We all want to stay fit and healthy and desire to be fit but we do not act on it. Before knowing the ways to get healthier, know why you want to be healthy. Let the answer to the ‘why’ fuel you to make the necessary lifestyle changes.
Often, people plan to implement lifestyle changes but most of them do not succeed at it. Hence, it is important to remember that being healthy is a lifestyle not a temporary means to feel good about yourself.
Implementing ways to be healthier may take time to become a habit. But once they become a habit, every day you will feel great about your body and mind.
Here are 10 ways to make lifestyle changes and have a healthier body and mind.
Also read about How To Move From Desire To Action
Eat A Balanced Diet
Having a balanced diet means changing your meals from time to time, so that your body gets different nutrients. We should change our meals because some specific nutrient keeps going inside our body and adds up to a greater amount. It may end up harming us. Excess of anything good may harm us too.
Lifestyle changes are hard to implement at first and having a good clean diet will be hard too. Over time this hardship will become a part of you and help you!
Ensure that you balance your nutrients with green vegetables, fruits, superfoods and home-cooked meals that include healthy fats, carbs, proteins etc. These nutrients are important to keep your body healthy,
Nevertheless, eating a balanced diet doesn’t mean you can’t treat yourself to fast food or junk food once in a while but it is important to maintain the frequency. Many experts suggest that having fast food once a week will not harm your long-term health as long as you have healthy and balanced meals regularly.
Exercise
While diet plays an important role in managing our health, exercising helps to keep our body and mind healthy. Researchers have proved that exercise releases serotonin in our brain which improves brain function.
We should ensure to eat healthy as it provides our body with energy but it is important to spend the energy too.
Exercising helps us burn calories. In short, our body needs energy to make it healthier. When we exercise our cardiovascular system, muscles, and central nervous system get into action. The activation of these things in our body makes sure we stay fit and healthy!
Stay Hydrated
Water and food are the necessities we need to survive. It helps in digestion, delivers oxygen and nutrients to various organs and cleans our body from the inside.
Water is extremely crucial for humans. Have around 3-4 litres of water throughout the day. Water not only keeps us hydrated but it also helps the body remove toxins.
Get Enough Sleep
People often neglect taking rest and sleep. We stay up all night or sleep extremely late to complete some tasks.
Aim to get at least 7-9 hours of sleep daily. Along with proper diet and exercising, a night of good sleep will help you even more maintain good physical and mental health.
Adding this to the lifestyle will be extremely beneficial and you will wake up full of energy.
Stress Management
People ignore this a lot. Especially those who work corporate jobs. Without even knowing, stress creeps up on us and deteriorates our mental health. Hence, it is important to practice Meditation, Yoga, and exercise to help manage stress levels.
While feeling stressed is not completely avoidable it is manageable in different ways.
We usually stress about the future. We have to emphasize thinking, let’s think about how we can make a better present. What lifestyle changes should be implemented to stay healthy?
Spend your present time with friends and family. Focus on work and do not think about the future much!
Read more: 5 Ways To Reduce Stress Levels
Limit Alcohol and Nicotine
We might have heard from a lot of people that they smoke or drink to reduce stress. While it is true that alcohol may help release stress, it is also true alcohol in excess causes permanent damage to your liver and digestive system.
40 to 60ml of alcohol three to four times a week is considered sage-safe. However, only 30ml to 40ml is safe to drink on a daily basis.
Cigarettes on the other hand are extremely dangerous. There is no established limit to it. Even half a cigarette will cause damage to your respiratory system. Nicotine gets very addictive and people smoke 10 to 15 cigarettes a day!
Hence it is important to stay away from unhealthy addictions and try to maintain stress naturally by meditating and exercising in order to lead a healthy life.
Checkups
Frequent medical checkups keep you up to date about your body’s condition. It is a notion that medical checkups are only supposed to be done when either sick or asked by a doctor.
This is a way where you can find out what is going on in your body. If there is a sickness on the way, you might find out about it early and treat it accordingly.
It is advised to go for full body health checkups every 6 months to help prevent any serious medical conditions from arising. This ensures that if you incur any medical issues, it can be detected early on and be treated accordingly. As often said, “prevention is better than cure”.
Also read: 5 Reasons Why Regular Health Check Is Important.
Limit Digital Devices
Digital devices are known to be a device to help us connect with people. Instead, they have taken over us. We get addicted to them extremely fast without even knowing it. Many of us base our lives on these devices!
To avoid this, limit your screen time. Devices emit blue-rays which affect our eyesight. Kids of a very young age wear spectacles because of their addiction to mobile phones.
So let’s limit our screen time and protect our eyesight.
Hygiene
Maintaining good hygiene is a must. It helps avoid infections and lets our body stay fresh. A well-balanced hygiene not only makes our body feel good but our minds feel good.
Practice cleaning the body with soap and water every day. One should always take care and frequently wash their hands and maintain oral hygiene as it help us avoid germs entering our bodies.
Regulate Caffeine Intake
In our day-to-day lives, we often end up chugging countless glasses of coffee. Any stimulant can be addictive. After a certain point of time, our bodies stop reacting to some amount of caffeine. So we start consuming more and that is harmful.
Caffeine in smaller portions has health benefits but in excess causes heart failure and insomnia!
Conclusion
Lifestyle changes are hard to implement but they become easier to follow once you get used to them. Remember, anything good in excess can cause a little harm too. So have cheat meals once a month or go to a party with friends.
Apply these 10 points in your quest for achieving a healthy body and mind and achieve them. Do not fall for anything addictive, do not give in to digital devices. Stay safe and make healthy decisions for your mind and your body.
