These simple steps will help you feel better and stay healthy.
1. Drink enough water
You need to drink water. It speeds up metabolism. Blood plasma is 92–95% water, and the liquid helps the circulatory system cope with its functions. With water, oxygen and glucose are supplied to the brain, which is necessary for nervous activity. Water removes metabolic products and toxins from the brain. But its lack can cause headaches, feelings of fatigue, problems with the digestive tract.
There is no universal rate of water consumption. Focus on two indicators
- Feeling thirsty. If you have it, you need to drink it.
- Urine color. It should be colorless or light yellow. Otherwise, you don’t drink enough.
Read also: 5 Reasons To Eat Turmeric Every Day
How to develop a habit’
Water should always be at hand. Otherwise, you will be too lazy to get up every time to drink, and you will do it less often than you really want. Place a bottle of water on your work table and sip every time you feel thirsty. Always carry the smaller container with you in your bag, and do not forget to refill.
Also, several apps allow you to keep track of your drinking. Their main disadvantage is the target performance. To reach your “norm,” you can drink when you don’t feel like it or hastily pour fluids into yourself late at night to achieve your goal. But if you love numbers and gamification, you can try it.
2. Eat more vegetables and fruits
Plant foods are beneficial for preventing cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer. The fiber they contain helps the digestive tract function better and reduces the risk of noncommunicable diseases.
We know about the benefits of vegetables and fruits since childhood, but it is impossible to eat them in sufficient quantities. Moreover, recent studies talk about the norm of 500-800 grams per day, which is a lot.
How to develop a habit
Here, the same as with water; if you want to eat more vegetables, make them more accessible. To make the plan come true, you have to think about why vegetables are an infrequent guest on your table. Perhaps you would love to eat cabbage salad every day, but you are too lazy to chop it with a knife. Then your choice is a food processor with a shredder. He will grind the head of cabbage in a matter of seconds, and all that remains is to rinse the bowl and knives with water; even a sponge is not needed.
Or you buy a vegetable that you don’t like because you are guided by information from the outside and not by your own feelings. Let’s say celery is really healthy, but it will settle like a dead weight in a vegetable drawer if you hate it.
Wash the fruits and put them on the table right away – this is more likely that your hand will reach for them. Also, prepare vegetables for consumption. Cucumber sticks and carrot sticks, small cabbage pieces will be quickly eaten if they are in plain sight. Finally, make sure there is a herbal supplement in every meal you eat. It cannot be delightful at first, but gradually you will get used to it.
3. Keep a food diary
People tend to be delusional about the amount eaten. We tend to underestimate the amount of food, even if we know that we will be double-checked. Therefore, it is highly likely that you are not aware of your eating habits. A diary will help you understand how things really are and learn a lot about yourself. For example, you may think that you are eating enough vegetables, but you are limited to two cucumbers a day in reality.
How to develop a habit
Write down what you ate, how much, and in what quantity, immediately after a meal, or even before it, if you can refrain from supplementation. Choose a convenient way to record information; in a paper notebook, a document in the cloud, or a calorie counting app.
If you love accuracy in everything, you can also find out how many calories you consume. The results will be approximate since you cannot tell how much nutrients will be absorbed from a particular food. But this information can already be used to correct eating behavior. True, all food will have to be weighed; in calculating calories, everything is already too approximate to estimate the portion size by eye.
4. Take less sugar
The modern man consumes too much sugar because it can be found almost everywhere. It is found not only in soda or baked goods but also in ketchup, instant cereals, and sausage. The incidence of type 2 diabetes, liver failure, tooth decay, obesity, and other unpleasant things are associated with excessive sugar consumption. So it is simply necessary to control its amount in the diet.
How to develop a habit
Start small; When thirsty, drink water, not juice or soda. By avoiding these drinks, you will already reduce your sugar intake. Switch to unsweetened tea and coffee. Limit your dessert consumption – make it meaningful. Instead, add a serving of complex carbohydrates in the form of cereals to the diet. This will make it easier to tolerate giving up sugar. Finally, cook more yourself. Manufacturers sin by adding sugar to products where you would never expect to see it. So you can resist this only by getting up to the stove yourself.
Also read: What is Mindful Eating and Why You Need it
5. Pay attention to the composition and calorie content of food
Reading is helpful, especially when it comes to product labels. For example, you might find out that your favorite “healthy” granola bar is half the sugar and outperforms chocolate in calories. Such an entertaining reading will give you many discoveries.
How to develop a habit
Learning labels takes time. Therefore, plan your trips to the store so that you have these free minutes. Be sure to eat before shopping, or the rumbling belly can drown out the voice of reason. And of course, do not take your fellow travelers with you, who will stand and moan while you “dig there for so long.”
Adapted and translated by Wiki Avenue Staff
Sources: Life hacker
