Nowadays, it seems to have become hard to lead a healthy lifestyle because you get a lot of conflicting information from different sources. Egg yolks are constantly going in and out of fashion. Some health gurus recommend high protein diets while others encourage you to go for diets high in fat (Atkins). Even when it comes to exercise, there’s usually some new fad you keep hearing about, from Zumba classes to kettle bells. So how do you weed through all this information and keep the stuff that you need? Consider the following tips:
- Diet. If you’ve ever tried to go on a diet (and most of us have done this at some point in our lives), you know that the process can be quite exhausting. The more you think about how you need to eat less, the more you actually want to eat. This can lead to binging which defeats the purpose of the diet altogether. Rather than focusing on eating less, focus on eating right and staying full. Your first priority when you go on a diet should be to make sure that you never stay hungry. This doesn’t mean you keep loading up on unhealthy foods. But make sure you have a lot of vegetables, white meat and complex carbs stocked up at home so that you’ll never go hungry.
- Exercise. A lot of women start exercising in order to lose weight or look good. Although these are not bad reasons to exercise, you should keep in mind that exercise is good for your health. When you exercise in order to become healthier, you’re more likely to keep exercising in the long run. When you exercise just to look better, you’re more likely to get disheartened when you don’t see results right away. This is partly because you tend to work out very hard when you exercise in order to look better and your body can’t take the level of activity you’re suddenly subjecting it to. It’s better to start working out slowly and steadily for health reasons and increase the intensity of your workouts as time goes on.
- Spiritual Health. A healthy lifestyle is not just about diet, exercise and taking care of your body. It’s also about taking care of your mind and spirit. Your mind and your body are intimately connected so that an improvement in one always leads to an improvement in the other. Taking care of your body may seem simpler, because you just have to manage your diet and exercise regimen. But taking care of your mind is actually far more powerful. A little bit of mental and spiritual pampering can improve your life greatly and bring you closer to your goals. So go for long nature walks, meditate, read some poetry or just do something fun that makes you feel uplifted. You’ll see the results immediately in your mental state, your work and other areas of your life.
