Modern busy lifestyle has brought a lot of diseases. Starting with mental disorders such as stress, and depression. This continues to physical problems like blood pressure, diabetes, weight gain, heart problems, cancer, and the list go on.
New diseases that don’t even exist 100 years back has become quite common now.
So what is the core reason for this?
We left behind the healthy lifestyle of the past and started to run behind the modern lifestyle, believing that it will make our lives any better. Now we look back in the past and regret the things we left it there.
Food, exercise, and sleep are the basis of a healthy life. Altering these three will help us to lead a healthy life.
Food Habits
1. The food we eat not only give us energy but it’s also responsible for the construction of our body itself. So we cannot be negligent with our food habits. Consuming organic and chemical free vegetables is a must. We have a lot of organic stores available everywhere, use it. Choosing organic vegetables and fruits will make sure we do not consume harmful chemicals. This lays the foundation for better immunity, healthy bodily functions, and prolonged lifespan.
2. Drink water either 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after food, drinking water while having your meal must be avoided or should be taken only if it’s really necessary. Drinking water while having your food leads to digestion problems.
3. Including lentils and pulses in your food is necessary. Rice and wheat based food intake must be minimized. The main problem with including millets is that they do not taste that good for kids. It might be necessary to make it into a tasty snack to make it appealing for kids.
4. Vegetables, greens, and fruit contents in our meal must be more than Rice or Wheat. Vegetables come in a variety of colors, we can decide to consume particular colored vegetable and fruit in a particular day in a week. This will help us to reap benefits of all the fruits and vegetables.
5. It’s good to consume fruits after cleaning it in water. Avoid juicing fruits, if you decide to juice it, do not add milk, sugar and ice cubes to it. Packaged fruit juices contain preservatives, flavor enhancers, and artificial sweeteners, so it’s better to avoid them.
6. Tinned or packaged food items must be avoided at all cost. Instant mix, cup noodles, tinned curry, and gravies do more bad than good, so better stay away from them.
7. Reduce consumption of white sugar and replace it with jaggery, palm sugar, and honey.
8. Eating out must be avoided or reduced. Avoid buying deep fried foods. Try to prepare your own snacks and meals yourself. Try to cook your own food.
9. A large portion of our food must be consumed during breakfast, reduce the quantity a little during the lunch, and dinner course should have the minimum food level of the three courses.
10. Storing drinking water in a plastic container must be avoided, if possible store it in a copper vessel or use a steel container. It’s good for your health.
11. Consume seasonal fruits and vegetables on those particular seasons. unseasonal fruits and vegetables have the least possibility of being fresh or cultured using natural methods, so better to avoid it completely.
12. Fasting once a week is a healthy practice. Fasting doesn’t necessarily mean you should not eat anything. You can have only fruits, or only vegetables for that particular day. It’s better to consult your doctor before practicing fast and follow his guidance.
Sleep and rest
1. We hardly give much importance to sleep, many of us sleep for the sake of sleeping. But sleeping is really essential for our body. Our body does a lot of things while we sleep. Sleep doesn’t mean you can sleep whenever you want. Sleeping between 10 PM and 6 AM is the right practice. It’s only during those times all the necessary bodily functions takes place.
2. Wake up at 6 AM, that is waking up before the sun rises, is the best and right practice. But our modern lifestyle doesn’t permit this or makes it really hard. So the only way you can ensure this is by starting to sleep early at night. Spending useless amounts of time on TV and mobile phones can be spent in sleep.
3. We need to ensure that our bedroom or the place where we sleep is really dark. It should not be lit by the TV or mobile phones. If it’s really necessary, you can keep a really dull light to light the room, otherwise, keep it dark.
Exercise
1. It’s necessary to exercise everyday between 6 AM to 7 AM, your body needs to sweat with your workouts. We notice many people hitting the gym at 11 AM, this will not bring needed results. Exercising early morning not only brings in needed results, also it is the right time to do it.
2. Evening times must be spent on doing light exercises like pranayama and yoga. Doing hard workouts in the evenings must be avoided.
3. Avoid chatting or listening to music while exercising, this includes going for a walk. Doing this will not yield necessary results.
4. Meditating for a few minutes a day is essential. If you are spiritual you can spend it by praying to God or offering Pooja.
Hope this detailed list helps you to make your life a healthy one. Good luck.