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The Benefits of Incorporating a Healthy Lifestyle

Impact of a Healthy Diet & Power of Exercise

By Maliha AnwerPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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"The mind and body are not separate. What affects one affects the other"—Anonymous

I came across these lines while scrolling through my social media posts and I couldn't agree more. In order to achieve our long-term body goals, we have to understand that change does not occur in one night. We will have to adopt a healthy lifestyle if we want our fitness to last long. While some of us join a gym or go for any other physical activity easily, others find it hard to adopt a certain fitness regimen in their daily lives. Worse yet, there are those who pay the membership fees but are unwilling or unmotivated to go to the gym. Lastly, there are those who find it hard to make healthier choices and go for fad diets and end up ruining their appetite. If that is your case too, then fret no more. The main aim of writing this article is to reach out and connect with people who love fitness and are health conscious but need motivation, support and guidance to follow through their lifestyle changes. Being a fitness instructor myself and someone who lost 40 kg weight over the course of time whilst battling my health issues and incorporating a healthy lifestyle, I know exactly what the challenges are and how to overcome bumps in the road to achieve fitness goals.

To start with, in order to stay motivated and overcome the challenges of incorporating a healthy lifestyle into our daily lives, we must start with daily small habits. For example: When I started to work on myself and change my lifestyle, I started with watching out for my daily eating habits. The first thing I noticed was I had a habit of skipping my breakfast. Due to my busy scheduled life, I had somehow developed this habit of subtracting my breakfast and going for a cup of tea instead, just to save time. So slowly and gradually, I started eating my breakfast by adding one slice of bran bread with my cup of tea. Then I proceeded to add two boiled eggs. Ultimately, I ended up having two boiled eggs with one slice of bran bread with a dash of butter on it and a cup of tea. Eating a proper breakfast did give me a boost of energy and helped me prevent alarmingly dropping sugar levels and impulsive eating. Just the way I did it, you should also start with monitoring your eating habits; watch out for the bad ones and adopt the good ones slowly and gradually.

While you are trying to adopt a balanced diet and eat healthy meals, try incorporating a certain workout regimen in your daily life. I started with a 20 minute walk on my rooftop. I increased my pace slowly from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. After that, I installed such applications on my smartphone which helped me count my steps. In this way, I customized my walking pattern. Over the years I have added gym (cardio+weights) and yoga to my workout regimens as well. Just like that, without even noticing, I lost 40 kg in a healthy way, not just that I ended up changing my activity levels and eating habits in a subtle way. Consequently, I ended up following a healthy lifestyle without even noticing it. The point I want to emphasize is, just like me, you can also do it. Start slow, start small, keep low key, think positive, set SMART goals, change your mindset from "it is impossible" or "I can’t do it" to "Little by little, daily, I’ll achieve my target." Don’t listen to non-supportive people, be patient with yourself and most importantly, download good and uplifting music.

Remember when you choose to opt for a fitness or workout regimen, there are various options to choose from: brisk walk, Zumba, yoga, swimming, Pilates, and cardio are just a few options I have mentioned. These physical exertions, when performed under proper supervision, have a direct impact on not just our bodies but our moods, behaviors, and minds’ functioning too. At this point, I would like to state that not all kinds of physical exertion generates the desired results, which include leaving your mind and body in a better state after you are done with it. If your workout drains you more than it uplifts you, something is wrong. You must check with your fitness instructor. Either you are posing the wrong way, your angles are not correct, your repetitions are miscalculated, maybe you are picking up heavier weights, or maybe you are performing exercises which do not support your medical condition. Whichever the case, something is not being done right and you should check with your instructor immediately.

Having said that, let me elaborate the benefits of adopting a healthy lifestyle I was raving about earlier in my article. Some of you may already be aware of them and some of you may not be. These numerous health benefits come as a part of the package of almost any sort of exercise and have long-lasting effects. These are listed below:

  1. Impacts on moods, energies & behaviors: Exercise helps us uplift our moods and energies by releasing certain chemicals in brain. This consequently improves the quality of our interactions with people around us. It helps us lead better lives.
  2. Impact on mind’s functionality: Exercise helps us in managing stress, improves our focus and helps us inculcate a new mindset of setting SMART goals and achieving them one by one. We feel empowered, refreshed, become more attentive and are ready to take calculated risks for rewards in life.
  3. Impact on overall physical health & fitness is a plus: This benefit is self-explanatory. With reduction of body fat, improved circulation of blood and all other medical benefits of exercise, physical fitness is a surplus.
There are various kinds of diets and workout regimens available to us today, and each regimen has a further stream of genres, like yoga is further divided into power yoga and Kundalni yoga, etc. The point is to find out which one best works for your body and adopt a healthy diet accordingly for better results. Once you start working out and eating healthy, you would never want to look back; after all, who doesn’t like improved mental and emotional health combined with fitness? Last but not least, DON’T RUSH things. Remember, "slow and steady wins the race."
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About the Creator

Maliha Anwer

Writer | Blogger | INFJ

Website: The Home Girls Digest

Social Media:

1. Pinterest: Maliha Anwer

2. Instagram: The Homegirl's Digest

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