Living a healthy lifestyle comes with a fair share of sacrifices and restrictions. Of course, it also requires you to put in a lot of effort in staying healthy and fit as you age. After all, no one on this planet gets younger each day.
Staying healthy is more than a diet. In fact, having a healthy diet is not even half of living a healthy lifestyle. You must also do regular physical exercises and avoid vices such as smoking, drinking alcohol, doing drugs, and more. Healthy aging also involves having adequate sleep and taking care of your skin. Indeed, it’s no easy task.
But however hard staying healthy is, no one will benefit more from it than you do. And we assure you, as you age, your body will thank you for all the good choices you did to maintain your health.Â
Not convinced yet? Well, here are the benefits you can get when you live a healthy lifestyle.
Healthy Aging: Benefits You Gain From A Healthy Lifestyle
1. Physical Endurance
A healthy lifestyle involves a lot of physical activities and flexibility exercises that increase your endurance. When you exercise regularly, your body will get used to doing physical activities.
Fitness experts from Leaps and Rebounds state that a thousand steps of stairs that you might not be able to endure before will be quite easy if you have adequate physical activities regularly. The triathlon that you found hard to finish in the past will also be a lot easier to manage with continuous exercise.
2. Preventive Measure for Health Issues and Diseases
Staying healthy also means that your overall physical health will benefit. A healthy lifestyle allows you to have less risk of numerous diseases caused by poor eating habits such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and fatty liver. Moving around and having regular exercises also allows your muscles and joints to stay healthy.
3.Improved Mood and Mental Health
The 100 million neurons in the gut are in charge of secreting important hormones that could heavily affect our mood and emotions. When you eat healthily and take care of the health of your gut, there are increased chances that it would send signals to your brain to release feel-good hormones.
Aside from that, regular physical exercises can also get you in a better mood. This is because it also signals our brain to release these feel-good hormones.Â
4. Being Naturally Energized
When the body is constantly exposed to bad meals, pollutants, and long-term stress, it is physiologically impossible for it to have ideal energy. Each of these causes the body to react unfavorably, impeding its capacity to maintain energy levels over time.
Another part of a healthy lifestyle is getting adequate sleep. Experts state that having anything between 7 to 9 hours of sleep can do wonders for your mental health, bodily functions, and as well as your skin. Give the body what it needs and you’ll notice a significant change in your level of energy throughout the day.
Being well-rested automatically boosts your mood and gives you enough energy to last for the day. Sleep fuels your body for the next day, thus, it should not be cut short. However, it is important to note that too much sleep is not good as well.
5. Increased Chances of Living a Longer Life
Healthy habits can significantly lengthen your lifespan based on a massive study conducted by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In this study, it is shown that people who follow a specific set of criteria live longer compared to those who don’t. The said criterion used in this study are as follows:
- Keeps a healthy diet
- Does regular exercise
- Never smokes
- Drinks occasionally
- Maintains a healthy body weight
According to the data gathered in the study, people who met the criteria for all five habits lived noticeably longer lives. In fact, it is longer by 14 years for women and 12 years for males for participants who started the practice at age 50. Note that none of these behaviors significantly increased the risk of dying young from cancer or cardiovascular disease.
6. Save Money in the Long Run
Living a healthy lifestyle includes eating nutrient-dense foods that will make you feel full and nourished. A popular method for accomplishing this is to prepare your meals at home using ingredients you already own. You can save money by cooking for yourself and avoiding eating out as much.
Furthermore, since you are taking care of your physical and mental health, serious diseases and mental health illnesses could be avoided, saving you tons of doctor visits and fees.
Developing Healthy Habits: Where to Start?
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Do Not Rush
A healthy lifestyle isn’t something that you should rush. Trust the process and start gradually, one baby step at a time.
For instance, do not force yourself to cut your calories in half immediately. If you do it this way, you’ll starve and it’s not healthy. What you have to do is gradually decrease your current calorie intake until it comes to a point where your body is well-adjusted to the changes. Do it until you reach your daily calorie goal.
The same goes for exercising. Refrain from forcing yourself to do a full set on the first go. You have to introduce physical activities to your body until it becomes accustomed to them.
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Create a Routine You Can Stick To
Creating a meal and exercise plan is a fun thing to do but a hard thing to execute. Thus, when you decided to live a healthy lifestyle, it is important to consider your wants.
For instance, if there are meat and vegetables that you hate, then do not force yourself to eat them. Do not incorporate them into your diet at all. Eating healthy does not equate to eating food that doesn’t make you happy. If you do that, you will only have a hard time sticking to your diet.
The same thing goes for exercises. If you have an exercise you hate, then do not incorporate it into your routine. Instead, find an alternative that you’ll enjoy doing. If squats are not your thing, you could still get that full-body workout with a fitness trampoline.Â
Conclusion
All great things come with a cost and staying healthy isn’t something that you can do without hard work and perseverance. Although it is a hard thing to do at the beginning, healthy aging is something you’d be thankful for in the long run.
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