We can change our habits, improve our sleep, carefully consider what we eat, be physically active, and so on. In return, our efforts will be rewarded with happiness and a healthy lifestyle.

Here are some things you can do in this rewarding process of self-improvement.

Sleep More and Sleep Better for a Healthier Life

The National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours of sleep for a healthy adult. The general recommendations should only be observed as guidelines. Depending on your specific needs, your body can require more time to consolidate memories and get the needed rest.

Keep in mind that it’s not just quantity but also the quality of sleep that counts. If you are constantly waking up during the night and if you sleep in an uncomfortable position, getting the full nine hours of sleep won’t help you feel rested. The essential factor for getting quality sleep is finding a supportive mattress that suits your sleeping habits and positions.

Change Your Diet

Poor diet choices are causing many health issues, but they can also affect your mood. The irony is that what we call ‘comfort food’ can actually make us more aggravated and sad.

In the long run, it would be better for your health and wellbeing to avoid (as much as you can) deep-fried and processed meals and turn to healthier alternatives. A balanced diet entails a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. Complement it with whole grains and wholesome sources of protein and omega-3 fatty acids. Some of the things to eat more frequently are leafy greens, nuts, salmon, kale, lentils, and grilled chicken.

Be Active for a Healthier Life

According to the CDC, physical activity can have many benefits both for your mental and physical health. Some of them can be immediate, while others come over time. For example, you will feel less anxious and your cognitive abilities will improve after a moderate or vigorous workout. If you exercise on a regular basis, the risk of depression and anxiety will decrease, you will sleep better, and you will be happier.

As for the physical aspect, exercising will help you maintain a healthy weight (or lose weight), decrease the risk of heart disease, strengthen your bones and muscles, and boost your immune system.

Keep Stress Under Control

Other than exercising, other things can help you keep stress under control. For example:

• Deep breathing techniques can help you calm down in a stressful situation and deal with any future stressors.
• When faced with stress, your muscles become tense, so you can also try relaxing them by stretching or taking a hot shower.
• Practicing yoga can help you adopt a more mindful approach and patiently deal with stressors.
• When you feel overwhelmed, share your problems and thoughts with someone. That can be a friend, a family member, or a therapist.

Socialize

We often sacrifice our social life due to work and household responsibilities. While being alone is good for you sometimes, being lonely never is. Humans are social beings by their nature, and even the most introverted among us require social contact.

Face-to-face contact is essential for good health, as it releases neurotransmitters that help you battle stress and anxiety. It also boosts your brain health and can make you very happy.

However, this doesn’t mean that you have to be social at all costs. It’s normal that you don’t enjoy being in some people’s company. Naturally, you’ll want to avoid the people that stress you out or simply make you feel uneasy. Find time to spend with the people you love and feel pleasant being around.

Be Kind to Yourself

Finally, find some time for yourself. Doing the things you love is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

You can spend that time as you wish – by reading a book, binge-watching a TV show, dancing, practicing a hobby. This can be replenishing and invigorating. Don’t make compromises when it comes to nourishing both your mind and body. Being kind to yourself also means forgiving yourself for the mistakes – small and big ones.

In Closing for a Happier and Healthier Life

We only spend a certain amount of time on this planet, so why wouldn’t we use it in the best way possible? Why wouldn’t we be healthy and happy while we’re here?
These tips will help you live a full life and face all the challenges ahead – and there will be a lot of them. Remember, cultivating good habits is not enough; you also need to get rid of the bad ones – so take it one step at a time.

The post 6 Things You Can Do for a Happier and Healthier Life appeared first on Food Health & Parenting Tips.

Changing your lifestyle for the better isn’t usually a straight forward task and requires a lot of work. Still, in the long run, you’ll benefit from making the changes, whether in productivity, physical ability, better financial situation, or just moving to clearer headspace. To lead a healthy lifestyle sounds appealing, and you may have already implemented some changes in the past. Still, often, people find themselves slipping into previous habits and falling off track. To help you stay on the right path to success, we’ve put together these top tips which will enable you to lead a healthy and more fulfilling lifestyle.

