Living a healthy lifestyle doesn’t mean hours of training at the gym and eating only salad leaves. It’s about making easy-to-manage healthy choices in your day-to-day living.
So let’s start with the fundamental basics of healthy living: regular exercise, healthy eating and healthy lifestyle choices:
I like to move it, move it!
1. Healthy diet, which was calculated and rated based on the reported intake of healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, healthy fats, and omega-3 fatty acids, and unhealthy foods like red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fat, and sodium.
2. Healthy physical activity level, which was measured as at least 30 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous activity daily.
3. Healthy body weight, defined as a normal body mass index (BMI), which is between 18.5 and 24.9.
4. Smoking, well, there is no healthy amount of smoking. “Healthy” here meant never having smoked.
5. Moderate alcohol intake, which was measured as between 5 and 15 grams per day for women, and 5 to 30 grams per day for men. Generally, one drink contains about 14 grams of pure alcohol. That’s 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits.
Body Maintenance: Be nice to your body and pay attention to what it needs
Eat enough every day — not eating enough tells your body to conserve calories and energy, and so the next time you eat more of the energy will be retained rather than being properly used.
Hydrate – Dehydration makes you feel tired. Caffeine and alcohol are very dehydrating. Balance caffeine or alcohol consumption with non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic fluids.
Sleep – Sleep deprivation increases appetite (and often body weight) and decreases brain function. So proper sleep helps your energy, weight maintenance and your ability to think and concentrate.
Exercise – Try to exercise at least 30 minutes a day, three times a week – it can even be split up into 10 minute walks. The effects of brief physical exertion last much longer than those of caffeine, and exercise decreases stress rather than increasing it! Finding a physical activity that you really like to do will make exercise more fun and something to look forward to as well as help to keep you healthy throughout life. So try something new or something that has always appealed to you.
Colour me beautiful
Choosing whole foods and cooking from scratch is a much healthier way to eat than buying pre-packaged or ready-meals which are high in fat and salt but very low in nutrients. To make sure you’re getting a variety of nutrients, vitamins and minerals into your body every day – a quick rule of thumb is to pick a variety of colours for your meals. Be the artist of your meals and paint a colour picture with a variety of yellow, red and green fruits and vegetables throughout the day.
Your body will wear a frown if your meal is all brown.
Choose life
There is nothing more damaging to a long, healthy life than smoking, which is estimated as the reason for death or disability in half the people who smoke. The dangers of smoking tobacco are so significant that it is the most important public health problem in the world, which ironically, is largely avoidable.
Smoking not only cuts your lifespan by affecting your internal organs, but it also ages you on the outside by causing skin damage. Tobacco smoking can give you wrinkles, create pucker lines around your mouth, stain your teeth and fingers, rob your skin of nutrients, break down youth-enhancing collagen and make your skin look grey. It makes you wonder how smoking is often marketed as glamorous and attractive.
It takes courage to quit smoking, as it’s not an easy journey – but it’s a brave and sensible choice. Some of the positive changes will happen quickly, while others will be more gradual, but all the changes will benefit your health and well-being.
Here are some 10 easy healthy morning routine habits that you can try! Click the video below:
Healthy lifestyle 