giving up future health for immediate results. What is healthy for your body is making small and manageable, life long decisions in how you eat.
Sugar is something that pretty much every doctor and even most fad diets will agree with as being damaging for your body. Peaking your glycemic index can lead to diabetes and other health issues, which happens every time you over indulge in sugar. Your body does not care if the sugar is from a cake or honey or fruit, sugar is sugar and affects you all the same. Sugar is also the only thing we are born with a craving for. The desire for sugar is what helps babies learn to suckle milk. So clearly sugar is a hard habit to break, even harder in times of stress, but we encourage you to start cutting back now while you can control what food you are exposed to so completely. All you need to remove the sugar from your diet is to simply not buy the foods and have them in the house. Easier said than done, but a challenge we welcome you to accept.
3- Meditate Daily
“ I discovered Mindfulness Meditation in 2015 and it changed my life. I learned how to not just understand my emotions and how they affect my body, but also how to approach my emotions in a rational way.”
Mental well being is something so easy to overlook. We spend so much of our lives checking off boxes and to do lists to try to make ourselves as perfect as possible that we rarely take time to check in on our mental states. It is so easy to develop tunnel vision in the modern world and lose sight of why we are doing any of this. Take time in your day to meditate with several of our guides intro to breathing and intro to mindfulness. Even five minutes a day of mindful meditation is enough to start training your brain to be present in the moment. With daily practice, mindfulness meditation can help you not only access your emotions, but understand how they affect you and how to use your emotions in productive ways, rather than being used by your emotions. And what better time than now, when it is so easy to go down the rabbit hole of dread and fear, to allow yourself time to relax into your body and environment and just simply be.
Though this is a scary and unprecedented time, we know this will pass. The sun will come out tomorrow and the world will return to normal soon. So instead of wasting this time creating bad habits or simply surviving, try to use this time in quarantine to develop new daily habits that will change your life for the better. Perhaps trying to take on all these habits is a bit much, but even one will be the start of a wonderful journey.
What are your daily habits for success? What are your goals for your time in quarantine? Reach out to us with any questions or comments at info@bullionite.com