Drink More Water

Do you sometimes feel drained? Perhaps you’re not performing as well as you could be? Usually, this has a lot to do with the amount of water we drink and how hydrated our bodies are, which can often impact our physical performance. Many people adopt the 8×8 rule, eight, eight-ounce glasses of water every day to maintain healthy energy levels and optimize brain function, which is especially useful when working from home. Drinking plenty of water may also prevent headaches often occurring when staring at a computer screen for long periods.

Keeping hydrated is particularly important during the warmer months, or if you follow intense workouts. This is because our bodies attempt to cool down through sweating, which can sometimes cause dehydration, making it essential that we drink more water in the summer and exercise. Drinking water can also help us lose weight as it may kickstart our metabolism to work more efficiently. Dr. Philip Goglia, a nutritionist at Marvel Studios, suggests that ‘we should be drinking half an ounce to one ounce of water per pound of body weight every day.’

Move Your Body

Another way to live a more healthy lifestyle is to exercise as much as possible, and this can include going for a short walk every day to keep the body moving and take in some fresh air. For those who enjoy working out frequently, you can also join running clubs or attend fitness classes such as HIIT or yoga, as this is a great way to socialize while reaching your body goals at the same time.

If gym access is restricted, you can get creative at home with online classes and build your own sports space with multi-gym equipment and hand weights if need be, or grab the nearest tins of paint as an alternative way to make your workouts more challenging. The main aim is to stay motivated, even more so if you’re stuck at home, and it’s important to stretch regularly and keep your body moving.

Take Control of  Your Finances

When it comes to leading a healthy lifestyle, this can also refer to your financial situation and taking control of your money. While money isn’t the most important, feeling financially free can help put you in a better state of mind. When there are more possibilities of socializing and doing the thing you enjoy doing, such as going on vacation with the family or investing in future assets.

If taking control of your finances is new to you, start small by re-evaluating your spending and saving habits. Many of us struggle to be frugal and often waste money on things that we don’t need. Try swapping out branded products for cheaper options and cut down on food waste or walk instead of taking public transport to cut back on spends. Having exact steps in place will help keep you on track, and you can use the extra money to pay off any debts or keep it for your travels or investment opportunities.

Where do you want to be in the next five to ten years? A question is often associated with financial income, which can lead to putting some long-term goals in place, like working on your investment portfolio. Investing your money for the future can be an excellent way to generate more income and support you for years to come. Investing in property, for example, is one of the most secure and lucrative investment strategies that you can make, according to RWinvest. If you’re looking for ways to get started, then there are multiple free guides and podcasts available online from property investment companies.

Relax Your Mind

Since isolation measures have been put in place, many of us may feel distant as we are separated from family and friends and our usual routine. Our mental wellbeing is just as important as working on our physical health and so checking in with ourselves and relaxing our mind regularly can help to lift spirits and keep a positive mental attitude.

Meditation is a great way to rejuvenate the mind and body and provides a healthy distraction from staring at our screens and mobile phones for too long. Taking just a few minutes a day can help to collect your thoughts and clear your mind of negativity, and a chance to rebalance and focus on your breathing and awareness will help to put you in a better headspace. Who doesn’t love to relax and unwind after a long day?

Read more: 

• 5 Herbs for Women’s Health and Wellness 
• How to Destress
• Self- Love: Be Kind to Yourself

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How often do we ever say that to ourselves? I’m by no means advocating ending relationships based on finding more time for loving ourselves. I’m just asking: how often do we love and cherish ourselves as we are? How kind are we to ourselves?

The answer is most likely – not nearly enough.

Let’s take a look at some of the things you can do to show yourself self- love and be kind to yourself, the person you indeed are, better.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

The only person you need to compare yourself to if you want to play the comparing game is the person you used to be. Yesterday, a year ago, a decade ago – as long as you’re becoming more and more the kind of person you want to be, you are doing a great job.

Comparing yourself to others is merely pointless. First, you don’t know their story, not really. You only know what they choose to share with you, and that’s most often just the best bits. And second of all, they are not you. They are entirely different, and you can never be them, which means that you get to be you – the best possible person in the world.

