Simple Healthy Diets, Health Tips for Healthy Living

Health Tips for Healthy Living

Healthy living facts

This article is designed to give tips to readers about how they can improve or augment actions in their life to have a healthy lifestyle; it is not meant to be all inclusive but will include major components that are considered to be parts of a lifestyle that lead to good health. In addition to the tips about what people should do for healthy living, the article will mention some of the tips about avoiding actions (the don'ts) that lead to unhealthy living.

"Healthy living" to most people means both physical and mental health are in balance or functioning well together in a person. In many instances, physical and mental health are closely linked, so that a change (good or bad) in one directly affects the other. Consequently, some of the tips will include suggestions for emotional and mental "healthy living."

Eating (diet)

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All humans have to eat food for growth and maintenance of a healthy body, but we humans have different requirements as infants, children (kids), teenagers, young adults, adults, and seniors. For example, infants may require feeding every four hours until they gradually age and begin to take in more solid foods. Eventually they develop into the more normal pattern of eating three times per day as young kids. However, as most parents know, kids, teenagers, and young adults often snack between meals. Snacking is often not limited to these age groups because adults and seniors often do the same.

Tips:

• Eat three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner); it is important to remember that dinner does not have to be the largest meal.
• The bulk of food consumption should consist of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk products.
• Choose lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts (with emphasis on beans and nuts).
• Choose foods that are low in saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, salt (sodium), and added sugars; look at the labels because the first listed items on the labels comprise the highest concentrations of ingredients.
• Control portion sizes; eat the smallest portion that can satisfy hunger and then stop eating.
• Snacks are OK in moderation and should consist of items like fruit, whole grains, or nuts to satisfy hunger and not cause excessive weight gain.
• Avoid sodas and sugar-enhanced drinks because of the excessive calories in the sodas and sugar drinks; diet drinks may not be a good choice as they make some people hungrier and increase food consumption.
• Avoid eating a large meal before sleeping to decrease gastroesophageal reflux and weight gain.
• If a person is angry or depressed, eating will not solve these situations and may make the underlying problems worse.
• Avoid rewarding children with sugary snacks; such a pattern may become a lifelong habit for people.
• Avoid heavy meals in the summer months, especially during hot days.
• A vegetarian lifestyle has been promoted for a healthy lifestyle and weight loss; vegetarians should check with their physicians to be sure they are getting enough vitamins, minerals, and iron in their food.
• Cooking foods (above 165 F) destroys most harmful bacteria and other pathogens; if you choose to eat uncooked foods like fruits or vegetables, they should be thoroughly washed with running treated (safe to drink) tap water right before eating.
• Avoid eating raw or undercooked meats of any type.

Tips for special situations:

• People with diabetes should use the above tips and monitor their glucose levels as directed; try to keep the daily blood glucose levels as close to normal as possible.
• People with unusual work schedules (night shifts, college students, military) should try to adhere to a breakfast, lunch, and dinner routine with minimal snacking.
• People who prepare food should avoid using grease or frying foods in grease.
• People trying to lose weight (body fat) should avoid all fatty and sugary foods and eat mainly vegetables, fruits, and nuts and markedly reduce his/her intake of meat and dairy products.
• Seek medical advice early if you cannot control your weight, food intake, or if you have diabetes and cannot control your blood glucose levels. Continue Reading

Source : http://www.medicinenet.com/healthy_living/article.htm

Simple Tips For a Healthy Life

Simple Tips For a Healthy Life

By Parthasarathy Rengaswami

Living a healthy life is not difficult. In fact, it is very easy to live a life of health, fitness and vitality. But we have made our life more complicated, jeopardizing our health in the process. Here are 7 simple steps to make your life healthy and happy.

1. Drink water. Am I saying something superfluous? After all, we all drink water, don't we? Yes, we do but many of us are under the misconception that since drinks like coffee, milk, alcohol, juices etc. contain water, drinking some of these will provide the body with enough water. You need to drink a considerable amount of water in its pure form! How many glasses of water do you drink everyday? I am not going to suggest any quantity. Just listen to your body. If you feel thirsty, drink water; don't go for a glass of juice or for a bottle of caffeinated soda!

2. Have a sense of proportion in what you eat at different times of the day. What you eat in the morning should be your heaviest meal and what you eat for the dinner must be the lightest. A heavy breakfast, a moderate lunch and a modest dinner will keep you fit, healthy, brisk, active and energetic.

3. Eat more natural foods than processed foods. Eat more of the foods produced by nature than of foods made in the factories. Natural foods will nurture your body while processed foods will weaken your body.

4. Play games. Keeping yourself physically active by playing games at all ages is the best gift you can give your body. Even if you do exercises, play games too. While doing exercises will make you feel that you are doing them because you have to, playing games will make you joyful relaxed. The fun that is usually missing when you do exercises will be present in its full form when you play games. Playing games does not mean that you have to play professional games. If you are a grand parent, you can play little games like hide and seek or other games of your own innovation with your grand children, making both your grand children and yourself happy.

