Living a healthy lifestyle doesn’t mean hours of training at the gym and
eating only salad leaves. It’s about making easy-to-manage healthy choices in
your day-to-day living.
Says
Dr Craig Nossel, head of Wellness at Discovery Vitality: "The trick to making
your lifestyle healthier is to make small healthy changes every day, such as
taking the stairs instead of the lifts, increasing your fruit by one, drinking
one extra glass of water or quitting smoking."
So let’s start with the fundamental basics of healthy living: regular exercise,
healthy
eating and healthy lifestyle choices:
I like to move it, move it!
Do as King Julian does and move your body. Not just once now-and-then – but
every day whenever you can. Although a set exercise
session is great to work into your daily routine, you can burn kilojoules in
other small ways, such as:
- Walking to someone else’s desk rather than sending an e-mail,
- Parking furthest from the building and walking in, or
- Taking the stairs more often.
- Doing house cleaning or gardening
- Taking the dog for a walk or cycling with the kids instead of watching
TV
We all stand together
We spend our lives sitting – at our desks, in front of the TV, in a meeting
or on the phone. New research is emerging highlighting the potential risk to
health from all our sitting behaviour. So break your sitting time by standing
for five minutes and reap the health benefits.
Every little bit counts and it all adds up to burning more
calories.
If you’re overweight, making small changes in your daily exercise routine can
benefit your health. In fact one study has found that just a 10% drop in weight
helped overweight people to reduce their blood
pressure, cholesterol and
improve their wellbeing.
Eating healthily
When it comes to healthy eating, there is an overwhelming array of theories,
diet books and online information about what to eat – which is often
conflicting. Although the research is still ongoing and developing, what the
experts all agree on is that our diets are too high in sugar, our portions are
too big and we should eat a variety of whole natural foods.
Sweet enough
From sugary drinks to breakfast cereal, it’s hard to get away from sugary
foods. Often the sugar
is hidden in canned goods or pre-packaged foods, or even in foods we think
are healthy for us, such as fruit juice. The average person takes in about 22
teaspoons of added sugar each day. According to the American Heart Association
the daily target should be no more than six level teaspoons for women, and nine
for men—that’s for both food and beverages combined.
The easiest way to limit your sugar intake with one small change is to cut
out sugary fizzy drinks. This alone can help you to lose or maintain a healthy
weight, which in turn will reduce your risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Portion distortion
Our food and drinks portion sizes have dramatically increased over the past
30 years. In the 1950’s a chip packet was 28g from a take-away restaurant -
today it’s 154g – and that’s not even the supersize, which is a whopping
196g!
Portion
size increases doesn’t only include the take-away portions, but packaging of
goods in the supermarket, dinner plates and glasses in restaurants and even
fridge sizes! Simple ways to cut your portions include:
- Eat your main meals off a smaller plate – visually the plate looks full so
you will be satisfied, but technically you’ll be eating less.
- Dish up in the kitchen, rather than have the serving dishes at the dining
table – it’s much easier to have seconds when it’s right in front of you.
- Eat small regular meals (at least every four hours) so that you’re never
starving – if you get to this point of hunger, it’s very difficult to stop
before you overeat.
Colour me beautiful
Choosing whole foods and cooking from scratch is a much healthier way to eat
than buying pre-packaged or ready-meals which are high in fat and salt but very
low in nutrients. To make sure you’re getting a variety of nutrients,
vitamins and minerals into your body every day – a quick rule of thumb is to
pick a variety of colours for your meals. Be the artist of your meals and paint
a colour picture with a variety of yellow, red and green fruits and vegetables
throughout the day.
Your body will wear a frown if your meal is all brown.
Choose life
There is nothing more damaging to a long, healthy life than smoking, which is
estimated as the reason for death or disability in half the people who smoke.
The dangers of smoking tobacco are so significant that it is the most important
public health problem in the world, which ironically, is largely avoidable.
Smoking not only cuts your lifespan by affecting your internal organs, but it
also ages you on the outside by causing skin damage. Tobacco smoking can give
you wrinkles, create pucker lines around your mouth, stain your teeth and
fingers, rob your skin of nutrients, break down youth-enhancing collagen and
make your skin look grey. It makes you wonder how smoking is often marketed as
glamorous and attractive.
It takes courage to quit
smoking, as it’s not an easy journey – but it’s a brave and sensible
choice. Some of the positive changes will happen quickly, while others will be
more gradual, but all the changes will benefit your health and well-being.
- (Discovery Vitality press release, February 2013)
(Photo of running
woman from Shutterstock)