Summertime can be your best part of the year. But so can autumn, winter and spring! It took me a while to figure out how to turn every season into advantageous period for all my needs, but after a few years, it turns out that a few well-designed summer months can do wonders for my health. Finally, it’s all a matter of concept and planning. During summer holidays we all often have a bit more time at hand, so my recommendation would be to make a quality use of it.

First things first, so try to put together a list of habits that you would like to „cut down“. It is very useful to become conscious of a timeframe in which you usually practice your bad  habit. Don’t try too hard. Remember the 80:20 rule and try to work on the „easier“ part.

Also remember that people usually want something they cannot have. It means, if you can have a little bit of anything, you’ll want it less or not at all. I use the tactique I call „conditional allowance“. You can give in to your bad habits only if you have done a few good things before that.

My list contained a cigarette with a morning coffee, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. I downsized the smoking habit to one a day, but only if I did a bicycle ride or yoga class before that. I allowed myself one in the morning only if I walked 20 minutes to work. I know I’m not perfect, but that’s fun!

You can apply it on many things. Food, drinks, internet surfing, watching TV. So if you want to watch your favourite TV  show, so be it. After all that watching TV, go for a brisk walk  for about half an hour. So, it’s a plus again for your health, and it did not deprive you of anything.

I’m totally adverse of doing things just because the whole world does it, and I believe that everyone should be well informed and empowered in order to make a good decision. So, do a little bit of research on things you plan to do. When I compared few summer activities, such as inline skating, cycling, jogging and few others, I looked for the information about number of calories burned, possible injuries, physical requirements, recommended dynamics of exercising, nutrition, hydration during exercise and so on. Last summer I decided to make a few changes to my diet. So I started to track down the number of calories, sugar, fat, and seek for a healthier alternatives for most foods I eat often. Believe me, it pays well.  Just browsing through healthy recipes on the net gave me few amazing ideas. I lost a few pounds and made many friends envious of my suddenly discovered cooking skills – and most summer meals took me about 30 minutes of preparation! Internet is such a powerful and inexpensive tool to do it, and most importantly, it saves your time so you can spend it outdoors! And by the way, there’s no easier way to skip dinner than in the summer holidays!

Where to start? Well, certainly not by copy-pasting someone else’s solutions. This is all about waking up your creativity and give you few start-up ideas.

Be aware that this is not about punishing yourself. Bad mood is much worse than bad habit. Every single thing you do should be aimed towards creating a better you, making you a more satisfied person. It should make you feel good! So, good start and good luck!