Healthy Living:
8 Steps to Take Today
Healthy
living starts right now. Experts tell you how.
By Miranda
Hitti
WebMD Feature
Reviewed
by Louise Chang,
MD
WebMD
Archive
Healthy
living is within your reach, starting today. Sure, healthy living is a
long-term commitment, not a flash-in-the-pan fad. But there are steps you can
take right now that will make today healthier than yesterday and pave the way
for healthy living tomorrow, too.
Here's
your checklist of practical healthy living tips that are ready to go. Let's get
started.
Healthy Living Step No. 1:
Take stock.
Your
first step toward healthy living is to get a handle on your health status right
now. Here's your to-do list:
Make appointments with your
doctor and dentist.
Catch
up on your routine screening and immunizations, and take the opportunity to ask your doctor any questions you might have.
Gauge your girth. Measure your height
and weight to check
your BMI, and measure your waist circumference to see if you're overweight
and if your waistline is putting your health at risk.
Assess your activity. How much physical activity do you get in a typical week? How intense is that
activity? How much variety do you get in your activity, and how much do you
enjoy it? The CDC recommends that adults get at least two and a half hours per
week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or one hour and 15 minutes per week
of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, plus muscle-strengthening activities at
least two days per week.
Keep a food diary. Write down everything you
eat for a day -- and no fair skipping the items you're embarrassed about.
"The idea is to write it down ... without judgment," says Kathianne
Sellers Williams, MEd, RD, LD, a nutritionist, wellness coach, and personal
trainer with Cafe Physique in Atlanta. "You can't change what you're
not aware of or don't acknowledge."
Check your mood and energy. Healthy living includes emotional
wellness and
adequate rest. How has your mood been lately? Are you experiencing any symptoms of depression or anxiety? Do you usually
sleep well for seven to eight hours a night?
Consider your social
network. How strong are your
connections with family and friends? Are you plugged in with social or
spiritual groups that enrich your life? "People have a fundamental need
for positive and lasting relationships," C. Nathan DeWall, assistant
professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, tells WebMD
If
you're not thrilled with the answers to some of those questions, remember that
the point is to figure out where you are today so you can set your healthy
living goals. It's not about being "good" or "bad,"
"right" or "wrong."
Healthy Living Step No. 2:
Put out fires.
If
you know that you have chronic health problems, whether it's heart
disease, diabetes,
depression, arthritis,
or other conditions, treatment is an obvious priority for healthy living. The
same goes for risky behaviors, such as smoking, and addictions of any kind.
Addressing
these issues typically isn't a do-it-yourself task. Partner with your doctor.
Make the phone call today to schedule that appointment.
Healthy Living Step No. 3
Move more.
Here
are Williams' top tips for increasing physical activity:
Make it fun. Go on a hike, walk with
friends, take a bellydancing or karate class, or whatever you enjoy.
"There's no need to stick to cardio equipment in the gym if you're dreading it and you
don't like it," Williams says. "Find something that's fun."
Keep track of it. Make a note of your
physical activity in your date book or calendar. "Put big Xs on the days
that you exercise," Williams says. "Keep a visual record that you
look at frequently" as a reminder and motivator.
Set a weekly goal for
activity. To build your confidence,
"make the first goal so easy that you say, 'I know I can do that,'"
Williams suggests. She recommends weekly goals because if you set a daily goal
and miss a day, you might get discouraged; weekly goals give you more
day-to-day flexibility. And at the end of the week, reward yourself with a
visual reminder of your accomplishment, such as buying flowers for yourself.
Work activity into your
day. "Ten percent of
something is better than 100% of nothing. So even if you have 10 minutes, it's
better than zero minutes," Williams says. She suggests taking a 10-minute
walk before lunch or walking up and down the stairs when you're feeling drained
and tired.
Other
ideas include wearing a pedometer to track how many steps you take per day
(health experts recommend shooting for 10,000 steps per day) and working with a
personal trainer (double up with a friend to lower the cost) to create an
exercise routine.
Healthy Living Step No. 4:
Upgrade your diet.
Williams,
a nutritionist for a dozen years, says her diet advice isn't about eating certain foods and
avoiding others as much as it is about awareness and choices. Here are her
pointers:
Replace "I
should" with "I choose." So instead of "I should be eating more fruits and vegetables," it's "I choose
to eat more fruits and vegetables" or "I choose not to," because
it's more powerful language," Williams says. "It shows that you're in
control, you're making the choice. So if you choose to or you choose not to,
you make the choice and you move on."
Skip the guilt. "Usually, whenever
someone feels guilty about something, it feeds right back to the behavior that
they're trying to get rid of," Williams says. "So if someone is an
emotional eater and they say, 'I know I shouldn't be doing this," it
implies more guilt and judgment on themselves, they feel worse, and then they
end up eating to comfort themselves."
Choose to plan. Stock your pantry with
healthy fare and bring healthy snacks with you so you're prepared when you get hungry.
"When we're really hungry, our physiology kicks in and that's when we're
craving the hamburger and fries; we're not craving a salad," Williams
says.
Slow down and savor your
food. Don't watch TV, work, or
drive while you're eating. "A lot of people tell me, 'My problem is that I
really like food,' but I think that's a really good thing," Williams says.
"If you really enjoy food, sit down and enjoy your meal. You're much more
likely to feel psychologically satisfied if you don't multitask while you're
eating."
Shoot for five to nine
daily servings of varied fruits and vegetables. Cover the rainbow of fruit
and vegetable colors to get a good mix of nutrients. "If you're not
getting the rainbow, you're probably not getting all the nutrients that you need,"
Williams says.
