Simple Hacks For A Healthier Life
A healthy lifestyle can make you feel more energetic, allow you to enjoy a more positive outlook, and reduce daily stress – but it requires a long-term commitment. Living healthily isn’t just about eating right for a few days to negate a weekend of gluttony or get over a bout of stomach flu, it’s about making the right changes to your life to keep you happy and healthy in the long run.
However, living a healthier lifestyle doesn’t necessarily have to be hard work. There are lifestyle changes you can make that will provide long-term health benefits – it just takes a bit of motivation to stick with it and start building good habits.
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Enjoy your coffee black
This well-loved morning pick-me-up actually provides you with a ton of important health benefits. But often, these are negated by the addition of cream and sugar. These seemingly small extras fill this healthy drink with unnecessary calories and make it a much less healthy option.
If you can learn to drink your coffee black, you’ll increase your fibre intake, protect against degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, lower your risk of diabetes and heart disease, and even improve your mood. Also, coffee helps jumpstart your metabolism and digestive system, which is a great way to give your body a morning wake-up call.
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Drink more water
Water makes up about 60% of your body, and is required for many functions including digestion, circulation, transportation of nutrients. It also maintains your body temperature and keeps skin looking, and feeling, great.
Drink a full glass of water before each meal, and eat more fruits and vegetables to benefit from their high water content. Keep water with you at all times, and enjoy the feeling of proper hydration.
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Find opportunities to be active
Increasing your level of activity doesn’t have to mean getting a gym membership and spending hours on the treadmill. There are ways to incorporate additional activity throughout the day. Take the stairs instead of the lift, park further away from work, and get up from your desk every half hour to stretch your legs. Maybe even schedule meetings outside, and talk while you walk.
These small behaviours will make a huge difference in your overall health, and make you more motivated to get out and exercise more often. Until you can make it a habit, set some reminders on your phone to get up and move around a bit throughout the day. Before too long, you’ll be doing it without even thinking.
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Buy a plant
Plants are a great way to remove indoor air pollutants, thus improving health with virtually no effort on your part. They can provide both physiological and psychological health benefits by improving mood, increasing the humidity, and reducing airborne dust and CO2 levels.
Not only that, they look great! Find plants that are relatively low maintenance and keep one at your desk at work, as well as several throughout your home.
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Practice stress reduction techniques
Whether you like to do yoga, enjoy meditation, or indulge in a regular massage, reducing stress levels can make a huge impact on overall health. Stress doesn’t just make you feel terrible, it can actually exacerbate almost any health condition you could think of – obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, gastrointestinal issues, asthma, heart disease, and diabetes.
Fortunately, it’s easy to lower these risks by finding ways to manage your stress in a healthy, productive way. Try a number of techniques until you find one that works for you. Then make it part of your daily routine to keep your cortisol levels down.
Of course, these aren’t the only ways we can improve achieve a healthier lifestyle. There are tons of other things you can do to switch up your lifestyle to benefit your health – both physically and mentally. The key thing to remember is to make them a part of your routine, so it’s easy to maintain the changes and see the health benefits!
- This article was written by Nina Wells from Steam Shower Store. Nina been writing on health-related topics for more than ten years.
