How Can You Live A Healthier Lifestyle And Live Longer?

7 Simple Ways To Live A Healthier Lifestyle

The term healthy lifestyle gets bandied around quite a bit nowadays, but what does it really mean? Different sources have different meanings for the term, but generally, it can be boiled down to “How we should live if we want to get the healthiest body we can – one that looks and feels good.”

But if you survey people on the street and ask them how should you live a  healthier lifestyle, most will answer with eating a healthy diet and getting enough exercise. And while those are two important components, it can (and should) be much more than that.

How Can You Live A Healthier Lifestyle And Live Longer?

1. Eat a Healthy Diet

Fact: 1 in 3 Americans are overweight; 40% of them are classified as obese. In general, people in developed countries are eating too much unhealthy food. Their pear and apple body shapes visibly show they are not eating a healthy diet. But just what is a “healthy” diet?

It’s one that starts with adding more fresh fruits and vegetables to your diet each day. By doing so, you’re also adding fiber to your diet which has been shown to slow down the digestion process and keeps you feeling fuller longer. This in turn reduces the urge to snack between meals on unhealthy foods and reduces the number of calories consumed per day. Also, many vegetables are very low in calories.

Other aspects of a healthy diet include reducing the amount of salt and sugar found in most processed foods. If it comes in a package or you buy it already prepared, it most likely isn’t good for you. Instead, focus on adding more lean meat, fish and whole grain to your diet.

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2. Getting Enough Exercise

Most people view exercise as a way to live a healthier lifestyle, burn calories and lose weight. While exercise does burn calories,  80% of the weight loss will be from the type and quantity of food consumed and 20% will be from exercising.

Exercise has more to do with building a strong body inside and out than it does with burning calories. The American Heart Association recommends getting 150 minutes of vigorous activity each week. This should be a combination of both cardio and strength training.

3. Getting Enough Quality Sleep

During the night when you’re sleeping, your body is working to repair itself along with accomplishing several other “housekeeping” activities. So, it stands to reason that if you’re not getting enough sleep, your body can’t perform all of its activities that it normally would do over the course of 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

There can be several reasons why you’re not getting enough sleep. It could be that you are overly stressed thinking about all the work you must do tomorrow. Or it could be environmental reasons, like your bedroom is too warm, too much light is shining in, your mattress is uncomfortable, there is too much noise outside, etc. Each of these can be corrected to give you more and a better night’s sleep.

4. Maintaining a Healthy Weight (for You)

You may know how much you do weigh but do you know how much you should weigh? To work it out, you need to know your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and Active Metabolic Rate (AMR).  By calculating your height, weight, age and gender, and the number of minutes you exercise each day, along with your level of exercise, you’ll know the number of calories you should be consuming each day to maintain your current weight.

To lose weight, you must reduce your recommended calorie intake by at least 500 calories per day. The best combination is to reduce your diet by 250 calories and burn 250 more calories per day through exercise. Over the course of a week, you’ll lose one pound.

5. Minimizing Sitting

The “sitting disease” is a degradation of health usually caused by sitting for hours on end. It could be from watching too much T.V, or sitting behind a desk or steering wheel of a vehicle. Symptoms can range from obesity, to an increase in blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess belly fat and high cholesterol levels. The “cure” is not with medication, but getting moving more. For each hour of sitting, get up and move for at least 5 minutes.

6. Curbing Unhealthy Habits

Eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, minimizing sitting and maintaining your weight are all well and good, but then many people sabotage their efforts by clinging to their unhealthy habits. Two of the worst are smoking and drinking alcohol to excess.

Smoking

Not only does smoking damage your lungs, but it can affect your eyesight, bones, immune system and your heart. And of course, it has been linked to lung cancer for a number of years. The bottom line is if you want to live a healthier lifestyle you must quit smoking.

Alcohol 

Too much alcohol in general isn’t good for you. Studies show it can damage the brain, heart, liver and weaken your immune system. Men should limit themselves to no more than two drinks per day and women only one drink per day.

7. Managing Stress

Stress is a normal part of life. As a matter of fact, we need some stress to survive. But when it becomes excessive over a long period of time – chronic stress – it begins to cause health problems. Everyone has to deal with some level of stress, but for many, stress can be crippling. Practicing mindfulness can’t make the source of your stress go away, but it can help you cope with it more effectively than other stress relief strategies.

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You probably already know that the way you choose to live your life has some effect on how long you’ll live. But, believe it or not, we do actually have some degree of control over our life expectancy! If you want to know exactly where you should be focusing your efforts to live a healthier lifestyle check out my free report Top 9 Things You Can Do For Your Health To Help You Live Longer. The choices you make about your lifestyle don’t mean that you and your loved ones have to live shorter lives.