Healthy body, healthy mind
What would you be like happier and healthier?
The mind is a terrible, terrible thing to waste. So is the body. Achieve healthy mind, healthy body through living a balanced lifestyle. Work, relax, and enjoy your life in moderation. Exercise and eating healthy is essential to promote a healthy body. Keeping your mind active and thinking with occasional breaks promotes a healthy mind.
Things that help you achieve a healthy body and mind
1. Water
2. Activity
3. Vegetables
4. Rewards
5. Support
Healthy Body Healthy Mind Tips to Keep You Functioning: Simple Strategies to Live a Healthier Lifestyle
Do not start trying out too many new things suddenly; achieving a balanced lifestyle takes time and patience. Don't neglect any aspects of your life and make sure you are taking care of your basic needs, first and foremost.
Achieving healthy body healthy mind can be as simple as remembering five basic lifestyle choices. As always, this list is not comprehensive; just food for thought to get you going.
1. Drink more water
It's a pretty simple concept. Drinking water keeps you alive and it keeps you healthy. Water is beneficial for your mental and physical well-being. Don't be worried about it, but be mindful of it. It's not about drinking 2 gallons of water per day. Golden rule to live by: if you're thirsty, drink. If you're not, then don't. You may have never been a fan of preventing dehydration by forcing water down. Water is in almost everything we eat and drink. Consuming anything in excess is never healthy. Even worse: it's wasteful.
You may be terrible at hydrating yourself daily with enough water. However, you should always have a spare water bottle with you in your bag wherever you go. Being conscious about your daily water intake will do wonders for your long-term health. Having water to sip when your mouth is dry wherever you go is sufficient to replenish your organs and flush out toxins. Be prepared for the fact that there might be no water around on your route, so it's best to have it on you. Add something like apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to increase the alkalinity of your water.
The importance of water to your health
Our bodies are made up of mostly water, and require continual replacement of fluids for when we sweat during exercise. Water also flushes out all of the bad bacteria and toxins out of our health body, keeping us healthy and sick-free all year round. Our joints also need lubrication from the water so we can be flexible and have strong bones. Milk giving us strong bones is a myth; calcium is important for our bone density but it's clear liquids like water that keeps us in motion and our system healthy. Water is the natural resource that keeps us strong and healthy. What happens when you don't take advantage of the Earth's resources? The consequences are disastrous.
2. Don't stay in one place for too long
This is basically just another way of saying that you should exercise, but on broader terms. Humans are not dogs. People require activity, a lot of activity. A 20-minute walk once a day will not suffice. In case you'd like to feel comfortable in your own skin, you should be constantly moving, never staying in the same place for any longer than an hour or two at a time. If you have no choice to be somewhere for more than two hours, you require frequent short breaks to keep functioning at 100%.
If you are dedicating at least 1 hour every day for exercise, that's a good start. Constantly look to improve yourself by finding ways to be active in both your body and mind. Keep your body moving and keep your mind moving. Stay motivated and relieve stress with breaks. The key to healthy living is maintaining balance.
Keep on moving
Remaining stationary for too long leads our bodies to decay. Sitting at your desk, at home on your computer, or standing in one place for too long has worse effects on your health than you think. We are active creatures in need of constant exercise in one form or another. When we stay still, we become ill. The science behind it is unknown. But the results speak for themselves: those who spend most of their time in one place gain many new health problems. Humans in old societies were more active and thus didn't suffer from many of the degenerative disease we experience today.
3. Go for the dark green vegetables
Did you hear that consuming anything in excess is never healthy? Think about this: dark green vegetables are the exception! Consider broccoli, spinach, asparagus, cucumbers, sprouts, etc. You can eat as much of these as you want. They are chock-full of vitamins and minerals. Eating these regularly will leave your mind and body feeling refreshed 24/7.
Your secret to never feeling sick is getting enough fiber and antioxidants from these miracle leafy foods. You can also find many of the health benefits of these vegetables in tea or natural supplements. You are still getting the important ingredients, but you're sacrificing quality for convenience.
Importance of leafy greens
Ideally you want to get a mix of all different colors from your fruits and vegetables. Each different vegetable has its own nutritional and healing qualities. Leafy greens are the best thing you could be eating in your diet and should be incorporated into every meal ideally. Vegetables go with everything and are the most important part of our diet next to herbs and spices. It's a bonus if you know how to cook because you can save a lot of money by cooking effectively with mostly vegetables. By eating a lot of vegetables, you save money and get more full while enjoying the nutritional benefits from a complete meal.
4. Build anticipation by keeping your rewards infrequent
Whether you like to reward yourself with sweets, shopping, or gifts for yourself, keep your counterproductive and detrimental activities to a bare minimum. You know why the sweets and unhealthy fats are at the small top triangle of the pyramid, right? They are meant to be enjoyed in moderation. If you had a big meal already and are offered some chocolate, store it for a future celebration. Enjoying these small rewards infrequently will build your anticipation and will make you appreciate them more afterward. You will be motivated to work harder when you have a reward waiting for you. Infrequent can mean once a day, week, or month. The bigger the reward, the more rarely you should indulge in unhealthy habits.
If you have any unhealthy habits, make them a reward you must really work hard for. These are damaging to both your healthy body healthy mind. The more unhealthy your decisions, the more rarely you should do them. Just make sure to have a detox routine before or after.
Reward yourself all you like but remember balance is the key achieving both healthy mind and body
Rewarding yourself too often can make you spoiled and thus never truly appreciating your celebrations and dreading the time you have nothing to spoil you. Celebrating too little can make life drab and uninteresting. Rewarding yourself the right amount can give you more motivation to work harder and accomplish more. It helps you to look forward to your reward to a job well done. Small rewards can often have a big effect on people's productivity. Reward yourself rarely and reward others often in order to get the most out of your experiences. Life is meant to improve yourself and enjoy yourself equally for body and mind health.
5. Find support in times of crisis
The support can come from anywhere: family, a friend, or a stranger's helping hand. The point here is to not bottle up your emotions. If you need help, ask for it. It's not healthy to be isolated from society. If your social needs aren't met, it will affect you emotionally and physically. People are all interconnected with each other; each and every person needs support in tough times. Find your source of support in troubled times. It is perhaps the most beneficial advice for your own well-being.
It is also important to offer your help others every once in a while. Support others in your quest to helping yourself. The same support you ask for you must give back to those who need it. There are numerous volunteer groups and these are great resources for meeting new, like-minded people. These are the people you may end up relying on for support someday.
Support each other
Giving support and thus receiving support puts your health mind at ease in times of trouble because you know that you have others to rely upon in emergency. It's very stressful to live somewhere in which you feel alone with no support system. We need to feel connected in order to be at peace with ourselves and have a healthy bodies and minds.
