Lifestyle Archives | Page 2 of 2

If you are looking for a one-stop solution to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, you may never find one. However, there are several lifestyle tips on the best way to maintain a healthy lifestyle and enjoy your life. You need to understand that it is not just about doing one or two things, it is not just about changing your eating habits and exercising. It entails a whole gamut of things that contribute to your overall well being. That is why the World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In other words, you can have good physical health, eat right and exercise very well, but your health and lifestyle can be poor if you are not doing well emotionally or psychologically. You need to give as much attention to your psychological and social wellbeing as you usually do for your physical health. Psychological and social wellness cuts across different areas of your life which contributes to your overall well being. Some of the different aspects of lifestyle that contribute to your emotional and psychological well being include exercise, vacation, travel, wellness, physical rejuvenation, relationships, self-development, entertainment, financial wellness etc. Benefits of Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle There are several benefits to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Some of these benefits include: 1. Disease Prevention: maintaining a healthy lifestyle will help you to improve your immunity and ward off many diseases. This is benefit alone is very important if you consider the money you can save from medical bills, missed wages, the inability to do things you love etc. 2. Increased Lifespan and Quality of Life: Studies have shown that people who maintain a healthy lifestyle (non-smokers) tend to live longer than those who don’t live healthy (smokers). You are also more likely to maintain a better quality of life (mobility and independence) than people with poor lifestyle. 3. Mental Health: This is very important especially as you get older. People who maintain a healthy lifestyle tend to have better mental health in their old age than those who do not maintain a healthy lifestyle. You can also have a better status of mental health if you are maintaining a healthy lifestyle and this is very important in your everyday interactions with people. Tips for Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle You can reduce your stress levels just by understanding how to leverage the benefits of the different things that contribute to your emotional and psychological health. These lifestyle tips should help you understand the different areas of your life that affect your total wellbeing and how you can create an exciting, rewarding and fulfilling lifestyle for yourself. The most important thing in attaining a healthy lifestyle is to reduce your stress or manage it effectively and these tips should help you to achieve this. Life isn't all about working hard to make more money to make ends meet. Part of the rewards for hard work should also be to enjoy the good things in life. You don't need to have all the money in the world to enjoy the results of your hard labor. These tips will give you ideas on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and enjoy your life without necessarily putting a dent in your bank account. Lifestyle Tips: Exercise and Diet For the most part, exercise and a healthy diet is what you need to maintain a healthy lifestyle but don’t think that is all you have to do if you really want to enjoy good holistic health like how the World Health Organization defines it. There are several benefits of regular exercise and eating a good and healthy diet. Exercise generally helps your body to remain strong and active which helps it to fight off potential diseases. It also plays a very important role in your mood because of the neurotransmitters and hormones that are released into your body when you exercise. Exercise also helps you to sleep better, especially if you are stressed and having issues with sleeping. Regular exercise can also have an impact on your body weight. This will help you control your body weight and avoid getting overweight or obese which can lead to other health challenges and complications. Diet also plays a very crucial role in your health as well as your lifestyle. It is often said that “you are what you eat”, which means the quality of your health may be a reflection of your diet. Avoid eating foods that can be detrimental to your body (like foods with high sodium, saturated and trans fat, high sugar content etc.), and eat more of foods that contain plant-based proteins, vegetables, fruits, etc. Diet is also very important in helping you to control your body weight. A good diet will help you to maintain good body weight while a poor diet can make you become overweight or obese and more susceptible to other health issues. The following tips can help you to easily start your efforts to maintain a healthy lifestyle. 