13 Tips for a healthier Lifestyle for You
It’s no secret that a healthy lifestyle is key to living a long and fulfilling life. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity each week and two sessions of muscle-strengthening exercises, such as push-ups or sit-ups, for older adults. But if you’re not sure where to start with your new exercise routine, here are 13 tips to help get you started on the right foot:
1. Avoid excessive amounts of sodium (salt), while it does not affect weight loss it does affect your health. You may see higher readings on the scale after several high sodium meals, but that is just water retention and is temporary.
2. Avoid refined sugars, this will put on the pounds faster than just about anything else you eat or drink. While some may want to dispute this, the simple fact is the volume of sugar is extremely small for the amount of calories they add. For the most part if they do not register mentally as eating too much, your calorie intake will be much higher than what your brain registers.
3. Don’t overlook the calories in your beverages, it can be significant. The average person consumes 400 to 800 calories a day from the beverages they drink. Consider these numbers; a medium morning Latte is over 200 calories, a large soda with lunch is over 200 calories, a sweetened iced tea is almost 200 calories.
4. Use lean cuts of meat to reduce both calories and bad fats.
5. A large whole egg contains 4x the calories, only twice the protein and a whopping 186 grams of cholesterol compared to the egg white with 0 grams of cholesterol.
6. Rather than going out for breakfast and lunch, take a couple minutes to put together your own healthier versions.
7. You need a body scale that tells you a little more than just what you weigh. You also want to know your fat and muscle levels. There are several brands of scales that use a technology called BAI to help determine those numbers. While they not be 100% accurate as far as an actual body fat number they are consistent so you can use the readings to follow upward and downward trends.
8. If you insist on weighing everyday just jot down the numbers and do an average at the end of the week to track your progress. Your body fluctuates constantly so by taking an average over a weeks time you will get a better idea of how your weight loss is truly going. It is also a good idea to weigh yourself at the same time of day and wearing the same thing every time.
9. Don’t get obsessed with your weight. It may actually go up on occasion and doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong. Keep in mind you should be increasing your activity level which will add muscle, even if very slowly. So while your weight isn’t always going down, remember you are changing your overall appearance and health. Refer back to the point about body scales.
10. We stress more protein than what is “typical” for several reasons. First protein makes your body work harder to digest it, therefore you burn more calories (increasing your metabolic rate). Second your body uses protein to repair tissues and muscles, which is important if you start exercising more. Finally it helps you feel full on fewer calories. There has been some backlash against higher protein diets because of some very non-scientific assumptions. The primary assumption seems to be that people are not going to get their protein from lean protein sources, but will devour high fat foods. Since we don’t accept the assumption that increased protein can only come from high fat foods it is easy for us to dismiss that issue.
11. The importance of a food scale cannot be stressed enough. You can buy a digital scale that has both ounces and grams and also has a tare function. Since the size of solids can vary greatly a cup of a chopped ingredient can have a significant weight variances depending on how fine the item was chopped.
Don’t cop out and say it takes too long to weigh things, it doesn’t take any longer to weigh something than it does to put it in a measuring cup.
12. Don’t blindly accept quantity per serving on packaged foods. A great example is a bag of steak fries that we tested. The calories per serving stated 110 calories for 85g or about 10 fries. We found that the only way to get 10 pieces to weigh 85g was to pick through the bag and only select the smallest pieces. If we just grabbed 10 random pieces we would get anywhere from 115 to200 grams. With a single item your calories could be off by over 100%. While the difference between 100 and 200 calories by itself is not extreme, imagine if 10 items a day were off by that amount. That would equal 100*10 or 1000 calories a day which is 7000 extra calories a week that you didn’t think you were eating.
13. You already know you should be drinking plenty of water every day, what you may not know is to always drink your water ice cold. Drinking plenty of water is great for keeping your metabolism working at optimum levels. Very cold water actually burns extra calories because your body works to maintain a constant temperature and cold water makes your body work harder to warm your body.
Conclusion
Now that you know the powerful benefits of a healthy lifestyle, it’s time to take action. We want to help equip and empower you with some simple tips for making small changes in your daily routine that will make all the difference in how you feel. From getting more sleep at night, taking care of your mental health, or eating better- we’ve got something here for everyone! What are you waiting for? Start living healthier today! What is one thing that stands out as being most important according to this blog post?
Read also:
