Does living a healthy and holistic lifestyle look unattainable due to our budget? Buying organic fruits and vegetables, the cost of going to a pricey health food store, and revamping all of your habits can look intimidating or even impossible.
Thankfully, there are ways to incorporate healthy living without breaking the bank. And it doesn’t have to mean a total lifestyle overhaul. After all, slow and steady wins the race.
How many times have you decided you wanted to do something, dove all the way in, only to crash and burn a few days later? Yeah, me too. You feel like you’ve failed before you even started.
When it comes to living a holistic lifestyle, changing one small thing at a time means it will be sustainable over the long haul. Changing everything at once is going to be overwhelming and probably cause you to quit and leave you feeling defeated.
Choose a small area of your life that you want to live more holistically in, and when that becomes a habit then move onto another area. This should cut down the overwhelm that can come with changing habits.
Read and educate yourself on different methods of holistic living. What may work for one may not work for another and it needs to be sustainable for you and your family. The more you learn, the more you’ll want to know.
One of the easiest ways to stick to a budget while living a healthy lifestyle is to meal plan. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone to the grocery store determined to provide my family with healthy choices but I didn’t have a plan beforehand. That meant I left the grocery with every kind of produce I could get my hands on, but realistically there was no way my little family was going to be able to consume it all before it went bad.
Write down some healthy meals and snacks that you want for the week and buy only what you have written down. That will keep your waste down and leave money in your budget. In addition to cutting down on waste, it will cut down on eating out because you’ll have a plan already in place for the days food.
If you’re really feeling ambitious, try growing a few things of your own. Living in the city or even in an apartment doesn’t mean you can’t grow a thing or two. Tomatoes make great container plants as do peppers and even lettuce.
If you have a flower bed, utilize the extra space by growing herbs and small vegetables. There are few things greater than the satisfaction of growing your own food and it gives you control over the whole process, from seed to table.
Healthly living isn’t limited to what we put in our mouths. Our bodies and souls need to be fed with more than just food. A well-rounded healthy lifestyle includes moving your body, and thankfully it doesn’t take an expensive gym membership to do that. Seeking out some trails in nature to hike or walk can do far more for the mind than a gym. There’s something about spending time in nature that feeds the soul and nourishes the mind.
If you want more than what a hike can give you, there’s many free options for workouts on YouTube, Pinterest, and even Instagram. You can even get a sweaty workout in just by using your own bodyweight.
If there is anything that is underrated when it comes to a healthy lifestyle, it is the importance of sleep. In today’s culture it is so easy to push sleep to the side and push our bodies harder and harder. When that happens, your brain isn’t functioning at full capacity. This makes it easier to choose the less healthy food option, makes you more irritable, and more prone to stress. Your muscle recovery diminishes and you’ll notice your ability to think and concentrate are both negatively affected. If the sleep deprivation continues over a prolonged period of time it can lead to many issues. They include hypertension, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.
Prioritizing sleep by making sure to be in bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning is a cheap and easy practice to incorporate into your healthy, holistic lifestyle.
It’s easy to look around at all the fancy foods and the expensive gadgets that aid in a holistic lifestyle. You may think you can’t live that life because of the cost. The further you get into it, you’ll find ways to trade the unhealthy for the healthy without touching your wallet. In fact, in the long run you’ll find that it’s actually cheaper. The need for prescription and over the counter medications will diminish and the reasons for expensive Dr appointments will lessen.
Living a healthy lifestyle on a budget is doable. It will cause you to find joy and satisfaction in making things yourself, growing your own food, and learning about all methods to improve your health and lifestyle. It will become such a way of life that you’ll never want to go back. And best of all, it will cost you less than you expected but you’ll gain all the benefits.
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