1. Start Small Think about the changes you need to make to your lifestyle and start doing them little by little if you are really motivated about changing your lifestyle and living a healthy life. Initiating big changes in your life suddenly may be a recipe for failure because you can become overwhelmed easily and abandon your quest to change your lifestyle. The best thing to do should be to identify the changes you need to make (habits you need to change) and start working on them by setting small goals you can easily achieve. Then you can progress with enthusiasm in setting new and bigger goals over time. 2. Do Small Consistent Exercises Daily If your goal is to start exercising regularly, start small but consistent exercises every day. Pick a time that is convenient for you (morning, afternoon, or evening) and stick to it. Also, do small exercises that your body can handle. Don’t overstretch or overextend your body in your first few days because it may lead to injury. Similarly, if you are starting a dieting program, start small by eliminating foods you want to stop eating and gradually increase your intake of the foods you want to be eating more until you change your diet completely. This will help you transition your diet without any serious issues. 3. Set Alarms for Gym Time If you are a very busy person, chances are that you may frequently forget about exercising since it is not high on your priority at this time. One thing you can do to help you remain consistent with this habit is to set alarms that will remind you when you are to exercise. You can also put it on your schedule so that it does not fall off from your radar. 4. Enlist Some Help It can be challenging pulling off something like this (exercise routine habits) by yourself, and if you feel overwhelmed in any way, know that help is available. You can hire a personal trainer to help you achieve your goals. It will be well worth the investment if maintaining a healthy lifestyle is really important to you and you can afford it. You can also hire a dietician to help you with your diet and nutrition if this is challenging for you to do. Another way to look at it is by analyzing the cost of hiring a trainer to help you achieve your goal versus trying to do it yourself and failing in addition to the cost of poor health. 5. Join a Group You are not left out if you can’t hire a personal trainer or dietician to help you with your exercise or nutrition goals. You can join a group where people with similar aspirations and goals come together to help one another achieve their goals. You can find and join groups like running clubs in your neighborhood or city. There are also similar groups on social media sites like facebook (if you can think about it, you will find a group for it) or online forums where you can get valuable advice, support and encouragement. 6. Cut Down on Eating Out Another important thing you need to do is to reduce your frequency of eating out to a very low minimum. You can do this gradually and eventually stop eating out if this is the main source of your meals. This will help you to control the kind of food you want to eat and it can also help you to be proactive in diet when you cook your meals by yourself. If you must eat out make sure you avoid processed foods. BTW, cooking your meals can save you a lot of money. 7. Reduce/Stop Eating Processed Foods This should be a no brainer. Almost everyone knows the bad effects of processed foods on your body. You can become overweight, susceptible to heart disease, and a host of other issues. Eating processed meals all the time can be a hindrance to living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. 8. Eat at Specific Times The times when you eat your meals can also have a huge effect on your body and lifestyle. Eating in between meals and eating during late hours gives your body more nutrients than it needs. So guess where the excess nutrients go? The body turns it into fats and that’s one of the reasons you can become overweight or obese. So have a designated time when you have your meals and don’t eat more than your body needs. 9. Try Cooking Yourself If you feel overwhelmed trying to cook your meals or if you don’t know how or what to cook, getting a recipe book will be a good idea. This will help you maintain your commitment to eating healthy and changing your lifestyle. All the work on what meal to cook and how to cook it has already been done for you. All you have to do is to follow the recipe instructions and you will have your meals ready. You can find several free recipes online easily. 10. Be Determined to Win The most important factor in exercising and changing your diet to maintain a healthy lifestyle is a strong will and commitment to succeed in achieving a healthy lifestyle. There will definitely be challenges and even failures, but you need to stand up and continue on your journey and commitment to live a better and healthier lifestyle so that you can enjoy the results of your hard work and the good things of life. Lifestyle Tips: Vacation and Travel Tips Vacations are not supposed to be for rich people alone, everybody should be able to take a vacation according to your budget/income. Vacations help your body to relax because of the absence of work-related stress, and you can get re-energized to perform better when you return to work. Studies have shown that people who take vacations tend to perform better on their jobs. The following tips should help you take advantage of your vacations to live a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle. 11. Spread It You should spread your vacation days across the different seasons of the year instead of waiting for one time of the year to take your vacation days. Take a few days off in spring for spring break holiday, take more days for vacation in summer, especially around national holidays like July 4th (if you're in U.S), take advantage of Halloween and Thanksgiving in the Fall and Christmas or New Year in the winter. 