Take Your Health into Your Own Hands – 6 Habit Changes
Health is the most precious resource in our lives. You can’t buy it or find it, you need to earn it with your choices. People often neglect their health for one reason or another and it comes back to bite them. This is why many will try to change their habits at some point to help improve their health and increase their quality of life. Doing this takes a lot of effort, and knowing which habits to change can be difficult. Here’s how you can start taking your health into your hands with simple habit changes.
Keep a glass of water by your side
Water is one of those substances we take for granted. It makes up seventy percent of your whole body weight, but it’s probably not something you think about on a daily basis. You just grab a glass when you’re parched and go about your day. It’s not seen as the essential substance that it really is.
Nowadays, people don’t drink nearly enough water as they should. Getting a glass of water when you’re thirsty is great, but you need to up that amount to get anywhere near normal hydration. It’s pretty much a given that most people are slightly dehydrated. It’s not something that drastically affects their day-to-day life, but it’s also not exactly a healthy state to be in. You should aim to consume a lot more water on a daily basis.
There are numerous benefits that come from drinking more water. Your body is constantly using water when you move around and exercise, and adding more water makes you feel more awake and energetic. You might not notice this at first, but having a few extra glasses per day can do a lot for your motivation and energy. Skin and also benefit greatly from extra water. You get smoother skin with fewer wrinkles when you’re hydrated, and your hair gets a nice shine as well.
The consensus on how much water you should drink varies. Some would say six glasses, while others recommend around eight. As long as you up your water intake without going into double digits, you should be feeling the positive effects pretty soon. Keep this in mind and remember to keep a glass of water by your side at all times. It’s going to help you quite a bit.
Get active
Physical activity is the most important thing you can do for the betterment of your health. However, you need to realize that it’s a lot more complex than hitting the treadmill twice a week. When people decide to improve their physical and mental health, the gym is often the first place they visit. There’s nothing wrong with going to the gym and exercising on your terms, but physical activity has a lot more to it. It’s more like a philosophy than anything else.
When’s the last time you decided to take the stairs when going to work? If there’s an elevator available, why would you bother? It’s just an unnecessarily difficult task that could leave you slightly sweaty and heated as you’re getting to your office. You should probably conserve your energy for work, anyway. Except, the exact opposite happens.
Introducing a little extra minor physical activity can really impact your health on a daily basis. People used to walk and bike everywhere, and this led to much healthier bodies on a physical level. Now that we have cars, escalators, and elevators, people hardly bother to do so. You can always go against the grain and walk wherever you can. It’s going to keep you feeling fresh and physically active for your whole day. Plus, you don’t lose out on nearly as much time or energy as you might think. On the contrary, you’ll feel much better pushing yourself to do these things, and they’ll give you even more motivation.
Go to the market more often
One of the healthier and more economical choices you can make is to cook your own food. In today’s faced-paced world, people often turn to take out and pre-prepared food for many of their meals. It’s understandable, especially when you consider the fact that we work a lot more today than we previously did. With less time on our hands, preparing food becomes quite the challenge, schedule-wise.
Still, it’s not an impossible task at all. You don’t have to cook a turkey in the oven just to have a meal ready for dinner. You could always boil up some vegetables or make a stir fry out of some pretty healthy ingredients. It’s not necessary to go all out for very demanding dinners.
There’s a lot of unnecessary and unhealthy ingredients in processed food. Extra sugar and salt are added just to preserve the food we get from supermarket shelves. Not to mention, they are often lacking in vitamins and minerals due to the thermal processing and filtering of ingredients. Why not simply hit up the local market and fill your bags up with fresh produce? All the goodies you can get that are sourced from local growers will not only be full of the nutrients you need, but they’ll also be cheaper than store-bought versions.
It takes a bit of effort, but the payoff is tremendous. You get to save lots of money every month, and you get groceries that can be very easy to prepare. Hit up a cooking website for some simple recipes and you’ll get your cake and eat it too, figuratively and literally speaking.
Start riding a bike
There are very few things that can improve your health quite like regular physical activities. There’s no shortage of benefits that exercise can provide your body. Whether it’s physical health in the form of better circulation and posture, or mental benefits like reduced stress and higher quality sleep, you’ll find that exercise does it all. The problem is getting people to do exercise in such a way that it doesn’t bore them or interfere with their schedule. This can be a problem.
If you want to get your body in tip-top health, you need something that you can do on a near-daily basis. Hitting the gym is always a good option, but this often leaves people stressed out more than anything. How do you do the exercises properly? It takes a lot of skill and practice to adequately make progress in the gym. Luckily, there are much simpler ways to get your fair share of exercise without stressing yourself out.
Riding a bicycle is a simple, but very effective way to improve your physical health. Unlike running or weightlifting, biking is very easy on the joints, so pretty much anyone can do it. This is a fact that isn’t lost on health experts, who often recommend riding a bike as a primary physical activity. It works your body’s muscles while also giving you some strong cardio activity to boot.
Plus, it’s pretty accessible. Going to the gym will cost you a monthly membership while getting a high-quality bicycle from a reliable online bike shop is an investment that will last you a long time. You can use a bicycle as your transportation if you’re sick of commuting to work. It’s going to let you enjoy some fresh air and peace of mind as you travel.
Work on your mindfulness
The human body is a very complex system, and it’s difficult to look at it from just one point of view. Keeping your body healthy and fit is going to go a long way towards making you feel better, but these are not the only things you should pay attention to. You also need to look after your mental health and well-being.
There’s a reason why the medical world is looking towards a more holistic approach towards treating people and improving health. There are certain things that diet and exercise can’t fix alone. If you’re feeling down or stressed out due to circumstances in life, this also requires remedying in some way. The problem is that many problems that influence us in our day-to-day life aren’t easy to solve, or they take a very long time to fix.
An easy way to decrease your stress and feel better on a daily level is to work on your mindfulness. It has been shown to increase comfort and satisfaction for individuals that live with chronic conditions, and it can improve one’s outlook on life. To do this, you’ll want to pay more attention to your daily tasks and practice mindful exercises.
Some people prefer to do mindful workouts like Yoga or Tai Chi, while others enjoy strictly mental mindfulness exercises. Meditation is a great example. You don’t have to light candles or sit out in the sun to relax and practice mindfulness. You can simply dedicate ten minutes of your day to just clearing your head and thinking about your breathing. It sounds too simple to be true, but it’s surprisingly effective at relaxing one’s mind and reducing stress.
Practice prevention
What would you say is the single best way to improve your health? Is it eating well? Some would say nutrition is the best way to regulate the health of your body. Could it be exercise? Perhaps it’s staying hydrated and regularly paying visits to the doctor. All of these examples are valid choices, but there’s one that goes above them all – prevention.
It’s important to practice prevention in every aspect of your health, whether it’s physical or mental. When you take measures to improve your health, start by rooting out the habits that are deteriorating it first. This means taking active precautions as you work on your health. You can find preventive measures in all of these examples, and the ones mentioned above. The best way to make the process easier is to prevent your health from getting worse in the first place.
Make sure you start scheduling your wellness checks. Even if you don’t have a major problem, visiting the doctor shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. Any small issue could balloon into something worse if not treated right, so make sure you stay up to the task. It’s going to save you a lot of time and pain down the road.
Conclusion
Improving your health is a challenge. Like many other challenges in life, it’s surmountable with the right knowledge and proper mindset. If you’re aiming to make changes in your life, living healthier is the way to go. Using the above examples, you can start switching up your habits and making things easier on yourself. The best time to start is today, and there’s nothing you can lose from trying your best, so keep that in mind.
