Healthy Life Tips: A Definitive Guide
Healthy Life Tips: A Definitive Guide
Diets, organic food, sleep-aids, cancer scares, what’s all the
fuss about? It’s easy to live a healthy life. Just follow a few simple steps:
Eat the right foods, buy bottled drinking water, get enough sleep, and exercise
a few times a week.
Okay, maybe it’s a little more complicated than that. Read on to
see what I mean.
Let’s
start with food. Fruits and vegetables are the most important aspect of living
a healthy
life.
Different diets tout meat, nuts, avocados, and tofu, but at the end of the day,
eating
you
find a way to live healthily. Instead of fad diets, eat a diet replete with
fruits and veggies.
Foods
high in fat like avocados and nuts are good to eat too, but not more than a few
times
every
day. Protein is crucial, but eating too much or too little of it can affect
your health negatively-- try to eat meat just once a day, and mind your
cholesterol when it comes to dairy products.
Healthy
snacks, such as a piece of fruit, cheese and whole wheat crackers, or chips and
salsa
are fine for you, as long as you bear in mind what else you’re eating
throughout your
day.
Keep your meals balanced throughout the day, so that if you eat a lot of the
carbohydrates necessary for proper brain function in the morning, you shouldn’t
eat a huge portion again at night.
Same
goes with protein, which is necessary for satiety, as well as fruits and
veggies which provide us with energy, vitamins and minerals. Don’t confuse
yourself about non-organic food; it’s not necessarily better for you, although
it usually does taste better.
And
for those into alternative diets, check out Ayurvedic dieting, which guides you
to different foods depending on your body type. Scam? Maybe. But something all
three body type diets share in common is eschewing foods that are high in fat,
sugar and empty calories.
What
about drinks? Well drinking bottled water is fine, especially if you live in a
rural area where the pipes are rusty. But tap water works well too, don’t be
scared of it. Juice is high in sugar, but it’s also high in vitamins. Fresh
juice especially is good for you, but often
over-priced.
It’s just as good for you to replace that eight dollar juice with a couple of
pieces
of
fruit and a salad at lunch, along with whatever else you’d normally eat.
Caffeine is good
for
you, as long as your body isn’t too sensitive to it. Try to limit your coffee
intake to less than two cups of day. It’s easy to become addicted when the
average cup has a hundred milligrams of caffeine. Tea on the other hand has
about half that, black has roughly 60 mgs, green about 40. Alcohol? In
moderation. Red wine is better for you than white because of its antioxidants,
while beer spurs the appetite and contains magnesium, a mineral otherwise
tricky to find. Both have plenty of calories, but nothing to worry about if you
only have one
or
two. But if you have more than 14 drinks a week, you’re technically an
alcoholic, so be careful.
“Exercise can help you sleep and it can also help you
think. Studies show that children who exercisefor at least thirty minutes daily tend to have a
higher IQ than those who don’t.”
What
about sleep? Some people work well with less sleep, but generally between seven
and
nine hours per night is ideal.
Anything
more can make you groggy, anything less can impair concentration. If you’re
one
of those people who is saying right now, I work best when I have little sleep,
well that’s because you’ve trained your body to operate on little sleep, which proves
the adaptability of humanity.
If
you typically have trouble falling asleep at night, try to read a little before
bed--and turn off all screens. That ghostly blue light from your cell phone or
your TV sets off an alertness trigger in your brain.
If
you can’t fall asleep after half an hour of lying down trying, get out of bed
and do
something
else. Otherwise you begin to associate lying in bed with staying awake and your
tossing and rolling around may not stop for hours.
Exercise
can help you sleep and it can also help you think. Studies show that children
who exercise for at least thirty minutes daily tend to have a higher IQ than
those who don’t. And adults who exercise are 15% more efficient at work than
the lazier among them.
Exercise
is also a great way to work off stress. Stress leads to unhappiness and for
those of
us
who can’t afford weekly massages, exercise is one of the best ways to burn it
off. One of the best ways to exercise is to vary your routine, forcing your
body to acclimate.
Routine
variation can also help your cognitive abilities, which can be deadened by
stale habit. Meditation also lowers stress levels.
Try
it by practicing breathing or focusing on a specific image with your eyes closed,
even if for five minutes a day.
Managing
your time and finding moderation in how much you eat, drink, sleep, exercise
and
stress can make a big difference in your life. Finding a balance in these
aspects
of
your life will change the way you live--all for the better.
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