5 Daily Habits to Adopt a Healthy Life

Adopting a healthy lifestyle is the best way to achieve physical, mental, and emotional health for the whole family. However, following them can be challenging.

The key to success is to slowly integrate changes into the family. Once each member get into the habit of maintaining healthy practices and making them a part of the routine, the family will start to see its benefits to well being.

To help get started, The Manila Times and Santé listed five daily habits each member of the family can start integrating into their daily lives.

Get moving
Daily physical activities are essential to maintaining a healthy body and reducing the major risk factors for chronic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, non-coronary heart disease, hypertension, among others.

Exercising is not only good for the body, but also for the mind. According to FNRI-DOST, exercise helps enhance psychological well being, improve self-esteem, and maintain motivation.

Simple activities like walking, running, biking, or even stretching, can help maintain weight loss. Committing to regular exercise may be challenging at first, but over time, as you continue doing it, you will start to see the benefits it can provide to your body.

Get more sleep
Sleep, just like exercise and a healthy diet, plays an important role in health and well being. Loss of quality sleep not only impacts the mood and performance but, can also result to health problems, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.

Getting enough sleep — seven to eight hours — poses tremendous benefits to achieve both mental and physical wellness.

Manage distress
There are many factors that can lead to distress, such as work, school, traffic congestion, and relationship problems. Distress is a natural reaction and, is the body’s ways of responding to the mental or emotional strain or tension from adverse or demanding circumstances. However, chronic or long-term distress can be a precursor to issues such as depression, anxiety, and even memory loss.

Thankfully, distress is something that can be managed. One good way to deal with it is through a balanced schedule. Try to find time in between work and social life. This allows a person to have a new perspective and to feel less overwhelmed. Having a social support to share concerns can also help relieve distress. However, it is important to note that everyone is different. Thus, it is essential to experiment and find out what works best.

Avoid smoking
It is no secret that tobacco has negative impacts on health. In fact, smoking remains as one of the leading causes of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco kills more than seven million people each year. More than six million of these deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 890,000 are caused by second-hand smoking.

By refraining from smoking tobacco, the risk of getting illnesses, such as lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, asthma, among others are also reduced. In addition, you also get to protect the people you love, especially the vulnerable children, from the dangerous second-hand smoke.

Make better food choices
We’ve all heard of it before, but it’s true — eating healthy is good for you. By making smart, healthy food choices, you help your body get the nutrients it needs every day and lowers your risk to health problems.

The key to eating well is to enjoy a variety of nutritious foods from the five food groups namely: (1) vegetables and legumes/beans, (2) fruit, (3) grain (cereal) foods, (4) lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds and legumes/beans, and (5) milk, yogurt cheese and/or alternatives, mostly reduced fat. Consuming foods from every food group help support optimal health and prevent diseases.

Leading a healthy life may be difficult at first, but if you establish simple daily practices now, then the end result will definitely worth it.

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