How to be healthier

By SilentWriter, 17th Jun 2010 | Follow this author | RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/1hw2fb7r/
Posted in Wikinut>Health>General Health>Wellness

If you need some tips about how to be healthier, look no further!

How to become more healthy

Smile!

This may sound a little odd, but if we smile, we feel happy. It has been proven in studies that happier people live longer and suffer from less illnesses, so if we spend less time frowning and more time smiling and laughing, we might be able to make ourselves healthier people! You could also trying telling your friends some jokes when you’re with them if you feel that they need a boost, as laughter is infectious, and if you cheer someone else up, chances are it’ll leave you smiling too!

Drink more water

Most of the population do not drink the recommended 8 glasses of water per day. The thing is, you don’t have to just sit there and drink straight water. It counts if you have a cup of tea or coffee in the morning, and it counts if you have cordial juice with your meals. It is likely that you have around 5 glasses of water per day without even realising it, so simply changing your attitude towards it may help. 8 glasses of water is approximately 2 litres. If you buy a 2 litre bottle of water to keep in your fridge (you can refill it every night with tap water, no need to buy new bottles for every day.. perhaps just replace them once per week.) it is a lot easier to see where you’re upto. Use this water to make your tea and your cordial, and you will find that it probably goes down a lot faster than you think! If you work, take a bottle of water with you at all times, and take little sips. You would be surprised just how much water you can drink during the day without thinking about it. I can often have anything up to 12 glasses, whereas in the past I hardly had anything.

Exercise

If you tell anyone that you want to become healthier, they will no doubt tell you to exercise. But what about for those people who just don’t have the time? You need to build exercise into your day, and you will soon realise that it isn’t as hard as it may seem. For example:

*Get off the bus a stop early, meaning that you have to walk a little further to get home.

*Make small journeys by foot that you might have travelled by car to in the past.

*Do 10 sit ups each morning, before you leave your bed. It will only take a couple of seconds, but will boost your energy levels for the whole day.

*Do you get breaks at work? Don’t just sit at your desk and surf the internet, go for a walk around the building, and say hello to your friends in other departments. This 10 minutes per day will have a great effect on your health in the long term.

*Have yourself an ”exercise room”, where you have to perform certain rituals each time you enter it. It could be, for example, your kitchen. Everytime you go in there, you should do ten starjumps. It’s upto you what you do, and which room, but anything that you didn’t do before is bound to have a positive effect on your health.

*Do you do a lot of shopping on the internet? If you have the time to, try to replace this with going around the shops yourself. This burns calories, and you won’t even feel it because you’re having fun at the same time!

*Buy a pedometer. You’re supposed to do 10,000 steps per day, so if you have one of these, you will be able to see just how close you are to that target. Most people do nowhere near that, as they are too busy. This being said, pedometers are a great incentive. Some people find themselves going up and down the stairs a few more times than they would normally just to improve their score, or maybe walking round the block to see how many steps they take by doing it.

Eat more healthily

By this, I don’t mean that you have to cut down, or rule out all chocolate. There are certain things that you can do to reduce your calorie intake without even noticing a difference.

If you can, look at the labels when you’re buying your food. You should always go for low calorie options if they are available. A lot of these taste the same as the normal options, but contain much less energy, meaning you’re less likely to gain weight by eating them. You might also find that different brands contain different calories because of the way the foods have been prepared or because of the ingredients, so it might be worth checking this out. Even if you only save 100 calories per day, it adds up to a fair amount by the end of the month, which could be the difference between you gaining weight and losing weight!

If you eat white bread, switch to brown bread. If you use sugar, use sweetner products with less calories. By making these substitutions, you’re already making your diet a lot healthier without even having to change the amount that you’re eating.

Eat more slowly. If you don’t eat as fast, you will be able to notice when you feel full sooner than if you eat more quickly. This might mean that you leave some of the food that you would have eaten in the past, making you consume less calories and therefore become less likely to gain weight.

De-Stress

It is common knowledge that stress is bad for you, and, with today’s hectic lifestyle, more people are becoming stressed now than ever before. Because of this, it is important for you to prevent yourself from being stressed or at least know how to deal with it when you are.

You should make one hour for yourself everyday where you have the time just to relax and do what you like. If you can have a bath whilst reading a book or listening to some music, this is the perfect way, particularly before you go to sleep. If not, then even just lying on your bed in the quiet can be just as beneficial. This time to yourself enables you to cope a little better with life and anything that it might throw at you. If you are less stressed, you will be able to be healthier in the long term.