Many factors can lead someone into living a healthy lifestyle. It could be for weight gain or weight loss purposes or just maintaining good body health. Regardless of the goal, pursuing healthy eating habits remains beneficial to oneself no matter the situation. Keeping up with a healthy lifestyle requires discipline, commitment and determination. Consistency is key for there to be recognizable results.
Why Healthy Eating Is Important?
Eating healthy boasts of several advantages to the body and mind as well. The intake of a balanced diet with all necessary vitamins and minerals keeps the body safe from many diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes among others. It also develops the body into a better version of itself by strengthening its bones’, and removal of toxins from the body, and has also been linked with mood-boosting.
Benefits Of Healthy Eating
1. Better Gut Health
The intestines are riddled with bacteria that help break down complex food in the alimentary canal. A good balance of probiotics and prebiotic microorganisms aid in maintaining good health along with the digestive system.
2. Good Heart Health
A good diet and healthy eating habits will keep your heart healthy and strong. Obesity can cause fat to accumulate around the heart leading to life-threatening complications.
3. Improved Memory Retention
Foods like fish contain fatty acids like Omega-3 which are directly linked to better memory and cognitive function.
4. Keeps Weight In Check
Good eating habits won’t allow your body to get out of shape whether it’s drastically gaining or losing weight. Each can have detrimental effects especially if it is to the extreme. Eating healthy food paired with practising healthy eating habits will always keep your weight in check.
5. Lowers Risk Of Cancer
Being a lifestyle disease, cancer can be kept at bay by altering certain aspects of a person’s lifestyle. Eating a balanced diet with all the right vitamins and minerals can help in hindering the development of this disease.
9 Tips For Healthy Eating
Drink Water
In anything, you do always hydrate. Hydration is key to the body and is beneficial not only to the internal organs but to the skin as well.
Water helps in digestion as it aids in breaking down the food ingested. Water is also specifically important in keeping brain function at an optimum level.
This is because the brain is made up of 75% water and the whole body itself is made up of 70% of water.
This just goes to show how vital water is to the body.
Portion Sizes
Keeping an eye on the size of portions of food you serve is an important habit you should learn if you want to keep up with a healthy lifestyle. Servings of food should be meaningful and goal-oriented depending on one’s preferences. This solely depends on a person’s weight goals whether he/she wants to gain or lose weight.
Maintaining portion sizes is a good way to curb overeating and stuffing yourself with excess calories.
A great mental trick you can use is to serve on smaller plates to trick yourself into thinking the portions are as they should be.
Don’t Skip Meals
Contrary to normal opinion, skipping meals can make you add weight instead of losing it. This happens because, without food, the body slows down metabolism so as not to burn through all the food reserves. This in turn drops blood sugar due to a lack of food in the system.
Do not allow yourself to starve intentionally or unintentionally. However busy your schedule is, always find time to eat even if it is snacking.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and a well-balanced meal can keep you feeling satisfied for hours on end.
Add Fiber
Adding dietary fibre to your meal has numerous upsides. First of all, it lowers cholesterol levels, it helps in weight management and blood sugar regulation. Fibre fills the stomach and so you get to eat less overall but still feel famished.
Fibre also helps in digestion and is one of the additives that are most overlooked.
Add Fruits And Vegetables
A great addition to the diet is fruits and vegetables. They are a great source of vitamins, minerals, and fibre. Fruits and vegetables reduce the risk of getting diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease as well as reduce obesity and lower cholesterol.
Switch Up The Menu
A great way to keep things interesting and avoid monotony is to switch up the menu. Eating the same food over and over gets pretty boring and from a health point of view, it doesn’t do much either. This is because you keep on getting the same old nutrients neglecting the rest. Broaden your horizons and get creative in the kitchen.
Cook More
A good way to better understand what you eat is by cooking it yourself. You can tailor your meal to a specific weight goal and portion it how best it suits you.
You get to be in complete control over the ingredients and don’t have to question anybody.
Get Enough Sleep
As bizarre as it sounds sleep and nutrition are linked by the body’s hormones leptin ghrelin and cortisol. Leptin is the hormone that helps in suppressing hunger while ghrelin stimulates appetite.
Inadequate sleep inhibits the production of the hormone leptin and promotes ghrelin.
Good sleep or 7-9 hours daily prevent the buildup of cortisol. This can lead to a gain in weight, insulin resistance, and a sugar craving.
Reduce Fat Intake
It would also do you good if you could reduce the intake of saturated fats as well as reduce the daily intake of sodium or table salt.
Vegetable oils are a better alternative to solid fats when it comes to cooking.
The benefits of living a healthy lifestyle cannot be understated. Although it requires a lot of self-discipline it is achievable and the thrill of witnessing good results will make it all worthwhile.
Disclaimer- All the information shared in this article is for informational purposes. Please consult a medical practitioner before making any dietary changes.
