8 Steps Towards Healthy Living
What does it mean to be healthy or to live healthfully? That definition might be as varied as the number of people that inhabit the Earth. healthy living
However, we know that certain lifestyle habits lend themselves to fewer disease, increased happiness and reduced stress. Those factors lead to better emotional well-being, better physical health and reduced mental stress. Healthy living must encompass all three of these areas of being.
In this article, we will identify the basic principles to healthy living, elaborate on each and give you the tools to begin living YOUR BEST LIFE!
A Guide to Living a More Healthful Life healthy living
Here are the 8 things everyone can do to live a healthy life:
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Move More!
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Eat a Balanced Diet
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Avoid Addictive Behaviors
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Be Mindful – Live in the Moment
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Find Your Optimal Work/Life Balance
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Learn When to Say NO!
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Pay It Forward – Live Grateful Life
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Surround Yourself with Worthy People
Let’s take a few moments to break out each of these action items, in order to better discover how each of these might resonate in your life.
1. Move More! healthy living
You’ve heard the saying: “If you don’t use it, you lose it!”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends 150 minutes (20 min/day) of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity or 75 min (10 min per day) of vigorous intensity physical activity each week.
Examples:
Not sure where to start? Here are FIVE examples of moderate intensity exercise:
- Cardio equipment: bike, elliptical, treadmill walking/jogging, outdoor walking, biking, level hiking
- Aquatic exercise/aerobics
- Golfing, doubles tennis, pickle ball
- Gardening
- Dancing
Too slow paced for you? Here are FOUR more vigorous alternatives to consider:
- Hiking uphill, running, fast cycling
- Singles tennis, Swimming laps
- Jumping rope
- Heavy Yardwork
Remember…
Don’t forget about strength training – more calories are burned during resistance training. But don’t forget about balance and flexibility too.
Why is any of this important??
These are some of the major consequences of non-activity (or minimal): reduced strength, reduced cardiovascular endurance, reduced muscle mass, reduced bone strength/density, slower metabolism, affected glucose sensitivity.
This can lead to several severe, yet avoidable, diseases: coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, osteoporosis, diabetes, obesity. Plus, when this happens, you don’t feel good, you don’t look good, and you have no energy – the cycle is vicious.
Benefits of Exercise: You feel better – mind, body and spirit! You will better manage your blood sugar levels and improve your ability to lose weight/maintain weight. Moreover, you’ll reduce your risk of heart disease, reduce cortisol levels, increase dopamine response, improve cognitive functioning, you will have more energy, a sense of purpose, and you’ll retard the effects of aging. All because you made the decision to move more. Great job!
Click HERE for a beginner’s guide to exercise.
2. Eat a Balanced Diet
That means: eat a variety of foods (read: have a colorful plate), limit processed items and eat in moderation.
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Eat a Variety of Foods
Strive to Have a Colorful Plate: For example, eat a variety of vegetables and/or fruits that contain all of the antioxidants, nutrients and special substances that best fuel our bodies.
Are there particular foods you don’t enjoy – no problem. But be sure to find a few that you’ve never tried before to add a few more colors to your plate. Sometimes the fear of trying the new food is worse than the actual experience.
There are very tasty fruits and veggie out there to try. Don’t let that mushy steamed broccoli of your childhood scare you away from trying new foods. Our adult palates enjoy more flavors than our childhood palates did; plus, we finally know how to cook foods to make them taste great!
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Don’t Exclude Fat From Your Diet (just find healthy options!)
Did you know that fat is critical for our bodies to operate properly? You read that correctly!
Fat is necessary for many reasons, but one of the most important is to help dissolve specific vitamins (like A, D, E & K) that are crucial to our body’s operations.
Healthy fats also give your body energy, keep you warm and even produce some important hormones – among other benefits. The secret is consuming the good stuff.
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Consume Ample Protein
Why? To fuel your body, assist in the repair of damaged tissues and build muscle faster.
How much? The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that protein make up ¼ of your plate.
Depending on your diet, there are plenty of good options for healthy proteins to fuel your body.
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- Are you a vegetarian? Try eggs, cheese/milk, back beans, almonds or tofu.
- Are you vegan? Try plant based protein powders, quinoa, tempeh, spirulina, natural peanut butter, or chickpeas.
- Pescatarian? Try fish or seafood.
- You eat anything? Try skinless poultry, Greek yogurt, or even small servings of lean red meat. Be careful – red meat tends to have too much of the bad fat, so keep your portions small.
