Healthy body is very important to live a long and happy life. Many factors including your diet, exercise, and lifestyle plays an important role to maintain your healthy body. If you don’t take a healthy and balanced diet, it may affect your health which in turn would lead to many diseases such as weight gain, malnutrition, diabetes, high blood pressure and a shortened life period. If you smoke, don’t manage your stress or you do not sleep well, it may also affect your healthy life. Try to follow a healthy routine and lifestyle to maintain a good general healthy body.
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Practicing Healthy Eating Habits:
- Eat a well-balanced diet: Well balanced and healthy diet is very important to maintain a healthy body. Unhealthy and unbalanced diet affects your health and causes many diseases. Balanced diet includes equal proportion or serving of all food groups having all nutrients, vitamins and minerals in it. Unbalanced diet means having some nutrients in high quantities and some in low quantities. For example, if you’re taking protein in your diet and don’t take fruits and vegetables then it is an unbalanced diet. Following proportion of foods in your diet would make your diet balanced:
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- 3-4 oz. of protein.
- 1 cup of vegetables or 2 cups of leafy green vegetables.
- Half cup of chopped fruit or one small piece of fruit.
- 1 oz. or half cup of grains.
Balance all your nutrients and minerals in your meals and snacks daily with equal right proportions by taking:
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- 3 to 4 servings of protein.
- 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables.
- 3 to 4 servings of grains.
Intermittent fasting is very beneficial to maintain your eating habits. Avoid eating 3 to 4 hours before going to bed and 3 to 4 hours after waking up.
- Go for lean protein sources: Lean proteins are very important to maintain a healthy body. It serves as a building block of many body or organ function systems. Lean proteins are lean poultry, eggs, seafood, lean beef, pork, legumes (nuts and beans), and tofu. It’s very good for maintaining your lean muscle mass, redevelopment of cells, and improves your immune system. Lean proteins are low in fats and calories. Eating an adequate amount of lean proteins have many important benefits such as managing your appetite, increasing healthy weight, and increasing healthy cholesterol and fats level in your body.
- Eat whole grains instead of processed grains: Eating whole grains instead of refined grains are more beneficial for your healthy body. Processed grains contain less quantity of protein, fibers and other nutrients while whole grains are full of healthy nutrients. Eating whole grain foods such as 100% whole wheat pasta and bread, brown rice, whole grain oats, faro, millet, quinoa, and barley in your diet will help to increase fibers, protein and other healthy nutrients as well as it prevents heart diseases, diabetes and cancers.
2. Maintaining a Healthy Body with Exercise:
- Do cardio exercises: Exercise plays an important role to maintain your healthy body and life. Cardiovascular and aerobic exercises have a great impact on your health. A doctor or physical trainer recommends you to do cardio exercises at least 30 minutes daily (150 minutes in a week) but if you increase your exercise period to 1 hour (300 minutes in a week) it will also increase the benefits. Cardio exercises include walking, jogging or running, dancing, swimming, aerobics classes, biking, hiking etc. It may have many health benefits such as improves mood, improves sleep routine, improves blood circulation, reduces weight, maintains blood pressure and prevents heart stroke, maintains insulin, controls blood lipids and cholesterol levels etc.
- Do one to three days of strength training: Beside cardio and aerobic exercises, strength exercises are very beneficial for maintaining a good healthy body. It helps to improve your immune system and increase your lean muscle mass. It also lowers your body weight and burns your unhealthy fats and calories. You can do high intensity exercises 7 minutes early in the morning. Doctors or physical health experts would recommend you to do strength exercises two days in a week. Do intense exercises on alternate days with one day of rest after exercise, so that your body muscles would repair or recover itself. Do those exercises that involve your major muscles like arms, chest, back, core, and legs. You can lift weights, use weight machines, or do weight-bearing exercises like yoga. These exercises would help to prevent osteoporosis or other bone disorders and improve strength of bones and muscles.
3. Making Changes to Your Lifestyle:
- Quit smoking: Smoking is the most dangerous and unhealthy habit because it has a negative impact on your health. If you’re a smoker then you should quit smoking immediately to maintain a healthy body. There are ways of smoking like cigarettes, tobacco or any harmful drugs. Smoking will lead you to many life threatening diseases such as lung cancer or other lung diseases, high blood pressure, heart diseases, diabetes, blindness, and oral diseases etc. There are ways to quit smoking like chewing gums, patches, medicines or counseling programs. If you face difficulties to quit smoking then you need to consult a psychiatrist or join a rehabilitation center.
- Limit alcohol: Alcohol also affects your healthy body. Consuming alcohol in a limited amount like 1 or 2 glasses in a few days would be beneficial for your body. But consuming more than this limit would have a negative effect on your health. Daily alcohol limit for male is less than two glasses while for women it is less than one glass. Excessive intake of alcohol may lead to many harmful health problems such as pancreatitis, stroke, high blood pressure, liver, and brain damage.
- Get enough sleep: Enough and deep sleep is very important for maintaining a good healthy body. If you don’t get proper sleep daily, it might affect your health and cause health issues such as weight gain, increased appetite, fatigue, less concentration, inability to retain information and even increased mortality. Professionals recommend sleeping at least seven to nine hours daily. Make a daily sleeping routine to go to bed early and wake up early in the morning. Proper and enough sleep would make you active and healthy. To get deep and comfortable sleep, make sure to turn off all electronic devices and noisy equipment such as TV, radio, smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Turn off all the lights of your room and darken your room as much as possible.