12. Off-Season Visits Consider visiting vacation hot spots during their off-peak seasons to save costs and enjoy more privacy. Vacation hot spots are significantly more expensive during their seasons. Check when the off-peak time for your desired destination is and plan your trip around that time. 13. Plan Ahead Planning your vacation ahead of time is the best way to take the stress out your vacation and you can also save some money too. 14. Disconnect and Shutdown You don’t necessarily need to travel somewhere for a vacation. You can just take time off and disconnect from work to have time for yourself and relax. You can relax at home or do something outdoors. 15. Pad Vacation Time Avoid the mistake of leaving work to travel for vacation and return to work tired straight from a vacation. Allow a day or two between your travel days to help you rest and pack before traveling and to rest before resuming work again. 16. Watch Your Expenditures Don’t spend all your money on a vacation trip. It’s actually a bad idea to borrow money just for a vacation trip. Spend only money you have planned for this purpose and only money you actually have. If you cannot afford a trip, stay at home and enjoy your stay (staycation!). Lifestyle Tips: Physical Fitness and Emotional Wellness Another important aspect of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is your physical and emotional wellbeing. Your physical health plays a very important role in helping you to live the life you want and do the things that are most important to you. If you are ill, you won’t be able to achieve these things. There are so many resources that show and help you to live an active physical life (exercising, diets, weight loss etc.) so I won’t dwell much on it. However, emotional wellness is often neglected and I hope to provide more lifestyle tips on emotional wellness. Emotional wellbeing is important because it can affect your quality of life negatively if you don’t take care of it and it will eventually affect your physical health even if you are doing everything else right. Some of the lifestyle tips on emotional wellbeing include: 17. Allow Your Body to Relax One of the best ways your body can recover from stress is through relaxation and this essentially entails the removal of the stressing stimuli on your body. There are different things that you can do to relax but one of the most effective ways to relax and allow your body to recover is going for a spa massage treatment. It has a lot of benefits for your body. 18. Reduce the Sensory Overcharge Another activity that can improve your emotional wellness and help you maintain a healthy lifestyle is undergoing a session of sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation tanks help you to hit the reset button on your sensory system by cutting off stressful sensory stimuli. You are most likely to come out feeling better emotionally. 19: Live in the Moment Anxiety and worry is a huge source of stress for many people and this can significantly affect your emotional and even physical wellbeing. Of course, there are a lot of things that can cause worry and anxiety-like financial situations, relationship stress, substance abuse etc. Try to live in the moment and develop good coping skills to reduce the impact of anxiety on your lifestyle. 20. Don’t Give Up on Exercise Exercise has a natural way to energize and rejuvenate your body. It helps you to feel refreshed and relaxed because your body releases hormones that tend to produce a calming effect on your body which helps you to feel relaxed and refreshed. This takes helps in reducing the effect of stress on your body. 21. Be Grateful Gratitude helps you to maintain a healthy lifestyle by causing you to focus on the good things that are working well or happening around you. Typically, it’s the things that are not working well that tend to cause the stressful situations in your life. Focusing on the good things and being thankful for them can have a calming effect on your emotions and it helps you to cope well with the things that are not working well. Lifestyle Tips: Acquire and Build Relationships Another way you can easily maintain a healthy lifestyle is by developing good and healthy relationships with people around you. Bad relationships can become very toxic to your emotional wellbeing and may affect you many more ways than you can imagine. You need to develop and manage great relationships and at the same time fix or eliminate any bad or poor relationships in your life. This will help you enjoy the benefits of having good relationships. 22. Family is Important One of the most important relationships you will ever have in your life is your family, especially your immediate family. The family is a great support system that can provide you with the kind of support you need in your life. Often times, when everything else fails, it’s your family that is still standing with you. The modern society may portray individualism but there are times in your life when a family relationship is all that you need. Take your family seriously and nurture those relationships. 23. Don’t Bet on Social Media Don’t let social media fool you that you have lots of friends. Most of them may be connected with you online but they don’t really know you and maybe they don’t even care that much about you. Don’t invest a lot of your emotional energy in acquiring online friends, rather put that effort in establishing real relationships with people around you that you can see and talk to physically when you need them. 24. Nurture Long Term Friendships Another good advice on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle is to nurture your friendships (and relationships generally) for a long time. Cultivate and invest in a few important friendships for the long haul. This can be your childhood, or high school friends, college friends etc. people who you know will not hesitate to tell you the truth. You need people who can steer you away from bad habits and decisions, not those who will look the other way when you are doing something wrong. Having these important relationships will help you to maintain a good lifestyle. 