5. Spend some time with silence. Allocate a few minutes for yourself everyday, during which, just be quiet. You may do some mediation or you may just sit down calmly and observe your thoughts, without trying to control them. You will find that you will cultivate a peaceful mind over a period.

6. Sleep for at least 6 hours a day.  Allowing your body to take the rest it needs is one of the most essential requirements for good health. You can have many reasons for not being able to sleep adequately but these reasons are not going to help in mitigating the damage you are doing it to your health. Find some way to ensure that you get at least 6 hours of sleep every day.

7. Walk your way to health. Can you allocate about 30 minutes everyday to go for a walk? If you can, then you will be creating a solid foundation for a life of health and vitality. A healthy life is important not only for remaining physically strong but also for living a life of happiness.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Parthasarathy_Rengaswami

Simple Healthy: Weight Loss Happens When You Take In Fewer Calories Than Your Body Needs

Fad Diets- Weight Loss Happens When You Take In Fewer Calories Than Your Body Needs

Ah yes, fad diets. They're everywhere, and there are tons of them. Actually, a lot of people may disagree on just how many there are. I say that because there are many different ways to define what a fad diet really is. Most of it is based on personal opinion. So, here's my personal opinion of what a fad diet is...As mentioned in Phase 1, weight loss happens when you take in fewer calories than your body needs to maintain it's current weight. This is a scientific fact. Therefore, based on this scientific fact, I feel that every single diet plan and weight loss program that is based on doing anything besides just eating less total calories each day... is a fad diet.

Yeah, that's a whole lot of fad diets then.

But, that's pretty much my view of weight loss and a key reason behind The Lose Weight Diet. It's all about doing what needs to be done and nothing else. No gimmicks, no nothing. Fad diets on the other hand are just the opposite. Gimmicks, gimmicks and more gimmicks. Sure, some (The Cabbage Soup Diet) may be a little more gimmicky than others (The Atkins Diet), but one thing remains the same in every case... they make you do things that you don't need to do. I like to call these "things" unnecessary diet tasks.

Take the extremely popular low carb diet, The Atkins Diet, for example...

Why go on a low carb diet when you know that it's calories, not carbs, that needs to be lowered in order for you to lose weight? Why go out of your way to limit eating something that you could (and SHOULD) still be eating and could still be losing weight while eating? Why do something that doesn't need to be done?

Also, for the record, The Atkins Diet (and all low carb diets) require the removal of most of the carbs from your diet. Do you know what this also just so happens to do? It just so happens to also remove a great deal of calories from your diet. What's that you say? You "accidentally" also eat fewer calories when you were only trying to eat fewer carbs? Interesting. Hey, you know what you might want to try? "Purposely" lowering your total calorie intake and forgetting the whole low carb diversion altogether. I bet that will work out pretty well for you, and you won't have to eat low carb to do it.

Do you see what happened there? Not only is a low carb diet based on doing something not needed, but a side effect of that not needed task IS the actual needed task. That right there is what fad diets are all about, doing anything except what is directly needed for weight loss to take place.

It's just completely unnecessary. In fact, it's so unnecessary that I'm going to use a metaphor (or is it an analogy?) to explain it. It's like throwing your shoe at the TV to try to hit the power button and make it go on instead of just using the remote control. Yeah, you may still hit it and turn it on, but there was absolutely no need to do it that way.

Fad diets have you doing things that just DON'T need to be done in order to make what you want to happen actually happen. Whether they work or not means very little at this point. It's the simple fact that these diet plans are based on doing something for weight loss that is NOT required for weight loss. To me that's just silly.

And, as if that wasn't enough, don't forget to add in the fact that most of these fad diets cost money. Whether it's books, products, or memberships, many of these types of diets cost some kind of money.

Hang on. Let's review this again:

Things required for weight loss to happen:

- Taking in less calories than your maintenance level.

- ::blank space::

- ::more blank space::

Things required by most fad diets:

- Diet tasks that don't need to be done in order for a person to lose weight.

- Your money.

Now that's just plain silly, isn't it?

Listen, I didn't write this article so I could bad mouth all the other diets. Granted, I personally will never recommend any other diet besides The Lose Weight Diet (or a diet based on it's common sense principles) to anyone... ever. However, I can't deny the fact that some people may have some strange preferences and weird needs and could for some reason prefer fad diets like the low carb diet over diets like The Lose Weight Diet. If something appeals to you for whatever reason and you think it will work for you, then by all means, do it. As long as it's safe and healthy, I can't tell you not to.

Like I said, I didn't write this article to call out fad diets like the low carb diet or to debate whether they really work or if they're just completely useless. Maybe we'll get into that some other time. But here, in this article, my only purpose is to call out your common sense. Why on earth would you want to be on a weight loss diet that is based on things completely unnecessary to weight loss itself? Things that just don't need to be done. Things that could be dangerous. Things that in some cases cost money. Why on earth would you want to throw your shoe at the TV instead of just using the remote? If at this point you still have a good answer to this question, please do me a favor and email it to me.However, if you don't have an answer, then my job here is done.

(Resource: http://www.theloseweightdiet.com/fad-diets.html)