3 Simple Ways for better health in 2012
Website DIVISIONS (Over 600 articles to help you to grow in every facet of your life)
Written by Jimmie Burroughs 
Email this article to a friend
The reason many are unhealthy is due to three things which are the opposite of the three things that create better health: obesity, lack of exercise and stress. Therefore, to experience better health it is necessary to reverse those three by the following:
- Modify your diet
- Include daily exercise
- Reduce stress
Modify your diet:
Some have the mistaken idea that you have to go on some kind of radical diet with foods that taste yucky in order to lose weight. Not so! Although those diets may work for a while to take the weight off, who wants to spend the rest of their life eating yucky, tasteless food? That is one reason fad diets hardly ever work. People will sacrifice for a while but will eventually return to their old eating habits and quickly regain all the weight lost on the fad diet.
There is a much better way: Re-train your body to appreciate healthy food. Search for healthy food that you like and develop a new lifestyle of eating right and eating the right amounts of food. This doesn’t require eliminating everything that you like. It does mean a more moderate approach. You will experience some hunger until your body becomes accustom to less food and your stomach shrinks.
The key is to add healthy food that tastes good; that includes fruit, fresh vegetables, dried beans, dark leafy greens like spinach, collard, mustard and turnip greens and certain kinds of lettuce. Below is a list of foods that you should include each week in your diet:
- Tomatoes
- Apples
- Nuts (Almonds are great)
- Fish (Salmon is great both canned and fresh)
- Eggs (But should be limited to one or two per day)
The more fresh fruit and vegetables you include, the better. Try to avoid processed food and reduce the amount of red meat to a bare minimum. The above are some of the foods I eat regularly and am able to maintain my weight and have experienced exceptional good health. I do however recommend that you consult with your doctor before starting any new diet.
Include daily exercise:
Who likes exercise? I don’t! Someone told about a cartoon they had seen that I think brings the point across well concerning exercise: This overweight fellow was talking to his doctor after an examination, and the doctor recommended that he start an exercise program; the fellow replied, “Well doc that would be fine but I just don’t have the time.” The good doctor replied, “If you don’t have time to exercise 30 minutes a day, do you have time to be dead 24 hours a day?”
A lot of people shy away from any exercise because they think it require a membership at the gym and going through all those exercise routines daily. I have done that and must say that it is very beneficial, but it is not required in order to get a sufficient amount of exercise. What is needed is a good form of aerobic exercise to keep the heart strong. Taking a good brisk 30 minute walk each day or at least every other day would be a big help. Some in home exercises like crunches; pushups etc could be added to tone specific muscles. Just as starting a new diet, you should always consult with your doctor before beginning any exercise program.
Reduce stress:
Here are three simple ways to reduce the stress in your life:
- Avoid stressful situations if possible
- Avoid stressful people when possible
- Include fun things in your life
This of course is not an exclusive list but it certainly is things high on the list for reducing stress. For more on stress, read my article “7 ways to reduce stress.”
Avoid stressful situations if possible, is the first thing to plan to do. For instance, if the 10 o’clock news stresses you, turn the TV off. There is a lot of TV that induces stress that would be best left off. Make a list of things you presently do that causes some irritation and determine how many of those thing you can drop. Of course it is impossible to eliminate all stress and it is not needful anyway; the body is able to handle stress, but it is the overload that causes real damage.
Avoid stressful people as much as you can. Everyone has those kinds in their life and sometimes it may be those that you can’t avoid, like certain people at work, but try hard to avoid those you can.
Include fun things in your life:
If you don’t have a lot of extra money in your budget, figure out some things that cost little or nothing that you enjoy doing. Fishing does cost some, but it can be within reason if you don’t have to go for a fishing boat and all the extra gear. I’m not much of a fisherman but when I do go fishing, it is just for fun. It really doesn’t matter that much what I catch and I nearly always just fish from the bank or from a pier. Where I’m spending some time now, there is a pier that goes out into the ocean about a 100 yards, and this one guy and his son, that I see rather often there, always have a good catch of rather large fish and they love to fish.
It could be a hobby that you take up. I took up playing guitar about 4 years ago and really enjoy it. I’ve learned about 15 or more chords and have memorized a couple dozen songs. It is a great distraction from the daily routine. There are many ways to have fun that cost little of nothing, but you may have to be a little creative to discover them.
Conclusion:
I hope you are able to try some of these suggestions and see if they work for you. They certainly have for me. What I’ve done has been on my own with the help of some research on the Internet, but I in no way rule out finding professional help if you want and can afford it. But taking action is necessary if you want to experience better heath. As it has been noted, “You can’t do the same things over and over and expect a different outcome.”
Ads by Google
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To subscribe to blog simply click on the RSS button on the left, and copy and paste the URL of our RSS feed into your RSS reader. ARTICLE INDEX _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ FREE Reproduction Rights – Feel free to publish this article on your website as long as the following information is included at the end of the article:
Jimmie Burroughs is the author of JimmieBurroughs.com ; get more tips on personal development: www.JimmieBurroughs.com
JimmieBurroughs.com is founded and maintained by Jimmie Burroughs Nashville, Tennessee. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ © 2011 Jimmie Burroughs. All rights reserved