Healthy Habits Challenge: Week II

Hey there sweet friend! We're wrapping up week one of our Healthy Habits Challenge today, yayy! How did you do?

Each week, I'll be introducing one small thing that we can do every day to get us closer to our most happy, healthy skin from the inside out. The appearance of our skin is a direct reflection of our overall health and what's going on inside our bodies. 

If you missed last week's introduction, you can read more here. Our challenge last week was to develop a practice of drinking our daily water intake, 64 oz of water or half our body weight in water. Practicing a healthy habit for a week can help us prioritize something we already know we need more of in our lives and remind ourselves of the intention every morning while filling our water bottles. 

So, how'd you do drinking your healthy daily water intake this last week? I'd love to know how you did! 

I had good days and better days, and all in all, I drank more water this last week than I had in many of the previous weeks, so I consider that a success.

This week's challenge is preparing food at home and avoiding heavily processed foods. If practicing cooking is an idea you are open to challenging yourself with this week for seven days, then I hope you'll join along! 

*We can share our progress on IG or FB and connect there! Just one small thing each week. Although the challenge is personal, we're in this together. So follow on Instagram and Facebook for daily healthy habits support all week long. 

Now for a bit of motivation, let's define what our why is. In our Skin Diet Connection Series on the blog, we learned that food is a powerful beauty tool and that the foods we choose to eat are equally as important to the products we're applying to our skin. Eating at home gives you control over the quality of ingredients, not to mention all the reasons listed below... 

• What we eat can cause and increase inflammation or help reduce inflammation in the body
• What we eat can cause excessive acidity in the body or promote ideal alkalinity.
• What we eat can create free radicals or neutralize them.
• What we eat can turn on genes for disease or switch them off.
• What we eat can leave you more susceptible to sun damage or actually protect you from UV rays.
• What we eat can compromise and destroy the healthy bacteria in our digestive system or support their growth.
• What we eat can contribute to oxidative stress levels or serve as our body's most outstanding stress defense.
• What we eat can damage DNA function or protect it.

I don't know about you, but all the above is important to me. Let's define our goal, shall we? This week we want to avoid heavily processed foods, foods created to withstand months or even years on the shelf. We want to eliminate foods full of preservatives, chemical additives, synthetic dyes, and fake flavors. And prepare our meals at home, in health coaching school they referred to it as practice cooking. When trying new things, we're not gonna always get it right, but we value progress over perfection here, and simply doing better than we did last week is great.

So now that we have our why and our goal, where do we start this week? 

1. Start with setting an intention of doing better than last week. Last week I ate out eight (8) times. I know that sounds like a lot, but I was out of town and on the road, so I'm not gonna beat myself up over it. This week's goal is to eat at home as much as possible. 
2. The next step, sketch out a plan. Meal planning doesn't have to be complicated. Just jot down a list of the breakfast, lunch, and dinner options you want this week. My weekly meal planning includes checking my fridge and garden for veggies that need to be used in the coming days. Then, I've learned to double up on dinner recipes, making for a quick delicious lunch the next day. So then I only have to plan dinners and breakfast. And I keep breakfast easy most days and do smoothie bowls. 
3. Go shopping for everything you need. A once a week shopping trip to have everything you need to succeed in preparing foods at home this week. If you already have the ingredients on hand, you'll be far less likely to eat out.
4. Schedule your cooking times. Cooking takes effort and preparation time. Be sure you set time aside so that your meals are ready to eat by the time you get hungry. If your schedule is extra busy this week, don't be afraid to ask for help. Share your intention with your loved ones and ask them to help you succeed. It's a healthy step in the right direction for everyone.

Next week #healthyhabitschallenge is going to be to quit sugar. Will you take the #cosmichealthyhabitschallenge? Will you join us each week, or is there one you're specifically looking forward to working on? And don't forget to keep drinking your water! Want to learn more about hydration and its importance for the skin? You can do that here.