Healthy Living Step No. 5:
Manage stress.
As
a wellness coach trained in stress management, Williams recommends making two
different plans to handle stress.
Routine maintenance: Develop positive coping
skills, such as meditation and visualization, and look for activities, such as yoga or exercise, to keep your baseline stress level in
check.
Breakthrough stress: Find ways to handle
stressful situations that flare up without warning. For instance, Williams says
that after a stressful meeting at work, you might run up and down the stairs a
few times to burn off anger, or retreat to a bathroom stall to take a few deep
breaths and refocus.
Check your perspective. Ask yourself, "Will
this matter to me a year from now?" If not, why are you getting so wound
up?
Volunteer. Helping to meet other
peoples' needs may make your own problems seem smaller.
Keep a gratitude journal. Write down the positive
people, events, and things that you're thankful for. "It really switches
the focus to, 'Wow, look how much I have," Williams says. "Most
stress is caused by wishing things were different than they are now."
Breathe. One of the breathing
exercises that Williams recommends is to count your breaths for a minute, and
then try to cut that number of breaths in half for the next minute.
Healthy Living StepNo. 6:
Sleep better.
If
you have trouble sleeping, try these tips from sleep medicine specialist Lisa
Shives, MD, medical director of Northshore Sleep Medicine in Evanston, Ill.
No TV or computer two hours
before bedtime. It's
not just because the TV and computer are stimulating; it's also because of
their light. "We're very sensitive to the cue that light gives you that
it's time to be up and about," Shives says. She recommends light, calming
reading lit by a lamp that doesn't shine directly into your eyes.
No heavy exercise close to
bedtime. Light stretching is OK, but vigorous activity will heat up your
body's core temperature, which makes it harder to sleep. "If you're
working up a sweat, you're working too hard right before bed," Shives
says.
Take a hot bath. That will heat up your core
body temperature, but when you get out of the bath, your core temperature will
fall, which may help you get to sleep. Plus, the bath "relaxes you
mentally," Shives says. She adds that having a hot, noncaffeinated drink,
such as chamomile tea, may also help.
Set a regular sleep
schedule. When Shives treats insomnia patients, she tells them that although they can't
make themselves fall asleep, they can make themselves get up at a certain time
the next morning. And though they may be tired at first, if they don't nap,
they may start sleeping better during the following nights. "We're going
to get nowhere if they take big naps during the day and keep a very erratic
sleep schedule; it's chaos then," Shives says.
Don't count on weekend
catch-up sleep. If
you have chronic sleep problems, you probably can't make up for that on the
weekends. But if you generally sleep well and have a rough week, go ahead and
sleep in on the weekend. "I actually think that's good for the body,"
Shives says.
Don't ignore chronic sleep
problems.
"Don't let sleep troubles linger for months or years. Get to a sleep
specialist earlier rather than later, before bad habits set in," Shives
says.
Prioritize good sleep. "This is as important
as diet and exercise," Shives says. She says that in our society, "we
disdain sleep, we admire energy and hard work and [have] this notion that sleep
is just something that gets in the way."
Healthy Living Step No. 7:
Improve your relationships.
Healthy
living isn't just about your personal habits for, say, diet and activity. It's
also about your connections with other people -- your social network.
DeWall,
the University of Kentucky social psychologist, offers these tips for
broadening your social network:
Look for people like you. The details of their lives
don't have to match yours, but look for a similar level of openness. "What
really is important in terms of promoting relationship well-being is that you
share a similar level of comfort in getting close to people," DeWall says.
For instance, he says that someone who needs a lot of reassurance might not
find the best relationship with someone who's more standoffish. "Feel
people out in terms of, 'Does this person seem like me in terms of wanting to
be close to other people?'" DeWall suggests.
Spend time with people. "There's this emphasis
in our culture that you need to be very independent -- an army of one, you can
get along on your own," DeWall says. "Most people don't know their
neighbors as much as they did 50 or 60 years ago."
Build both virtual and
face-to-face relationships. DeWall isn't against having
online connections to other people. "But I think long term, having all of
your relationships online or virtual ... would probably be something that
wouldn't be as beneficial as having a mix" of having virtual and in-person
relationships.
If a close relationship is
painful, get help. "Some
of my work and some work that other people are doing suggest that ... when you
feel rejected by someone, that your body actually registers it as pain. So if I'm in a relationship that's really causing me a
lot of pain, then we need to do something, we need to go and seek help,"
DeWall says.
Healthy Living Step No. 8:
Challenge your mind.
Participating
in mentally stimulating activities, especially activities that involve other
people, may be good for the brain.
There's
no downside to including brain-challenging activities as part of your healthy
living, unless "you spent $400 on some computer program that makes all
sorts of wild claims about brain health," says David Knopman, MD, a
neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Knopman
explains that brain fitness is influenced by many factors, including education
and opportunities for mentally stimulating activities starting in childhood,
and also by the presence or absence of depression, diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure, and other risks.
Observational
studies have shown that people who engage in mentally stimulating activities
may be less likely to develop dementia. But Knopman notes that such studies
don't prove cause and effect, so it's not clear if mentally stimulating
activities protect against dementia or whether people with healthier brains are
drawn to those activities in the first place.
That
said, Knopman says, "I think that socially engaging activities are
particularly important, and that's why I'm somewhat skeptical about the various
commercial entities that seek to sell computer games to stimulate the brain.
... If that's done to the exclusion of socially engaging activity, it's
probably counterproductive."
Source:
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/healthy-living-8-steps-to-take-today
