Advice for Healthy Living in 2006
Anna Fleet

With the New Year now upon us, it’s important to give pause and
consider making some positive changes regarding the state of
your health. As they say, there’s no time like the present.
People the world over often make resolutions to do something to
better themselves in the coming year. In 2006, consider doing
something that will benefit your overall health. The following
suggestions may just help to ensure that you’re able to make New
Year’s resolutions for many years to come.

Get a Check-up – An excellent place to start when
considering lifestyle changes is with an honest assessment of
your health. At this stage, it wouldn’t hurt to consult with
your physician. Why not make an appointment for your annual
physical exam? This way, you can begin the year with an accurate
assessment of your physical state. Your doctor will be able to
focus your attention on areas that are of immediate health
concern. This is especially important if you’re a smoker, if
you’re overweight, or if you have any significant health issues
that might prevent you from performing simple daily tasks.

Drink More Water – Make another profound difference to
your health by consuming more water. Many people make the
mistake of assuming that they’ve received enough water from the
various pop, coffee and other beverages they’ve consumed in a
day. This is not entirely accurate. Ideally, one should consume
upwards of eight, 8-ounce glasses of water per day. Water helps
the body metabolize stored fats. It can also help your body
cleanse itself of free radicals, which have been linked to
cancer and other such ailments.

Get Moving – Exercise is yet another effective way to
maintain optimal health. That’s not to say that one has to
become entirely committed to working out each and every day, but
it’s in every individual’s best interest to perform some form of
activity 3 times per week. Physical exercise can be performed in
a wide variety of ways to keep it fun and interesting. For
instance, the simple act of walking is a highly effective form
of exercise. It’s one that can be completed without supervision,
without props, and without any previous experience working out.
Joining a gym has a number of direct benefits as well. Not only
will you have access to some excellent equipment, but you will
also benefit greatly from the fitness knowledge that most
personal trainers possess.

Pay Attention to Nutrition – Diet also plays a
significant role is one’s overall health. Everyone should be
familiar with the dietary guidelines established by the leading
health agencies and authorities. The “food pyramid” is by far
the most popular set of published nutritional guidelines. The
food pyramid advises people to include all of the major food
groups – grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy and meat (or protein)
– in their diets. Keep in mind that the food pyramid is merely a
nutritional guideline. The dietary needs of each individual will
vary drastically, and what’s ideal for one person isn’t
necessarily ideal for the next.

By following these few simple suggestions, you can take control
of your health and your life in 2006. Good luck!

About the author:

Anna Fleet is a certified personal trainer. When she is not
working out or helping others achieve optimal health, she is the
face and voice behind www.fitnessgear101.com – an excellent
online resource for information about Fitness Gear
Information, Aerobics
Equipment, and Workout Routines.

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Maybe you feel as though you are already at a level of optimum health, and the last thing you’re worried about is a healthy eating plan. Or maybe you’re able to eat anything without any apparent problems. While there is a chance that you just so happen to eat all of the right foods, it’s not very likely. The more likely scenario is that you’re healthy now, but eating better could help reduce your risk of a lot of ailments later on in life.

But, if you are like most people, you may already be feeling a bit unhealthy, at least in some areas. This could be the result of heredity, but a lot of health problems can be eliminated or prevented by eating the right foods.

Regardless of which type of person you are, a healthy eating plan is a good idea. If you’re healthy, then it will help to prolong your good health. If you’re not as healthy as you could be, then it will help improve how you feel. In other words, there’s no good reason to avoid eating healthy.

To be fair, a lot of us will make what we think are better food choices when we eat. Of course there are also some of us who don’t think about the food we at all. But, the fact that you are reading this right now shows that you are now giving more thought to eating better. How easy it is will depend on what your current habits are like and how motivated you are to improving your health.

The first step of a healthy eating plan is to be aware of what you’re putting into your mouth. That means you need to be conscious of what you’re eating, as opposed to stuffing your face mindlessly. It also means that you need to know what’s in the food you’re eating. Just knowing this can go a long way toward eating better. For example, you may be shocked at how much fat, salt or sugar are in some of your favorite foods. It’s easy to eat too much of these things when you don’t know how much is in your food.

So, your first step is to learn about the nutritional content of the foods you eat. You are probably going to have a wake-up call, but that’s okay. Don’t feel bad about the food you were eating; feel good about the healthier food you will be eating. You won’t be able to turn back the clock in a literal sense, but you can do a lot to reset the clock and have a healthier future.