Stop Worrying About What Others Think

While we are on the subject of comparisons and judgment – you should also aim to stop caring about what other people think about you. You can never actually influence that. People will have their beliefs and values, and they will believe what they want to find. Rare are those whose opinions and deeply rooted ideas can be changed through a conversation or a series of actions.

The only person who needs to approve of you and your actions is, you’ve guessed it – you. You are living your life for yourself, and you can do whatever you want with it (as long as you’re not harming someone else!). No one else will live your life, and you are not living your life so someone can approve of it. You do you, babe, and stick to your dreams.

Reconsider the Way You Treat Your Body

And I am not for one second talking about your weight if that’s what you were thinking.

I’m talking about the other things you’re doing to your body: are you making sure it gets plenty of rest, and that it receives the recovery time it needs from lugging you around all day? Are you giving it enough water, the nutrients it needs, and making sure your skin and hair are getting the nourishment they need? This is what self- love is about and to be kind to yourself. 

Think about the way you sleep, as not sleeping enough is the gateway to a bad mood and poor mental and physical health. Think about the products you’re putting into your body and whether they’re giving it what it needs to grow and prosper. If you identify any room for change and improvement, seize it. After all, your body is yours for life, and the better you treat it, the more it will allow you to do.

Don’t Worry About the Future and Dwell on the Past

The funny thing about life is that we only ever get to experience it in the present, and yet we spend so much time living in the past (which can’t be changed) or trying to imagine the future (which we can never predict and never truly control).

Learning how to live in the present is an incredible gift and a habit you can learn to nurture, and one that will help you live a more fulfilled and enjoyable life. If you manage to stop obsessing about things that have happened and those that have yet to happen, you will realize there’s a whole lot of life right here and now.

Be Mindful of Your Language

Finally, think about the way you talk to yourself. Is there a whole lot of negativity or self- love there? Do you call yourself all kinds of names? Do you nitpick at every tiny little thing that is not perfect about you?

The thing is, we would never speak as negatively to anyone else – we only do it to ourselves.

And we are no different from all those other people when you come to think about it. We are all prone to mistakes, none of us are perfect, and we all deserve to be treated with kindness and a whole lot of love.

So next time you start talking to yourself negatively, check yourself, and change your language. You’ll notice it makes quite a difference.

To Sum It Up

Being kind and showing self-love to yourself is a habit you might have to work on – but it’s never too late or early to start. So try some of these tips out, and see how your life changes for the better.

Read more:

• 7 Helpful Tips for Coping With Depression
• Peppermint for Anxiety and Depression
• Exercise Can Benefit Your Mental Health

The post Self- Love: Be Kind to Yourself! appeared first on Food Health & Parenting Tips.

Whether it’s to see old friends or family members, immerse yourself in a new culture, or just experience something you’ve only ever seen in movies, travel has so much to offer us.

However, one effect of travel that might be somewhat less obvious is its improvement in our mental health and happiness. While not everyone realizes it, travel can have a huge role to play in keeping us happy and healthy.

To learn about the seven most essential ways in which travel helps with our health and happiness, keep reading.

You Break the Monotony of Everyday Life

No matter how much you love your ordinary routine, you’re bound to get tired of it sometimes.  After a while, staying in the same place and doing the same thing every day will start to wear down on your health and happiness.

When you’ve had enough of your day to day existence, it’s time to pack up your car roof rack with vacation essentials and hit the road. Even if you only go away for the weekend, your health and happiness will thank you for it.

You Get to Have New Experiences

Whether it’s trekking through the Andes in South America or puffing on some legal cannabis in Amsterdam, having new experiences is the essential benefit of travel. It’s also very beneficial to your health and happiness.

We all love home. It’s where our friends and family are, and where we keep everything that’s important in our lives.

However, without making journeys to other places, you’ll never live up to your true potential.

You Can Get Active

This isn’t something that applies to every trip. Everyone has spent at least one summer vacation sipping cocktails by a swimming pool.

However, many kinds of vacations allow you to get active. The more you exercise, the healthier you are, so it’s great to have the opportunity to stay active while traveling.

