How to maintain a positive balance in your health account

July 4, 2022 1 Comment

When it comes to making changes to our health, it’s easy to fall into a mindset where it’s all black and white, good or bad, all or nothing.  If we miss our meditation session or our workout, we throw in the towel and skip the rest of the week.  If we eat food that wasn’t part of our healthy eating plan, we’re head down into the ice cream with no coming up for air.

In actual fact, there is a load of research to show that there is no place for perfection when it comes to improving our health.  The largest and most sustainable changes come from the smallest and most consistent behaviours.  This means that sometimes we’re just doing the bare minimum for our health, but we do it as consistently as possible.

Your health account as a savings account

Think of your health as a bank account.  You want to be setting aside an emergency savings fund for the times when you know you’re not going to be as diligent with your healthy habits.

So, you make deposits when you can, the bigger the better, but know that even the small ones make a big difference in the long run.  Some deposits will be good, some will be better and some will be best – right where you’d like them to be.  None of them are bad, they’re just on a spectrum from good to better to best.

  • If you can save just $10 a paycheck, that’s good.  If you order a salad instead of the fries with your fast-food burger at lunch, that’s good.
  • If you can save $50 a paycheck that’s better.  If you order a salad and a turkey sandwich on whole-grain bread at lunch, that’s better.
  • If you can save $100 a paycheck that’s best.  If you start packing your own lunch from whole food ingredients, that’s best.

There will be seasons of life when it will be more challenging than other times to make deposits into your health account – think parenting, big work deadlines, personal tragedy.   These things happen and yes, they will derail us from our healthy habits for a while.  Just like an unexpected leaking roof repair might derail us from your financial savings for a while.

So how do we make sure you don’t overdraw your health account when life throws you a curveball?

Steps to maintaining a positive balance in your health account

1) Make big deposits when you can

If you’re trying to build up an emergency fund, you’ll find that you’ll be able to set aside more money for that fund when there aren’t other financial pressures on you.  Similarly, with your health habits, when life is ticking along and not pulling you in too many directions, this is the time to do all those healthy things that we find to make us feel our best – get enough sleep, manage your stress, eat fuel food, exercise regularly, manage our mindset.  This the time to make deposits into that health account.

2) Set your good minimums

When finances are tight, you might need to reduce the amount you put into your savings account but you want to set a minimum that you don’t dip below to maintain small deposits.  The trick here is to sustain the habit of saving, even if the amount is not where you might like it to be.  The same goes for your health.  When life gets busy, maybe you cut back on your exercise but try not to eliminate it all together.  Set a minimum that you don’t want to drop below.  The same goes for your sleep.  Get your minimum time in knowing that more would be better, and your ideal amount would be best but during this season of life, the minimum is good.

Treat your food the same way.  What’s are your minimums for healthy eating?  Maybe you decide fast food is fine but it’s fries OR the burger – not both.  Business dinners out might mean wine OR dessert, but not both.  When life is really crazy, maybe you insist on a minimum of at least 2 servings of vegetables a day even though you know more would be better.  These are the minimum behaviours you want to maintain when life isn’t as smooth as you’d like it to be.

3) Get back on track as quickly as you can

If you come back from vacation and realize you overspent, you have options: you can start saving again by setting aside a little from every paycheck and work to replenish your bank account, or decide that all is lost, drain the rest of your bank accounts and spend like crazy until you don’t have a cent to your name. 
Most of you will agree that getting back on track with saving again is probably the best strategy here for long-term financial health.  So equally when we miss a day of exercise or eat something that we’ve decided isn’t ‘healthy’, our next best step is to get back on track again with our habits, NOT stay up late night after night watching Netflix and chowing down on sugary and salty snacks and canceling our gym membership.

4) Have compassion for yourself and those around you

A lot of our black and white thinking comes from the crazy high expectations we put on ourselves and our lives.  This may come as a shock but there is no such thing as perfection so stop looking for it – in you, in your family, in your friends, in life.  Life is going to be crappy sometimes and we’re going to do some stuff we’re not proud of and people are going to do things we don’t like. 
But hey, these are the dark moments that make us appreciate the light.  These are the times when we might make a few withdrawals from our health account.  But instead of beating ourselves up for it, except that it’s all part of being human.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and kindly ask yourself, what’s the next best thing I can do for my health today?

Maintaining a positive balance in your health account is not about being perfect and it’s not about making drastic changes, it’s about the small basic things that we do over and over, even when life throws us a curveball.

Need a coach?

Need help finding a way to fit the basics into your life?   Give health coaching a try.  Book a free consultation to find out if health coaching might be for you.

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet

1 thought on “How to maintain a positive balance in your health account”

  1. LOVE this comparison to saving money! I have always been good with my money so by applying this same logic, I should be just as good with my own health! And love the idea of setting minimums – that way always something to feel good about. Lana

Comments are closed.