25. Develop Great Relationships at Work You spend most of your time (or life) on your job, and you will be a miserable person if you don’t have good relationships at work. Some people have been able to establish great relationships at work and it looks like their second family. This can make work to be fun to do and not just something you need to do for a paycheck. This can also significantly reduce your stress and improve your lifestyle. 26. Participate in a Social or Community Group Participating or volunteering in a community group helps you to develop social relationships and interact with people that you may not know or come in contact with. This does not only help you to become aware of your environment and have a sense of belonging, it makes you feel good about yourself because you are making an impact and contributing to something important. There are community activities that you can participate in your neighborhood. Consider volunteering your time at a food bank, volunteering at a local library, participating in your local church activities etc. 27. Invest in Your Spouse Your spouse should be your number one friend, fan and advocate if you are married. This is a very important relationship that affects almost everything in your life and it can make or break you. You need to invest in your relationship with your spouse and nurture it very well to get the kind of fantasy filled romantic results you desire. A good relationship with your spouse will help you to be emotionally stable and in good health while a turbulent relationship will affect you emotionally and eventually your physical health unless it is fixed. Lifestyle Tips: Home Decorations This may sound counter-intuitive but a good and comfortable home is very important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So many things happen in a home but one of the most important things about a good home is that it is a place where you can always look forward to coming back to after a hard day's job. It can be a place where you spend your evenings or free time to rest, relax and prepare for the next day. The best thing to do in order to get the best out of your home is to create the ambience that you want to have. The ambience of a home has so much relaxing effect on your body and emotional wellbeing. Unfortunately, many people do not realize this or maybe they just underestimate the potential in this. These lifestyle tips with home decor can help you maintain a healthy lifestyle. 28. Color of Wall Paint The color of the wall paint in your house interacts with your senses in a profound way to make you feel a certain way depending on which color you have on your walls. Some colors will make you feel relaxed and at peace, while some colors will make you feel excited, happy and stimulated. Of course, these responses vary for different people and the most important thing is to find which colors appeal to you the most and use them in your house. 29. Add a Few Plants Indoor plants play a tremendous role in helping you to maintain your health. Plants do not only improve your visual appeal, they also help you to maintain concentration and productivity. Indoor plants also reduce stress levels and help in boosting your mood. All of these can lead to incremental and cumulative health benefits that can help you to maintain a very healthy lifestyle. There are various indoor plants that you can keep in your house to help you relax and also improve the general visual appeal of your house. 30. Invest in Good Lighting Lighting of your home is another important aspect of your living space. It can have a huge effect on your mood, especially if you are really stressed. Having the right lighting in your home can lift your mood, and inspire creativity and productivity. You are more likely to experience depression if your house is dimly lit and certain types of light like blue light can make you feel energetic. You can maximize the benefits of good indoor lighting in your home by reviewing your house to see which light you need to get and where to fix it. 31. Eliminate Clutter Clutter harms your health in more ways than you can imagine, and it is a multi-faceted way of increasing your stress. The clutter in your house makes you spend more time every day to get things done in the house, because you have to move something before you can get to or find what you are looking for. Then you have to spend time to keep them back in place. It affects your relationships (who wants to visit you in a home that looks like a junkyard?). It also makes you spend more as well because you are more likely to be eating out if your house (especially the kitchen) is a mess and eating out more will likely cause you to develop unhealthy eating habits. This infographic and article from Mia Danielle explains it all. All of these will not help you in any way to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but rather send you on a steep sliding slope to poor health quicker than you think. 