3 Healthy Habits to Start Today

They say that it takes 21 days to build a habit. That is just under one month and if you can manage to do something every day for those three weeks, you will have a habit at the end of it. What is a habit? Something you do automatically, without thinking about it! Some of the best habits you can build have to do with health.

One of the most important health habits you can develop is to drink water. Assess your life carefully. How much water do you really drink in a day? Not liquids, but water. Juices, sodas and the like do not count at all since they can actually dehydrate you more. If you are drinking less than the recommended 8 glass per day, you could use a water habit!

Drinking more water is essential to health. Water rinses the toxins out of your body and keeps the digestive system running smoothly. If you drink enough water, you should experience fewer pimples and zits and more energy. Did you know that the majority of Americans are actually chronically dehydrated? It's true, and you don't want to be one of them! Dehydration can cause a lot of health problems, as well as inhibit brain function.

It isn't as difficult as you might think to get into the habit of drinking more water. If you go glass by glass, it can be hard, but if you take a 20 oz. water bottle, it is much faster. You only need to drink 4 bottles of water in a day to meet your quota. You might even want to opt for a larger bottle and aim for just one a day.

If you aren't much of a water drinker, you can try a few small tricks to add to the amount you drink each day. Freeze an inch or two of water in your bottle the night before and in the morning, fill your water bottle up. This keeps the liquid nice and cold for several hours and makes it more appealing to drink. You can also add a squeeze of lemon or lime to make the water more palatable, without adding unnecessary calories or sweeteners.

Another excellent habit to get into that will boost your daily energy is to eat breakfast. Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day and it deserves more than a cup of coffee. Your body has been fasting all night long and needs the ingestion of energy food to get it going in the morning.

There's no rule saying that breakfast has to be a big affair with stacks of pancakes, sausages and eggs. In fact, a piece of fruit is just fine. The idea is to give your body something to start the engine again after a long night without food. A healthy breakfast like fruit, whole-grain cereal or toast with peanut butter is far better than a sugar-laden donut or sweet cereal. These will just give you a sugar high that causes a drastic drop in blood sugar levels mid-morning, causing a drop in energy levels, too.

By eating breakfast, you also jumpstart your metabolism and you will tend to burn more calories throughout the day. So if you think you're losing weight by not eating breakfast, it simply isn't true, your body needs that boost in the morning.

Our last healthy habit is to increase the amount of exercise you do in a day. For many people, this isn't much. We walk to our cars, to the office from the parking lot and that is about it! It is really quite easy to add more exercise to our days, without any pain whatsoever.

Obviously, if you want to hit the gym on a daily basis, no one is going to tell you that it is a bad idea, but for many working people, it just isn't possible to spend two or three hours working out. So, you need a better solution.

Although a good workout is always nice, you can get just as much benefit from short bursts of exercise. Take your coffee break, for example. Why not use it to take a quick walk around the block? Eliminate the caffeine and boost your energy level with some fresh air and exercise. Who knows, you might even be able to get a few coworkers to join you and make it more interesting!

You can also make a point of parking on the far side of the parking lot when you go to work. This automatically forces you to add a minute or two of walking to your day when you arrive and when you leave. You can use the same trick anywhere you go, the movies, the grocery store, etc.

If you have a dog, don't pay the neighbor kid to walk it. Instead take your dog out every day yourself and enjoy the walking. Your pet will love the attention and you will be multi-tasking, building good habits and bonding with your dog!

These are three habits that can make a drastic difference in your life and aren't really that difficult to build. However, most people never get around to creating healthy habits and they suffer for it. So why not take a step back, assess your life and decide to make three small changes today to create good habits for tomorrow?