A healthy eating plan will also help you to stay at a healthy weight. This is good because obesity is a major health problem and is a serious risk factor for a large number of diseases. Not only will eating better make you more healthy overall, but if you are overweight, it will also reduce your chances of getting any diseases associated with obesity (assuming you lose weight).

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Are you overweight? Have a problem with high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease? Are you worried about getting cancer or other ailments? Do you wish you could just feel better? If so, then you need to make a healthy eating program a part of your daily life.

It all starts with knowing how your body works, and how it reacts to various types of foods. Some foods drain you and can make you sick, others have no real effect, and still others will improve your overall health. It’s this last category that you will want to focus on as you start your own healthy eating program.

The next thing you need to consider is what your health goals are. After all, if you’re not interested in losing weight, then it wouldn’t make sense to start a plan that’s all about shedding pounds. However, you could still look into it and then use the parts of the diet that fit in with your particular goals. See, when you start looking at the bigger picture, you won’t feel as though you have to try every new eating plan that comes out. At the same time though, you will be able to incorporate good ideas from any plan and make them a part of your program.

One of the keys to look for in a healthy eating program is balance. Any diet that has you eat too much of certain foods, or too little of others is usually not a smart choice. The first reason why such plans don’t make sense is that they won’t give you all of the nutrition you need. There are some vital nutrients that can only be found in certain foods, and if those foods are eliminated (or drastically reduced), then you could harm your health in the long run. The second reason is that you will most likely start to crave the “forbidden” foods. Now, willpower can be a wonderful thing, but it can only carry you so far. You will eventually give in to your temptations, and you’ll be worse off than before.

Some general guidelines to follow are to eat whole foods, or foods that are as close to their natural source as possible. Good choices for most people include whole grains, lean protein, healthy fats, and fruits and vegetables. Avoid over-processed foods. Try to eat a wide variety of foods so you have a more complete nutrition profile. Pay attention to the food you eat and remember that food matters.

You don’t have to follow a healthy eating program that was created by somebody else. The truth is that you can make your own plan and do just fine. The catch is that it may take some time to figure everything out and a lot of the available information on food can be confusing. For those reasons, a lot of people will look for programs that cover most of what they’re looking for; as a sort of shortcut to good health. This is actually a good idea, at least to get you started.

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There are a lot of things people can do to improve their general state of wellness. Perhaps the most important of these is healthy eating. If you have ever paid attention to experts when they talk about getting healthy, you will notice that there are two things that always seem to come up: diet and exercise. There is no question that what you choose to eat plays a major role in healthy you are.

All kinds of analogies are used when talking about the human body, but one of the most fitting for our purposes has to be comparing the body to cars. There are cars that are fairly new, but their owners don’t take care of them, so they start running poorly long before they should. Then there are the cars that are decades old and still run like new. This is rarely due to luck. Instead it’s all about how the owner takes care of their car.

We can continue this analogy a bit further. The kind of fuel you put into your car makes all the difference. Sure, an economy model may be able to run on any brand of gasoline, but a fine-tuned sports car requires premium. All cars require regular maintenance as well. However, this analogy can only go so far, and there is one huge difference between the two. You can always trade in a car for a newer model, but you only get one body. Yet, too many people take much better care of their cars than themselves. Healthy eating is like putting the right kind of fuel in a car, but a car that you can never trade in.

Now, there are a lot of diets out there that promise to do this or that. Some claim that they can get you to lose weight the easy way, others are meant to prevent cancer, lower your cholesterol, or reduce the risk of various ailments. The truth is that some of them really do work for some people. But there are so many bad diets out there that it can be hard to figure out which ones are worth trying. You can actually try most diets, but there’s a catch. You need to know what counts as healthy eating first, then only use those parts of the diet that will be good for you.

Choices are what it’s all about. Let’s face it, most of us already have a pretty good idea about which foods we should eat and which ones we should avoid. For example, if you have a choice between eating a large chocolate doughnut and a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast; you would most likely agree that the oatmeal was healthier. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat a doughnut, not at all. But if you do, you should think of it as an occasional snack, and not a nutritious breakfast. And that’s only one example. Just being aware of the choices you make is an excellent start to eating right.

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