“To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. " - Buddha
Healthy Living is about taking responsibility and making smart health choices for today and for the future. Eating right, getting physically fit, emotional wellness, spiritual wellness and prevention are all a part of creating a healthy lifestyle.
It's a brand new year with a chance for you to start and commit to a healthier lifestyle.
2011 is the time to…
- Exercise regularly: the benefits of being fit and staying within your recommended weight range are endless. You'll not only look and feel healthy, but your mental health will benefit too.
- Eat smaller, regular meals including breakfast.
- Detox your lifestyle: Natural, organic and eco-friendly products are all the rage at the moment - and rightly so! They'll not only help your health but help mother earth stay happy and healthy too
The Right Nutrition
Importance of Breakfast
If you're skipping breakfast to lose weight, you might want to re-think your weight management program. A satisfying breakfast can help prevent over-eating later in the day. But breakfast isn't the only meal you need to eat – lunch and dinner are also essential. This is because skipping meals tricks your body into thinking it's heading into a starvation period, causing your metabolism to slow down. When your metabolism is slower, your body burns fewer kilojoules and holds on to any fat reserves.
Eating smaller, regular meals throughout the day helps to ensure your body is burning energy efficiently (that is, converting more kilojoules into energy that you can use throughout the day), and not storing fat.
The Right Exercise
Do we really need to exercise? Sometimes even the thought of it seems hard especially after a long day at work. The truth is that you'll be a healthier person for it and not just in terms of cardiovascular fitness. As an active person, you're also less likely to develop certain diseases.
Sitting at work: a health hazard
Many of us spend many hours of our day sitting, especially when we're at work. If we're not glued to a computer screen or tethered to a phone, then we're stuck in seats around tables in meetings. And that's on top of the hours we spend sitting in cars, buses or trains getting to and from work.
There's evidence the typical office worker is sedentary for 75 per cent of their working day. From research conducted over the past decade, it's become clear this affects our body's processing of fats and sugars in ways that increase our risk of heart disease and diabetes.
The key is to avoid sitting as much as possible or at least break up your sitting time – even if only by standing, which uses more muscles than sitting:
- Standing when you use your phone (or use a cordless handset or headset so you can move around even more)
- Moving your rubbish bin/printer further away from your desk so you need to get off your chair to access them
- Taking the stairs instead of the lifts between floors
- Walking to a colleague to talk to them instead of sending an email
- Getting up to move around for few minutes or so every hour
- Doing household chores like ironing or folding the washing while watching TV
- Standing to watching children's sporting activities.
How much exercise do you need?
Even moderate exercise such as regular walking or climbing the stairs can be protective no matter how late in life you start.
One thing experts agree on is that your exercise, at the very least, has to be moderately intense and has to be regular. The National Physical Activity Guidelines for Australians recommends at a minimum 30 minutes of moderate physical activity – like walking – on most days of the week. How do you know if you're being moderately active? A good test is to see if you can talk easily while you're exercising. If you can, you are exercising at a light to moderate level. Once your breathing makes it too hard to talk, you know you've increased the intensity of your workout!
Set a goal to incorporate little changes into your lifestyle and the time to start is NOW! your body will thank you for it!
