Diet and Exercise for a Healthy Life

One of the paradoxes of modern living is that we are becoming increasingly unhealthy in spite of the better nutrition and medical care that is available to us these days. People, especially in the United States, are getting more obese and unhealthy and are also increasingly complaining of ailment such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease etc. One of the main reasons for this is that they do not understand the need for the right diet and exercise.

It is impossible to lead a healthy life unless we follow the right diet and exercise regularly. We need to eat a balanced diet as far as possible, so that we get all the nutrition that our bodies require. Food should be eaten in moderation so that we do not overeat and neither do we starve ourselves. The average woman needs to consume between 1800 to 2000 calories every day in order to stay healthy. The average man requires 500 – 700 calories more than a woman.

Meals should consist of lots of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains and beans. Fish, poultry and dairy products are also very important constituents of a proper diet. Meals should also be washed down with lots of water. It is best to avoid processed foods because they contain lots of preservatives and chemicals.

Exercise is also very important for a healthy life. It is sufficient to exercise in moderation as long as one does it regularly. Cardio exercises ensure that one’s blood circulation is at a heightened rate and this helps to get rid of impurities from the cells as well as distribute nutrients throughout the cells. The right combination of diet and exercise ensures that a person can lead a long and healthy life without suffering from various lifestyle diseases. Interestingly, it can even help keep cancer and other unwanted diseases at bay.

Exercise for your health!

If you are not exercising on a regular basis at least three times a week, then you’d better get moving!  Exercise has so many benefits and is so necessary to maintain your health in top form.  The best amount of time to exercise a week is every day or at least five days a week.  What kind of exercise?  Anything is better than nothing is the key!

Say you don’t have time to exercise, well, here is a quick exercise video that gives you a quick 10 minute workout to be done every day.  So now you don’t have an excuse not to exercise – time is not the reason.

Even simply going for a half hour walk every day is good for you.  Walk briskly and swing your arms wide.  Breathe in the deep fresh air.  You’ll feel amazing if you work a good 30 minute walk into your daily routine.  Tone up those muscles, exercise your lungs and heart and burn the fat.  You’ll stay younger looking longer if you do.

Try this workout and then tell me you don’t have 10 minutes a day to spare.

Want a healthy brain?

Doing a crossword with three friends stimulates activity in more brain regions than completing it alone does. Most of us suffer from moments of memory loss — walking into a room and forgetting what you were looking for or grasping for the name of the person you have just bumped into on the street.

You could be suffering from brain anaemia, according to psychologist Jane G. Goldman.

She’s not talking about the nutritional condition caused by a lack of iron: she means a lack of new experiences and mental challenges that the brain needs to keep it in tip-top condition and in the best health.

‘The brain is not too different from the rest of your body,’ she says. ‘It needs to be nourished.’

Without adequate challenges, such as learning a new skill or taking up a hobby, she says, our brain cells start to wither. These cells (known as neurons), become less active and fire fewer electrical signals, and their nutrient and oxygen supply is gradually reduced. It is to keep these neurons active and nourished that we are told to do activities, such as crosswords, every day.

However, Goldman says that sitting down and tackling a Sudoku puzzle on your own isn’t enough to halt this brain atrophy. For these puzzles to keep the brain agile and ward off Alzheimer’s, you have to do them with other people.

We have evolved as social animals, she says, and completing tasks in groups stimulates and strengthens our neurons, boosting brain power and memory.

She suggests that just as we keep our bodies in shape with aerobics classes, so we should keep our grey matter fighting fit by tackling puzzles in groups. She CALLS this ‘brainercising’ and recommends that mental exercises are done in teams. Exercises include tasks such as recalling a string of numbers after listening to them being read aloud. This challenge is called digit span.

Professor Felicia Huppert, director of the Wellbeing Institute in Cambridge, believes there may be some science to this theory.

‘There are benefits to doing tasks collectively, as the social brain would also be engaged,’ she says.

And why should involving the social brain help?

Well, more than two decades ago researchers at the University of Leuven in Belgium began to report that older people did better on memory tests if they did exercises in groups.

The effect has been re-tested several times with the same result, most recently in 2009.

Studies suggest that being with others encourages our brain to develop new connections throughout the brain, not just in one particular area.  So doing a crossword with three friends would stimulate activity in more brain regions than completing it alone would do.

The benefits of group brain activity seem to be linked to competitiveness, too — it seems we learn better if we have goals such as wanting to be as good as someone else. We also learn better if we are rewarded, such as receiving congratulations from others.