Many vacations involve physical activity, including skiing and hiking trips.

You Can Relieve Some Stress

This is perhaps the most obvious benefit of going on vacation, health-related or otherwise. Ask anyone why they go on holiday, and you’re likely to hear some reference to stress relief.

However, not everyone realizes just how crucial stress management is for our health and happiness. Stress is closely linked to anxiety, which is the most common mental health issue affecting Americans today.

There are many ways to combat stress and anxiety. Traveling is one great example.

Getting away from home will help you put your worries into perspective. By the time you get home, you’ll have a much healthier attitude to the issues in your life.

You Can Start Learning New Things

Nothing is better for our health and happiness than learning new skills. If you like to travel, there are plenty of opportunities for you to pick up and perfect new things.

An obvious example is a new language. If you studied literature in school or college, but you haven’t practiced it a lot recently, going to a place where that language is spoken the best way to sharpen those skills.

Finding the right place to go to practice your language can be relatively easy or very difficult, depending on the style. If you’re trying to practice Italian, you don’t have any option other than Italy itself.

If you’re trying to speak Spanish, however, you have almost all of South and Central America to choose from.

Traveling Will Boost Your Immunity

This might seem like an odd reason to travel, but it is a real thing. Those who regularly travel to different places have a more robust immune system than those who stay put.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Going to different places exposes your body to different kinds of immune system threats, which your body can then learn to deal with.

Also, the more you travel, the more varied your diet becomes. This nutritional diversity will strengthen your immune responses, as well.

With the COVID-19 pandemic remaining a threat to all of us, a robust immune system is more important than ever for our health and happiness.

You, Will, Learn to Be More Resilient

Traveling can be a lot of fun. However, when things start to go wrong, it can also present challenges.

If you’re going on a long trip with many different destinations, chances are you’ll run into some kind of problem at some stage. Maybe you’ll miss a train or get lost on the way to your hostel in the middle of the night. The longer you spend on the road, the more likely it is something will go astray.

This kind of situation is brilliant for honing your problem-solving skills. When you’re in a different place with no access to your usual support systems, you have no option but to address the issue at hand yourself.

Keeping the Blues at Bay with a Trip Away

We know that not everyone has the luxury of travel right now. If you live somewhere with stringent travel restrictions, your next journey might be a few months away.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t get planning! The great travel destinations of the world will all still be in place when COVID-19 is a distant memory, so get your thinking cap on and start deciding where you’ll be going on your next big vacation.

If you enjoyed this article, you’d probably enjoy some of our others. Follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter to ensure you never miss anything that we post.

Read more:

• Travel Without Leaving Your Home 
• Travel in 2020- Feed Your Soul, Mind, and Spirit
• Cycle Your Way through America- Boost Your Mental and Physical Health

The post 7 Ways Travel Can Improve Your Health and Happiness appeared first on Food Health & Parenting Tips.

Trying to do too much too quickly is guaranteed to end in you falling off the weight-loss wagon. The simplest and easiest method to achieve a healthy body weight is to start small and slowly increase your pace. Here are a few tips to help you get started on your weight loss journey. 

Image source: Octavian Dan

Cut Back on Carbs 

People who follow low carb diets often experience more significant short-term weight loss than people on low-fat diets. More importantly, studies show that low-carb diets are associated with less fatigue, hunger, and stomach problems than low-fat diets. However, not all carbs are equal. Healthy carbs such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables provide plenty of additional nutrients, while refined carbs such as sugar, white bread, and sodas offer little to no nutrition. Eliminate or drastically reduce your intake of carbs so that 30-40% of your daily calorie intake comes from carbs, a moderately-low carb diet. 

Increase your Protein Intake 

A diet that is higher in protein can help to prevent and treat obesity. Meals that are high in protein result in modulations in appetite, calorie intake, and energy metabolism.  Data from various studies indicate that including at least 25-30 grams of protein in each meal improves appetite and aid bodyweight management. Higher-protein diets also help to improve cardiometabolic risk factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure levels, which have a positive impact on heart health and overall health. Unlike other weight-loss diets that result in muscle loss, high protein diets show more significant fat mass loss with the preservation of lean muscle mass. 