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Drink lots of water!
Hydration without calories! Did you know that often when you feel hungry, you are just thirsty? Consuming water throughout the day prevents dehydration, which allows our bodies to regulate temperatures and maintain important body functions.
Hate the taste of plain water? Try diffusing it with your favorite fruit – I love lemons in the winter, berries in the summer. Not much into drinking lots of liquid? That’s ok. Try eating foods with higher water content: watermelon, cucumbers, celery, strawberries, cauliflower. Guess what – you are making a colorful plate too!
Need more info? Click here!
3. Avoid Addictive Behaviors
You aren’t living your best life when something owns you. Addictive behaviors could be what we are eating, drugs (RX & illicit) we are using, alcohol, gambling, smoking, caffeine, technology, etc.
Anything that you have the inability to stop consuming, despite it being harmful to you, is an addiction. Strive to live in moderation, demonstrate control and determine if it really adds value to your life – or is it holding you back?
Addiction can change the way your brain functions, how you interact with the world and your ability to participate in society. Moreover, those who have addictions, are not living their fullest and often cannot balance those additive tendencies with healthier habits to create positive change. Serious addiction requires therapies, but common addictions we all have – technology!! – can be more easily addressed.
4. Be Mindful – Live in the Moment
We have too much on our minds, and it’s fairly easy to think ahead instead of living in the moment. Be present, fully experience what’s happening at any given time, give it your full attention and commit to completing your task well. “Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence.” (credit: Ted Key)
Avoid distractions that keep you from fully experiencing what’s in front of you. Create memories – they will one day be all that’s left, and all the ‘things’ we’ve collected will go away.
Multitasking isn’t always a good thing. Did you know that only 2% people multitask well? Yet we all do it. For those of us in the other 98%, multitasking actually makes our brains work harder to process information & focus on the task at hand. It makes us LESS efficient and can reduce productivity by 40%! (forbes.com) While most of us can’t completely stop multitasking in our daily lives, I think we can all agree that we should do it less!
Mindfulness and meditation can reduce blood pressure, reduce anxiety and improve our mood. There is recent research that has identified a potential link between mindfulness and slowing cellular aging, improving the immune response & even reducing the cognitive decline associated with aging. That’s pretty encouraging news!
5. Find Your Optimal Work/Life Balance
Be present at home, be present at work. How do we achieve the ever elusive work/life balance. Mindfulness and boundaries are crucial. So are identifying your goals and determining what is necessary to achieve them versus filler and stress inducing nonsense.
6. Learn When to Say NO!
Boundaries! We must stop agreeing to be all things to all people and simply live an authentic life. Ask for help, don’t be the first to volunteer, be ok with imperfection, do less! Spend time with people, spend less time checking off your ‘to do’ list. Don’t get me wrong – I love a good checklist, and use one regularly! It helps to keep me organized and on task so I’m not wasting precious time. But don’t let your to do list become a list of things you feel obligated to do, keeping yourself from truly enjoying this moment in time and extending yourself too far. Instead, have boundaries and say no from time to time – this leads to better success living in the moment.
7. Pay It Forward – Live a Grateful Life
We all have special talents, gifts and treasures unique to us. Share your gifts with the world in whatever means necessary. You can probably think of someone who has done something for you, only to be a better human and to make your life easier. Be that for someone else. A small gesture is worth a thousand words and a million intentions. Think of others, but don’t live for others. For all you’ve been given, pay it forward.
8. Surround Yourself with Worthy People
You are only as good as those you surround yourself with. If you have a support group of negative thinkers, then you will have a very difficult time achieving your goals. Positive thinking, family/community/friend support helps to encourage us to step outside of our comfort zone and make a change.
Change is uncomfortable – don’t you want to be surrounded by those who can champion you and encourage you through the growing pains?
Conclusion
Healthy living is a choice – sometimes dictated by our environment, ALWAYS dictated by our choices. Take one small step to live a healthier life, and you’ll be surprised at how much easier it becomes to make another small change, then another, and so on. Life can be very hard – why make it harder on yourself?
Remember these tips to living a more healthful life:
1. Improve your physical body: move more, eat a balanced diet and curb addictive behaviors
2. Improve your mental health: be mindful, find your work/life balance, learn when to say no
3. Improve your emotional health: surround yourself with people who will make you better, pay it forward.
In choosing to make an effort towards healthy living, we are providing the best example to our children, our community and our world. We have one body and we get one crack at this life. Let’s make the most of it!
Helpful resources to consider from this article:
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