Lifestyle is what everyone is going on about, there’s so many of them. I’d like to talk about maintaining a healthy lifestyle which comes in all shapes and sizes but I will be general in my speech, I hope you find this article to be an informative introduction that will serve you well. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle takes more effort than you’d think so here are some basics to get you started.
Goal Setting:
Before we look into aspects of a healthy lifestyle (generally) it’s essential that you set some goals. Don’t do what everyone else is doing to achieve the goals they have because those are their goals. It takes reflection and a good level of self-awareness to come up with a goal that works for you individually. If you’re finding this hard employ a fitness and/or nutrition coach like myself to help you in this goal. You need to be critical about your strengths and weaknesses. From that point you can gauge what you need to work on right now and what will be the next goal to achieve.
Weight loss/gain:
If you want to gain or lose weight don’t focus on the weight target too rigidly but rather the steps and the journey to the goal weight, a day at a time, that will help you keep motivated and enjoy the process. As you look back month after month as you’ve been eating healthily and exercising more you’ll see the growth within yourself and enjoy it more. As previously said, don’t worry about what the next person is doing. You need to be all-in on your weight goal and rely upon yourself as much as possible.
Know what affects your eating habits & know when you’re truly hungry:
Do you eat food when you’re stressed? Emotional and stress signs are different to hunger signs since hunger is a physiological reaction to a lack of food and shows as hunger pain, dry mouth, growling stomach and so on. Learning to make food choices that complement your goals will help you form new eating habits that boost your mood, aid your health and could save you money.
Eating more vegetables, healthy fats and fibre:
The vegetables we eat contain vitamins and minerals and fibre. The vitamins and minerals in vegetables play essential roles in maintaining a healthy body. It’s better to eat fresh in-season veg that was grown close to home since this will further increase the freshness of the food, in turn helping maintain the nutritional properties of that food. Healthy fats like nuts and seeds are great snacks full of antioxidants and have many other benefits.
Drop eating added sugar:
Adding sugar to food is a major issue, more so than eating fats. Sugar is an empty calorie, fulfilling little to no benefit to the body. Eating sweets, treats, biscuits and drinking fizzy drinks all increase your chances of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Try to reduce your sugar use by keeping tabs on your consumption and adapting your food choices, switching to sugar alternatives and honey which has many benefits for our health.
Sleeping well:
Getting regular sleep for the duration of time your body needs to recover is very important. Sleeping is beneficial to health because it increases concentration and memory formation, boosts your immune system to avoid sickness and increases emotional well-being. How much sleep you need per day depends on your age and how much energy you expend each day but generally an adult man will need 7-8 hours of sleep each day.
Staying Active:
Regular Physical Activity is important to our health including the Brain, Muscle and Heart. Your mental health is boosted by regular exercise such as running, which many people have found to be true during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Exercise improves blood flow, lung capacity, and the composition of your body. You can reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure and increase muscle mass through exercise.
Drink more water:
Drink a litre a day, 2 or more than that! People say a lot of different things about drinking water but the best thing you can do is listen to your body and drink regularly and in accordance to your situation. Water is essential to life and staying hydrated will improve your exercise and daily performance, energy levels and brain function, improve bad skin and much more.
I wouldn’t call this the definitive guide to a healthy lifestyle since we missed out aspects of a healthy lifestyle like positive relationships and money management which can both have major impacts upon the quality of your life and wellbeing in general.
From a health, fitness and nutritional point of view you should now be able to look at and evaluate your current lifestyle to gauge whether you need to make changes, when and how, in a methodical way (God willing).
Thank you for reading this post, my name is Hanif and I’m a Fitness and Nutritional Coach here at CriterionFit.com. I hope you’ll come back to read more articles and also follow me on Instagram and Twitter. Helping Men live healthy lifestyles is what we do here, tipping the balance of fitness in your favour. If you have any questions shoot them over to me by emailing us [Here].
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