5 Healthy Habits All Long Beach Locals Should Add To Their Routine

Photo by Mikal Kelaidis on Unsplash

Despite what it might sometimes seem like, changing your lifestyle for the healthier isn’t always necessarily a dramatic undertaking. In fact, making big changes to your health can start with small but purposeful habit changes!

If you’re looking to get healthier in Long Beach, here are 5 things that you can try incorporating into your daily routine for long-term wellness.

Eat more whole foods.

Cleaning up your diet can start as easily as eliminating some of the processed foods you include in your diet and replacing them with fresh, whole versions instead! Processed foods, which are ubiquitous both in grocery stores and in many of our modern-day diets, are often chock-full of preservatives, additives, added sugars, and other unnecessary ingredients that can throw a wrench in our health. So instead, make it a habit to eat fresher whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and snacks you make from scratch (think salsa, homemade hummus, et cetera).

Start meal prepping.

Meal prepping is one of the most cost-effective ways to eat healthy every single day – even if you don’t always have room in your daily schedule to throw down in the kitchen. The idea is pretty simple: rather than cooking each individual meal on its own, you whip up a larger batch that can hold up throughout the week, and divide it into individual portions for convenience. Then, when it’s time to eat, all you need to do is grab your premade portion, reheat, and go! It’s an excellent choice for people who are busy or who just don’t want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen every single day.

For even more convenience, consider using a non-subscription meal prep delivery service in Long Beach like My Healthy Penguin. Every week, you choose your favorite healthy dishes from a rotating menu and get them delivered straight to your door on Sunday, ready to be reheated and eaten. It takes all the best parts of meal prepping and makes it even easier – so no more excuses!

Minimize the screen time.

We tend to spend a lot of time staring at screens, from our phones to our computers to the tablets and the TV (and everything in between). Unfortunately, all that screen time isn’t great for our overall health or wellbeing – it lends itself to sedentariness and can even interrupt your sleep if you’re doing it too much. So make it a point every day to set limits for the amount of time you spend looking at your screens, and find other alternatives that get you moving instead.

Find time to walk more.

On a similar note, you can replace some of that idle screen time with more physical activities like walking! Take a long walk at your closest beach or along the pier, or take a short drive to a nearby hike or trail so that you can get those steps in and enjoy some much-needed time away from the phone or computer.

Improve your mindfulness.

Living in the 21^st century can be stressful, and it sometimes seems like we’re constantly running from place to place without ever really having time to be present. So to reconnect with yourself and give yourself more time to be in the moment, try practicing a little mindfulness: set aside little pockets of time to focus purely on what you’re currently doing, rather than having your mind wander off onto the next thing on your agenda. This is a great way to recenter and take a breather, especially if you’re otherwise too busy to give yourself some much-needed “you time.”

Conclusion

Life can be crazy busy and stressful, and it sometimes leaves us with little time to focus on our own wellbeing. But with just a little bit of planning and purposeful habit changes, these tiny improvements can add up in big ways over time!