My 10 steps towards a healthier lifestyle

A healthy lifestyle is probably something many styles follow, but can it be achieved with cures or wise books? The problem is that diets, general dietary advice, and calorie counters are based on schedules and a motto that one size fits all. It's just not that easy - thankfully because we're all different.

Some people can tolerate eating less healthy at times without feeling bothered by it, others react to sugar or lack of exercise with headaches, fluid retention, and the like. I meet people every day who think they are living a healthy life, and yet they are not feeling very well. The problem may be that when we think about healthy living, we think about diet and exercise and forget the rest. You can exercise and eat just as healthy, but if you forget to drink enough fluids, live too low fat, do not get enough sleep, push yourself a little too hard or feel mentally ill, then you are still straining your body.

I have gathered 10 steps towards a healthier lifestyle and knowledge of what it means for your health. There are no prohibited foods, units of measurement, or time horizons. I have put together 10 healthy steps towards a healthier lifestyle that I hope can inspire you.

 

Healthy lifestyle - 10 steps towards a healthier lifestyle

  1. Gear down! Stress is harmful to health in many ways.

  2. Move - and get fresh air every day.

  3. Sleep well! The body works for you at night - give it peace.

  4. Eat vegetables - lots of vegetables and some fruit in all colors.

  5. Cut down on white goods - sugar, white bread, pasta, and hot potatoes.

  6. Stay full - eat real meals 5-6 times a day

  7. Drink water and limit the coffee

  8. Eat fat. Your body needs healthy fatty acids.

  9. Eat varied

  10. Eat organic, clean, and unprocessed foods

Gear down! Stress is harmful to health in many ways

Stress is an overlooked culprit when we talk about healthy living. Stress eats away at the body's energy stores, disrupts the sleep pattern, and weakens the immune system. A diet with a calorie counter app that records everything you eat forbids you to eat foods that fatten force you to run or practice a sport with high heart rate and high fat burning can be really stressful and actually not very healthy. This is perhaps the main reason why I recommend shifting focus from weight and instead of tuning in to your well-being. If you are stressed, it can be a really good idea to think about how you eat, but everything you do should take care of yourself.

Move - and get fresh air every day

Exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle because it helps i.a. the body gets rid of waste products and accumulated fluid, and then it gives the cells oxygen. But exercise does not have to be running, interval training, and weight training if it is not you at all. A good bike ride to work, a long walk, yoga, swimming, kayaking, and dancing are also movements. If you can get movement into everyday life that you really want, then it also has a de-stressing effect. If you prefer the gym in the winter then consider whether you can get fresh air in other ways. Take a slightly longer walk with the dog during the day, drop off children on foot, park a little further from work and take a good walkthrough green surroundings on foot or see if you can entice your colleague to hold a walking meeting. 

Fresh air is also an important element of a healthy lifestyle. Studies, in particular, have shown that there is a relationship between the lack of fresh air and depression. People with a lot of outdoor work, such as gardeners and educators, have a 40% lower risk of being depressed. But fresh air also allows the body to get rid of carbon dioxide when we breathe in and breathe in the fresh oxygen, as opposed to “reusing” the air from a bad indoor climate.

Sleep well! The body works for you at night - give it peace

A lot of research has been done into sleep because it has been linked to long-term sleep deprivation and a weakened immune system, obesity, stress, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes 2. Sleep is important for a healthy lifestyle, because even if you do not experience it, then it is at night, the body recovers. 

If you have difficulty sleeping, there are some basic tips you can try. Avoid coffee after 4 PM, because it takes 6 hours for caffeine to be excreted from the body. Avoid not only evening coffee but also sweet treats before bedtime. Try to satisfy your hunger in the late evening hours with bananas or pumpkin seeds, as these foods are thought to stimulate the production of the sleep hormone melatonin.

Make sure the bedroom is cool, dark, and calm. Put the mobile on flight mode if you use it as an alarm and do not check mail before bedtime. Tell body and mind that it's time to gear down and move into dreamland with a good book instead of work, action movies, or Facebook on the bedside.

Eat, drink and snack lots of vegetables

We can not get too many vegetables. You do not have to count whether you get 3, 6, or 10 vegetables a day, but just remember that a healthy lifestyle includes lots of vegetables and less fruit. You could start by being inspired by beautiful pictures of vegetables and salads. Let yourself be seduced and make a few salads that you really want to taste. At the same time, you can start thinking vegetables into the dishes you usually make. A tomato sauce can be made from a lot of vegetables, blended and eaten as a soup with a little skyr top, as a sauce on pasta, or as together with minced beef for spaghetti bolognese.

If you can get vegetables into your meals right from the morning, you are well on your way. It can be a good serving of red peppers for the cheese dish. Or try adding a few cubes of frozen spinach and avocado to your smoothie in the morning, it is completely tasteless and the avocado makes the smoothies nicely creamy. Make plenty of coarse salads of cabbage, they stay a few days in the fridge and are easy and filling to take with you like a packed lunch.

If you miss inspiration for salads, find a lot of delicious recipes online from good food bloggers.