32. Get Comfortable Furniture The furniture you have in your house has both an obvious effect and a subconscious effect on your health (both physical and mental health). If the furniture you currently have is not comfortable, you are likely going to have some postural issues that may worsen over time (if not corrected). On the other hand, if you have comfortable furniture it can have a good effect on you often subconsciously. For instance, if you have a good sofa in your living room, you can snuggle in it and watch a netflix movie and some people don’t mind staying in that position forever. Take advantage of this easy benefit and improve your lifestyle easily by getting furniture that will make you comfortable. A simple, comfortable and versatile furniture design is often the best option. 33. Invest in Calming Wall Decoration The interior decor of your home can have huge impacts on your mood and productivity as well as relief from stress. One of the ways that you can utilize this benefit to improve your health as consequently enhance your lifestyle is by getting nice appealing wall decorations. There are several options and designs of wall decorations that you can use for this. You can either nicely frame and display your own pictures that help you remember good memories or you can get nice framed pictures of nature (seas, waterfalls, landscapes, snowy mountains, sunsets etc.) that you really love. Lifestyle Tips: Recreational Activities Recreational activities or hobbies are a very important in maintaining a healthy lifestyle for various reasons. Most of these activities are outdoors activities which means you have to do something active like walking, running, climbing, or some physical activity that helps you move and exercise your body. These activities typically take you away from your regular routine work (job) which oftentimes helps you to decompress and get some relief from the stress you experience on your job. Recreational activities also help you to interact with others and build relationships outside of your routine relationships which can be of immense benefit to improving your social relationships. 34. Pick Activities Your Love The easiest way to develop a hobby or recreational activity is to pick an interest in something that you really love or admire. It is a lot easier to develop a hobby in an activity when you really have an interest in it and you see yourself doing it. Also, you are more likely to develop your skill in that activity and learn it if it is something that you really love. People tend to drop an activity and lose interest in it when they don’t really like it and if they experience any challenges in learning the skill. So pick a hobby that you really love not something you want to do for the sake of it. 35. Do Something Interactive Pick a hobby or recreational activity that is interactive or social in nature. It is a lot easier to learn new skills when you are in the company of supportive people who can teach you and make it easier for you to learn. It helps you to build new relationships and it makes your hobby or recreational activity to be more fun. Even if you prefer doing your thing by yourself, try to find people you can learn from and then decide later if you want to continue doing it by yourself. 36. Look for Something Inexpensive As you are trying to find a hobby that will help you to maintain a healthy lifestyle one important thing to consider is to look for something inexpensive. The main reason for this is because this will help you to get started more quickly and also reduce the likelihood of procrastinating or quitting. People tend to delay starting hobbies that are expensive because they are waiting for when they can be financially stable before they can start enjoying themselves. Guess what, that time never comes for many of them. If you are really interested in a hobby that is expensive (boating, golf, sailing, flying, etc.) and really want to do it, consider renting. Renting equipment may be the easiest way to get started before you can buy your equipment. 37. Do Something Interesting but Challenging Don’t go just go for something because it is easy and simple to do, you may get bored and lose interest in it too quickly. You will enjoy a recreational activity and find it more interesting if it is challenging, especially if its a group activity and you are the kind of person that loves taking on challenges. Hobbies that are challenging are known to help build strong bonds between people involved. This should be a good criterion for you if you are hoping to find a recreational activity to do with other people. 38. Try Something New Another thing you can do as you consider what hobbies to start is to try a new hobby or something that you have not done before. This will significantly improve your learning ability because your brain will be tasked with something new and not just the things you are used to doing every day. This also has the ability to help you improve your productivity significantly because you may learn about new ways of doing things and apply those strategies on your job. So don’t be afraid to try something completely new, at least you can always try something else if you don’t like the new experience. 39. Become the Best You Can Be Always aim at becoming the best in your recreational activity or hobbies as you develop new skills. As you enjoy your experience and discover the best way to maintain a healthy lifestyle, remember to stretch yourself and get the best out of your experience. Always remember that many people have created successful businesses and large companies out of things that they did as a hobby or just for recreation. You may be on the verge of discovering something that may change your life and that of others completely, so give it all that you can and see what will come out of it.