“5 Lifestyle Changes to Improve Your Health” is a sponsored post and includes affiliate links. I was given product to review and all opinions are 100% mine. Please see the disclosure page for more information. Disclaimer – always verify medical information with your doctor or a professional and follow all laws for your location.
Nobody has the perfect lifestyle that fully contributes to optimal health and wellbeing – although that’s what most of us dream of. Our lifestyles can be dominated by work and life stresses that take the joy out of being alive.(Cue Debbie Downer music here.) Luckily, you can move towards a more harmonious future and better state of wellbeing by changing some of the habits below.
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Change Your Diet
What you eat can have a significant influence on your physical, emotional, and mental health. Why is this? The food you put into your body is processed by the digestive system and nutrients are sent to the places that need them. The brain uses 20% of all nutrients consumed. If you continually eat processed foods, your body and mind will not have enough valuable nutrients to work with and will store it as fat instead. Switching to a healthier diet encourages your body to crave healthier foods.
Changing your diet is easier said than done. If you are a sugar-aholic, your body literally has an addiction to sugar. From Healthline.com “Sugar affects our brain pathways just like addictive drugs, and most of us don’t realize how much we’re eating.” To change your diet you will need to combat your cravings, be aware of what and how much you are eating each day, and prepare ahead of time what you plan to eat. Just like any bad habit you will need to formulate a plan that will work for you taste and your lifestyle. Like any goal you want to reach, write it down and be specific. Then follow your plan and check yourself on your timeline to success. Don’t give up! You can do it!
Switch to Vaping
Vaping is an alternative to tobacco smoking. Instead of lighting a dirty and unhealthy cigarette, that also makes you smell bad, you can take a puff of a flavoursome e-juice. The chemical in the vape is briefly heated to create a plume of smoke. Although many people use vaping as an alternative to cigarettes, the activity is actually independent. Did you know this info from FDA.gov – “There are more than 7,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke. More than 70 of those chemicals are linked to cancer.”? There are people who have taken up vaping without having smoked. Be sure to research more about vaping to see if this is something that is right for you.
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Get More Sleep
Are you a bit of a workaholic? Do you wake up at 6 am every day to get in an hour of exercise before you start work, only to crash before it gets to 12 pm? It sounds like you’re the sort of person who isn’t getting enough sleep. In order for your system to operate optimally, you need between seven and nine hours sleep most nights. This gives your system enough time to go through its full sleep cycles and leave you fully refreshed. If you suffer from insomnia, be sure to speak with a doctor about help. If you don’t get enough sleep, it will wear you down over time and cause health issues.
Get More Movement
Everyone knows that exercising regularly is good for your health, but not many people realise that when they exercise and how often also plays an important role in its effectiveness. If you run and lift weights for an hour, it could be offset by sitting around for the rest of the day. During your workdays, make sure you’re getting enough movement in. Take the stairs instead of the lift and take a walk at lunchtime. Don’t forget to stand and stretch if you’re at a desk all day.
Practice Mindfulness & Prayer
If you find that your head is often busy with thoughts about the day or ideas about the future or the past, you might need to bring a bit of presence into your life. Mindfulness can be used at any moment. The present moment is the best time to start. Use it by bringing all your attention to what you are doing or step back from your thoughts and create a gap. For a more controlled practice, set aside some time for mindful creativity.
Prayer is also a way to calm our minds and hearts. Giving over our worries and thoughts to a higher power (for me that is the God of the Universe in traditional Christianity but you may pray to someone or something else). Knowing I am loved and there is a greater plan than I can understand or have control over sets me free from the stress of life. This is one of my favorite set of verses about worrying in the Bible from Matthew 6 –
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
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These 5 ideas for Lifestyle Changes to Improve Your Health are definitely easier said than done! I’m 44 years old and have been living my life the way I am for some years now. It’s not simple to just change how we eat, choose better alternatives to habits, make sure we exercise more and worry less. But take it one day at a time. Like Lao-Tzu said centuries ago, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.“
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