An active lifestyle can help you feel good physically and emotionally, reduce disease risks, extend life span and save money.
Your health habits are ultimately your responsibility; start by setting one small improvement as your goal and working your way up from there. Here are a few suggestions to get you underway: 1. Engage in regular physical exercise.
Exercise
Exercise helps maintain a healthy weight, which in turn reduces your risk of obesity and other diseases. Furthermore, physical activity gives energy and lifts mood – contributing to overall improved feelings. Furthermore, those who remain physically active for at least 30 minutes most days have significantly lower risk of death compared to inactive people.
Exercise doesn’t need to involve long gym hours and miles-after-miles running a treadmill, however. Even walking, climbing stairs and cleaning your home can count as moderate exercise if done regularly with others, including friends and loved ones – making exercise even more motivating! Furthermore, physical activity has been shown to reduce the effects of stress and clinical depression by decreasing skeletal muscle tension; and may reduce risks such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and arthritis over time.
Eat a Balanced Diet
An effective diet is at the center of any healthy lifestyle, consisting of foods from various plants with moderate amounts of fat, salt and sugar. A balanced diet also contributes to maintaining a healthy body weight as well as protecting against diseases like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers.
A well-balanced diet offers your body essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and vitamins and minerals that support good health – however this alone won’t guarantee long-term good living!
Physical Activity. Regularly drinking plenty of water and getting sufficient rest. A full body checkup and vitamin screening tests can detect health problems early. Adopting these habits into your everyday life may take some time; but over time they’ll contribute to creating a healthier lifestyle.
Sleep Well
Sleep is an integral component of living a healthy lifestyle, as it helps the body and brain function efficiently. Sleep improves concentration and mental performance, helps manage mood swings, strengthen judgment and decision making skills and protect against many diseases.
Sleep is essential to good health, yet can often be hard to come by in today’s fast-paced society. Aim to get at least 7-8 hours each night.
Establish and adhere to a regular bedtime and wake-up time, even on weekends, and stick with it. Make your bedroom comfortable and quiet, avoiding electronics with screens in the hour before sleeping. If you can’t fall asleep easily, try relaxing activities such as reading, stretching, or visualization instead of electronics before bed. Be wary of caffeine or alcohol consumption before sleep as well as eating large meals shortly beforehand – these will impede restful slumber. Regular exercise and diet changes may help improve quality sleep for those suffering with anxiety or depression symptoms affecting sleep quality significantly.
Reduce Stress
A healthy lifestyle involves practices designed to alleviate stress and promote emotional well-being, such as socializing, meditation and relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, tai chi or yoga. People also consume balanced meals, sleep well and take time out for simple pleasures such as smiling or laughing.
Under stress, our bodies produce hormones which elevate heart rate, blood pressure and sugar levels – leading to muscle tension, headaches and digestive issues as a result of increased heart rate, blood pressure and sugar. Furthermore, stress may make people more likely to smoke or overeat – both behaviors with potentially negative health implications.
Implementing a healthy lifestyle may seem challenging at first. By making small adjustments to your routine and building upon it over time, however, success will become easier and build upon itself over time. Living an overall healthier lifestyle may save money in terms of medical costs while simultaneously increasing life span with better quality of life.