Have an Early Lunch 

There’s no denying that what we eat affects our body weight, but recent research shows that when we eat might play a significant role in weight management. The concept that the human body reacts differently to food based on the day is not a new one, as this idea can be traced to ancient Chinese medicine. Researchers found that test participants who ate lunch early lose more weight and have a faster weight-loss rate than those who eat a late lunch, even though both groups were following the same weight loss diet. This indicates that eating an early lunch could be one of the simplest habits for weight loss. 

Image source: Matheus Frade 

Set Measurable Exercise Goals 

According to health experts, you should avoid vague goals like “I will walk more each day” and instead have concrete, measurable goals such as “I will walk for 15 minutes every day”. When starting a new weight-loss fitness routine, make sure that you start slow and gradually increase the duration and intensity of each session. Avoid high-stress activities such as running until you have reached your ideal body weight as these exercises will put a lot of stress on your knee and ankle joints. Swimming, water aerobics, and walking are perfect weight-loss exercises for overweight and obese individuals. 

Image source: Photo by Guille Álvarez on Unsplash

Reward Success  

A weight-loss diet and exercise routine requires self-control and self-discipline. Most people are excited when they start their weight loss program, but their enthusiasm begins to wane in a matter of days. A simple way to stay motivated is to acknowledge and reward your success. Never use food as a reward. Instead, you can treat yourself to a spa day or that new phone you’ve been eyeing. This is a simple way to ensure success as it reduces your stress and increases your resilience. You can set up a reward system to get regular small rewards and more enormous rewards for specific milestones. 

Planning is an essential aspect of weight loss, but it’s equally vital that you get started. Don’t wait for the ideal conditions to put your plan into action. Instead, find ways to implement your plan, despite the obstacles. In addition to following these habits for weight loss, you can also use natural weight loss supplements such as green coffee extract as they could aid your weight loss efforts. You can again try a more holistic approach, such as intermittent fasting, to speed up your weight loss. However, it is crucial that you first talk to your doctor to ensure that there is no negative impact on your overall health. 

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What many of these body positive influencers have in common as that they share a love for Dr. Linda Bacon and her book: Health At Every Size. The basic principle behind her book is that we need to live in a world where we value all bodies. To do so, we can support individuals through compassionate self-care. Also, Dr. Bacon encourages us to look beyond size to create a culture of empathy.

Body positivity is more than an individual journey. Disrupt the injustices that lead to body dissatisfaction, alienation, shame, trauma, and poor health, including weightism, racism, sexism, cis-sexism, ableism, ageism, and classism, among others. https://t.co/GonVgY1jsZ

— Linda Bacon (@LindaBaconHAES) May 7, 2018

About Linda Bacon

Dr. Bacon’s credentials include a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of California, Davis. She also serves as an Associate Nutrition. With two decades of being a professor and researcher, she is an expert on many topics. These include social justice, health, weight, and nutrition. In addition, she conducts studies on health and weight, many have been published in top scientific journals. 

Are you an LGBTQI+ advocate? Check out our blog post on the 5 Safest Places for LGBTQ+ Travellers.

Dr. Bacon’s book, Health at Every Size, is a bestseller and top-rated read. She is known for her social and political commentary. As an advocate for body respect, Linda channels her ideas through her large social media following. Not to mention, she is all about intersectionality: her work considers the ways that power, privilege, and disadvantage complicate our experiences in our bodies. I also think this point is extremely important since everybody deserves respect and value. Inclusivity in the body positive movement is essential.

Some Standout Facts

Did you know that diets have a 95% failure rate? Dr. Bacon assures that you have not failed your diet, but your diet has failed you.

Here is a video that explains the principles behind the Health at Every Size Diet.

Expand Your Wellness Knowledge

If you want to expand your knowledge about health, wellness, and body positivity, I cannot recommend Linda Bacon’s book enough. This book is transformational for many individuals (myself included), and encourages a practice called Intuitive Eating. This is a practice where you make peace with food. (I will touch on this in a future blog post).

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