Look at any collection of New Year’s Resolutions and you’ll find countless variations on the theme of healthy living. For example, most people make a resolution to lose weight at some point in their lives. Others decide they will find ways to limit stress.
As feel-good as those resolutions are, they come with a fatal flaw. They aren’t actionable. Saying you’ll lose weight or limit stress doesn’t mean much if you don’t where to start.
If you’ve committed to a healthier lifestyle but despair over the first steps, keep reading. We’ll provide three tips to help you get on your way.
1. Get Better Nutrition
The average American diet contains excessive fat, sugar, and oversized portions. This combination serves as a solid foundation for weight gain and a variety of medical conditions, such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Trade out some of those processed foods with lots of fats and sugars for fresh vegetables, steamed vegetables, and fruits. Invest in a kitchen scale and start weighing out your portions. Trade up some of your red meat for lean chicken breasts and fish.
Those changes will help you drop excess weight and provide a much healthier cross-section of vitamins and minerals to support your body. Need some help on this front? Look for a healthy living market and cafe or similar store in your area.
2. Limit Alcohol or Quit Entirely
With the possible exception of very moderate amounts of red wine, alcohol provides almost no benefits. It can increase your weight or slow weight loss. In reality, alcohol is a toxin for your body.
Cutting back on alcohol can improve other healthy living efforts and probably spare your wallet some pain as well. If those aren’t enough reasons, you can head over here for even more reasons to quit drinking.
If you feel like your drinking is out of control, look for inpatient or outpatient rehab programs that can help you.
3. Get More Exercise
A lot of people think getting more exercise means massive investments in equipment or expensive gym memberships. Yet, most people can get away with little more than a decent pair of walking shoes. Walking can provide you with the moderate cardiovascular exercise doctors recommend you get several times a week.
Health permitting, you can also do basic yoga routines and basic strength training at home. If you feel like you need more structure, you can look for a Center for Healthy Living or similar organization to help you develop a plan.
Healthy Living and You
Very few people aim for living an unhealthy lifestyle. Easily available fast food and other highly-processed foods make it hard to avoid. Yet, healthy living is not beyond your grasp.
Making even some changes in what you eat and reducing portion sizes can take you a long way. Limiting your alcohol intake cuts tons of calories out of your diet. Even moderate exercise like walking can improve your cardiovascular health.
Looking for more healthy living tips? Check out the posts in our Health and Lifestyle sections.