Living a healthy lifestyle starts with good and positive habits developed over time. That’s why here at JoyFresh, we believe living a healthy lifestyle is the requisite of joyfulness and long life. This means that your habits determine how well you live your life. Thus, good and healthy habits can lead to a transformative change in your life.
We understand how difficult it can be to break bad habits. Most people are too busy, and come up with different excuses while it’s just easy for some to live with unhealthy habits. You can learn healthy habits the same way you learned the unhealthy ones, through practice and taking control of your consistent actions.
Thus, these healthy lifestyle habits will help you live an improved, joyful and transformed life. Do these every day, and you will see a change in your life.
Get quality sleep every day
Most busy people overlook sleep or sometimes find it difficult to sleep due to the schedule. However, sleep is very important to your health. It helps your muscles to recover after a long busy day. Thus, you should try to get seven to eight hours of quality sleep every day.
Have a consistent sleep cycle — sleep and wake up at the same time daily. During weekends, ensure that the difference in your sleep cycle should not be more than one hour. This routine reinforces your body’s sleep-wake cycle and helps you stay healthy.
Have a morning stretch
When you wake up in the morning, always remember to stretch out your muscles. When you stretch at the start of your day, it gets your blood flowing, improves your flexibility, and boosts your energy all through the day.
Eat healthy breakfast
It’s good to start your day with a healthy breakfast to keep you energized throughout the day. Eating a healthy breakfast helps in boosting your brainpower and improving your memory — this will help you overcome and slay those morning meetings. Check out some healthy breakfast ideas.
Be active
You should incorporate physical activity into your schedule every day. It’s quite easy to live a sedentary lifestyle when you are a busy business person. You can sit at your desk for hours without standing up or moving your body. This can increase your risk for certain types of diseases. While working in the office, you should get up and move around.
If you don’t have time to visit the gym for some exercise or workout, there are also several other ways to move your body. You can take a 10-minute walk every day, take a walk while talking on the phone at work, or do some stretching exercises while sitting. You can also go for a walk during your lunch breaks, and take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Drink more water
It’s quite important to stay hydrated always. It keeps your temperature normal, gets rids of wastes from your body through sweat, urine, and bowel movements. Thus, it’s recommended to drink about two liters of water during the day. If you like, you can add mint, cucumber, and lemon to your water for some flavor. You can also drink fruit juices, mineral water, or sparkling water from time to time.
Cut down on sugar
While sugar has a sweet taste, it should be enjoyed in moderation. You can go for fruits instead of sugary drinks. Too much sugar can cause havoc in the body such as high blood pressure, weight gain, fatty liver disease, and diabetes. Try to avoid sugar-sweetened drinks and focus on eating whole foods.
Eat more vegetables and fruits
Vegetables and fruits are a good source of minerals and vitamins, which are important for your health. Thus, you should add plenty of vegetables to your meal regularly. They are low in fat and calories and have lots of fiber that can boost your gut health. For every meal, try to fill your plate with a variety of vegetables, and have some fruits as healthy desserts.
Eat a balanced meal regularly.
Don’t skip meals. Don’t forget to eat. When you skip your meals, it can lead to overeating. Eat regularly, enjoy food varieties in the right amounts so that you don’t overeat. Avoid consuming too many calories. If you want to eat snacks, make sure it’s between your meals. Don’t replace proper meals with snacks.
Avoid eating too many carbohydrates. Replace carbs with protein foods. Swap the rice, bread, pasta, cereal (carbs) in your diet with meat, beans, fish, and eggs (protein). According to Dr. Hauser of Harvard Health, “Protein takes more energy for you to digest than refined carbohydrates, and also gives you a body a feeling of satiety.” Don’t forget to eat lots of fruits and vegetables as we explained above.
Meditate more
Practicing meditation is one of the healthy lifestyle habits you should develop. If you want to feel more focused, less stressed, and less reactive, you should meditate regularly. Apart from transforming your perspective on life, it helps increase your self-awareness, reduce negative emotions and develop a positive mindset. Meditation also helps to increase your creativity, tolerance ad patience. You should practice meditation more!
Practice self-care
Finally, take good care of yourself. Even though we live in a fast-paced world, do not neglect your own needs. Take a break, unplug and relax, pamper yourself, hang out with your friends and be happy. Living a balanced and healthy lifestyle requires you to take control of every aspect of your life. Make self-care one of the healthy lifestyle habits that you practice every day. Develop a self-care plan to follow weekly. It can help enhance your emotional, mental, and physical health, and wellbeing.
Hey Joyfreshers, what are the healthy lifestyle habits you can’t do without? Do you find it difficult maintaining a healthy lifestyle? Let’s discuss below.