5 Lifestyle Changes To Promote Good Health
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If you’re on a journey to bettering your health, simple lifestyle changes can help you live longer and feel your best. With behavior modifications, you can start to experience positive changes in your life. Whether you want to lose weight, get healthy, or improve your overall health and wellness, sometimes all it takes is a small change in your life.
While you can always make major changes simultaneously, lifestyle changes are all about sustainability. If you aren’t able to sustain new habits, you won’t be able to get all of the rewards. Instead of trying to do everything at once, consider changing your habits slowly and seeing how you feel. Here are lifestyle changes to promote good health.
Healthy Lifestyle Changes to Consider
1. Move Your Body More Often
A lot of us work desk jobs that make it difficult to get exercise. However, exercise is one of the best ways you can improve your mental and physical health. Believe it or not, moving more throughout the day can be more beneficial than exercising because it puts your body in continuous motion, which can help you lose weight, improve joint health, and make you feel better and more energized. Moving more can also help you reduce stress and promote an overall sense of well-being.
If you live a sedentary lifestyle, you can find different ways to move more throughout the day. For example, you can go on a walk during your lunch break or set an alarm to do stretches every few hours. Making conscious choices to benefit your health over time will help you reach your health goals. Once you find yourself moving more and engaging in more physical activity, you might feel more motivated to start working out.
2. Eat Well
Eating healthy foods can also improve your overall health and wellness. Junk food and fast food can make you feel sluggish in the afternoon when you should be productive. Meanwhile, healthy food can help you stay energized throughout the day without feeling too full so you can continue to stay active while getting work done.
Unfortunately, many people choose the easy route when looking for something to eat. Instead of spending a few minutes a day preparing a healthy meal, many office workers would rather grab something from the vending machine or go out to lunch on their lunch break. As you already know, eating junk food or overly oily foods can lead to afternoon fatigue and weight gain, and it can prevent you from moving more.
If you’re someone who prefers quick and easy meals instead of spending too much time cooking each day, you can begin meal planning. For example, on Sunday, you’ll plan your food for the week and freeze it so you always have a meal waiting for you to heat up instead of reaching for the most convenient and often unhealthy options.
Remember, you should also be eating a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables each day. You can add more healthy food to your meals by making your plates more colorful with carrots or leafy greens. Additionally, you can eat fruits and vegetables in place of unhealthy snacks to prevent afternoon binging.
3. Start Managing Stress
Everyone has stress in their life, but how people manage their stress can go a long way to ensuring optimal physical and mental health. As you already know, stress increases your cortisol levels, which can lead to weight gain and have negative effects on your health and wellness.
For example, stress can make health conditions, such as an essential tremor worse, leading to a cycle of increased stress due to illness and illness due to increased stress. Prolonged stress can lead to burnout at work and fatigue you can’t seem to shake off. On the other hand, managing your stress can help you stay calm when you’re under pressure and prevent burnout.
Some people may have a more difficult time managing stress than others, depending on their jobs or personal lives. However, everyone can benefit from learning stress management techniques and taking care of themselves to ensure they’re not directly or indirectly making the stress worse. For example, it’s important to get enough quality sleep every night to help you manage stress. When you’re feeling drained, stressful situations can have more of an impact on your mental health. Additionally, staying active can help increase mood-boosting hormone production to help you feel better.
It’s also important to provide yourself with a healthy work-life balance. If you’re someone who brings work home with you, try to set boundaries that allow you to spend time doing activities that help you relax and keep you happy.
4. Get Better Sleep
As we’ve just mentioned, getting enough sleep is important for reducing stress and the effects of stress on the body. However, far too few people get enough sleep every night. Many people have busy work and personal lives that prevent them from getting their full seven to nine hours of sleep, which increases fatigue and can make it difficult to focus.
If you have difficulty sleeping, consider your environment. If you have a bright light outside of your window or your mattress is uncomfortable, it can be difficult for your body and mind to wind down at night. You may have to buy a new mattress or black-out shades to help you fall asleep and stay asleep.
Additionally, you can get better sleep by turning off your devices. It’s never a good idea to fall asleep in front of the television or check your social media feeds too close to bedtime. Looking at blue light emitted from devices can disrupt your sleep cycle by tricking your brain into believing that it’s daytime when it’s not.
5. Quit Unhealthy Habits
If you have unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking, or stress eating, it’s time to quit. Unhealthy habits typically arise due to stress, but they can also cause stress. For example, someone might eat junk food when they’re stressed but then become stressed because they’ve gained weight due to their unhealthy habit.
Quitting unhealthy habits is easier said than done, but once you’re able to quit the habits preventing you from living your healthiest life, you can start to be mindful.
Changing Lifestyle Habits
Changing your lifestyle habits can be difficult, especially if you’ve acclimated to an unhealthy routine. The best way to change your habits is by making one small change at a time. For example, you can become more active by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and you can eat better by packing your lunch every day. Once you’ve mastered one new habit, you can start making small adjustments throughout your life.
Changing Your Habits for Better Health
7 Small Lifestyle Changes with Big Health Benefits
UC San Diego School Of Medicine: 10 Ways to Make Lifestyle Changes Easy
