If you’re a woman trying to get healthy, a great way to do it is to build some new healthy habits. The best habits you can build that will improve your health are:

• Cooking healthy meals
• Getting enough sleep
• Meditating
• Socializing
• Going to the gym
• Journaling
• Using your phone less
• Making to-do lists
• Spending time in nature

We’ll expand on each of these in more detail in this article.

The 9 Healthy Habits You Should Build

1. Cooking Healthy Meals

Poor diet is one of the risk factors for heart disease, so healthy meals are essential. Cooking healthy meals and preparing healthy snacks will help your overall health.  Replace one weekend restaurant dinner with a nice dinner prepared at home and weekly takeout in favor of healthy, easy dinner recipes made with real foods. This is an easy way to transition to a healthy diet and reach a healthy weight.

2. Getting Enough Sleep

Sleep is essential to your physical and mental health, and lack of sleep can cause major problems. An American Psychological Association study found moodiness and irritability as early signs of lack of sleep. If a sleep-deprived person ignores these first symptoms, they might experience apathy, slower speech and lack of emotion, forgetfulness, and difficulty multitasking. The recommended amount of sleep for adults is between six and eight hours nightly.

3. Meditating

If you’re afraid of trying something that seems like alternative medicine, decide who do you want to be – do you want to be someone who tries new things or someone who does the same thing all the time? Meditation has many benefits for both physical and emotional well-being. They include:

• Taking a fresh look at stressful situations.
• Developing skills for managing emotional stress.
• A greater sense of self-awareness
• Being present.
• Managing negative emotions.
• Increasing creativity and imagination
• Developing tolerance and patience.
• Reducing resting heart rate.
• Helping you get better sleep.
• Lowering stress levels.

It’s not hard to start meditating. The best way to start is to sit with your eyes closed and concentrate on your breathing. Then notice how your body feels. Start at the top of your head and work your way down. Once you get to your feet, you’ll probably be completely relaxed.

4. Socializing

Women who want to get into popular jobs for attractive females need to be more social. If you’re not a very social person, here are some tips for becoming more social:

• Take pride in who you are.
• It’s okay to be quiet.
• Take a risk, then refuel.
• Plan conversation starters ahead of time.
• Befriend extroverts at work.
• Go to work functions and leave early.
• Ask easy-to-answer questions and discuss topics you like.
• Once comfortable, go deeper.
• If you think you’re awkward, film yourself.
• Be what you behold.
• Deal with rejection.
• Be present and you won’t feel awkward.

5. Going to The Gym

If you want to become a strong independent woman, go to the gym. Exercise lowers blood sugar levels, and gyms offer equipment and expert advice about fitness. Gyms have rowing machines, treadmills, free weights, weight machines, and stationary bicycles. You can also take classes such as spinning, yoga, or CrossFit.

6. Journaling

If you’ve started feeling frustrated or down and want to start feeling good again, a great way to start is to journal about your feelings—just a blank book or even just paper and a pen. Just write down whatever you feel. Write about your life and how you feel about it, or write about your goals and how you can achieve them. If you’re trying to become an independent female and you’re stuck for things to write about, you might try looking up independent female quotes and use those and journal prompts – write down your feelings about each quote.

7. Using Your Phone Less

Not only is it rude and predictable to always be using social media on your cell phone, but obsessively stalking your phone before bed can have serious health effects. Staring at your mobile’s screen at bedtime can cause people to take longer to reach the deeper stages of sleep and to spend less time in them. Deep sleep is crucial to rejuvenating cells and repairing damage caused during the day. Social networks can wait until morning.

8. Making To-Do Lists

One tip for improving personal finance for women is to make to-do lists. What are the benefits of making to-do lists? When improving their finances, successful women set goals for how much they want to save, invest, or put towards their debt repayment goals. Then they break those down into weekly to-dos.

One of the best to-do list apps is Todoist. You can schedule tasks for certain days of the week or month. You could make a to-do that says, “Transfer $25 to savings every Friday,” and it would appear on your to-do list every Friday.

9. Spending Time in Nature

If you feel tense, spending time in nature can put you in a better mood. When you spend time in nature, dopamine and endorphin levels rise, promoting happiness, boosting concentration, making you feel less anxious and irritable, and your blood pressure and cortisol levels go down. You also feel less isolated.

These are just a few good habits you can adopt to improve your health. As you look through this list, decide which habits you already have in your life and which you need to adopt. Then start looking for ways to work them in. For example, you might try meditating for just a few minutes every morning. If you need to, use a habit tracker or just track your progress on paper. Once one habit becomes part of your routine, add another one until you’ve added all these habits to your routine. And if you already do all these things, good for you! You’re already living a healthy lifestyle.