Annette Harbech Olsen has a sea of ​​delicious recipes on her blog Food for Life and she has written a really good book Seven Healthy Steps, which actually makes it easy and inviting to start a healthier lifestyle.

Cut down on white goods - sugar, white bread, pasta, and hot potatoes

Cut back on white goods if you want to follow a healthy lifestyle. It is especially the white bread and the white pasta but also the white rice and potatoes. Boiled chilled potatoes are healthy enough but bypass the baked potatoes and mashed potatoes.

A bowl of white pasta can be equated with a bowl of sugar. White carbohydrates are densely packed with energy but contain very little nutrition. If your body does not need the energy, then it is stored in the fat depots. If you love bread, do not just eat whole grains, but go for the really coarse bread with lots of grains and rye bread with rye flour instead of wheat flour. Remember that you need to have nutrition in the food you eat and not empty calories. With whole grains and kernels, you get the whole grain - where there are good fatty acids, dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals. All the good that has been sifted from in the empty white teacup. 

If you love bread, choose whole grains with lots of grains.

If you bake yourself, try using oatmeal, rye flour, wholemeal, and sifted spelled flour instead of wheat.

Feel free to eat rye bread and choose bread with rye flour and rye kernels and not wheat.

If you eat gluten-free, go for the nutritious flour types such as buckwheat, oatmeal, almond flour, amaranth, chickpea flour, teff, quinoa flour, and whole-grain rice flour. Limit corn flour, potato flour, and white rice flour.

Replace white pasta with whole grain or gluten-free pasta on buckwheat or brown rice.

Replace the white rice with brown rice, quinoa, or pearl barley

Eat your fill-in protein instead of carbohydrates - preferably in the form of lentils, beans, poultry, fish and also eat healthy fats and coarse vegetables, they also saturate. Feel the difference in your stomach - from when you ate your fill of carbohydrates.

Keep your blood sugar stable

If your blood sugar is unstable, you are often very affected by fatigue, malaise, and cravings for unhealthy foods at the wrong times during the day. If you have unstable blood sugar, this can also have consequences for your health and future lifestyle diseases. Always start the day with a healthy and sensible breakfast. It could be a fresh smoothie made on almond milk, where you blend different foods, each bridging with both fat, protein, and carbohydrate could be a banana, blueberry, chia seeds, almonds, almond butter, raw vanilla powder, and cinnamon.

It is always a good idea to think about the composition of your meal when you want to follow a healthy lifestyle. Make sure that fat, protein, and carbohydrate are present in your meals. In addition, you must implement small healthy snacks during the day eg 1 banana and a small handful of nuts. This way you keep your metabolism going and your blood sugar stable. A good basic rule that works for many is 3 main meals and 3 snacks daily. Try it out and feel for what your body responds best to.

Drink fluids (avoid too much alcohol, coffee, black tea)

Nourishing the body with water is indispensable for all of us and an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. Water is the best source to rehydrate your body, and water helps to transport nutrients around our body as well as detoxify it. Coffee, black tea, and alcohol dehydrate your body instead of nourishing it and these drinks should be restricted. It is recommended to drink a minimum of 2 L of water daily. Coconut water is also recommended, as we absorb coconut water extremely easily due to the fact that it is isotonic, which means that it has the same chemical profile as our blood.

Welcome the healthy fats

Fat is actually an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Make sure you get enough healthy fats. It is especially olive oil, rapeseed oil, coconut oil, and organic kernel butter that contain essential fatty acids that benefit the body. Nuts and grains also have good healthy fatty acids and a lot of other goodies. Fish oil is the king of fatty acids because we rarely get enough of it, and it is beneficial for i.a. brain, sight, and heart. You can also get omega 3 fatty acids from chia seeds and flax seeds, but they do not all contain the same beneficial fatty acids like fish and seaweed.

If you have been bony with your weight for several years, then you have probably also cut down on fat where you could. But it's actually a really bad idea, especially if you want to lose weight. Fat is vital, just not fat with trans fatty acids, which you get from french fries, chips, and in-frying margarine. Fat is actually a bit of science - and still a controversial science. Many Danish doctors still recommend eating low-fat and especially saving on saturated fat, while other doctors and alternative therapists are advocates for fat - healthy fat.

I recommend fat, both saturated and unsaturated. But be picky with your fat sources and use them properly.

Fry your meat in chopped organic butter, coconut oil (possibly tasteless), or ghee

Sort your vegetables in olive oil

Pour olive oil, rapeseed oil, or flaxseed oil well on your salads, vegetables, and bread - but never heat a rapeseed oil or flaxseed oil

Bake cakes with churned organic butter or coconut oil

Use it. almond flour and mashed bananas in pancakes and cakes - as one of the sources of fat

Look at product declarations and bypass the light products and foods with sunflower seed oil, corn oil, and so-called "vegetable oils".

Eat good seeds and grains. Nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, and hemp seeds are good sources of fat, which are also rich in other important nutrients.

Take a supplement of fish oil, because it is difficult to get enough omega 3, even if you eat fish.

Eat varied 

Eating varied is a good rule of thumb when it comes to food intake. But what does it mean to eat varied? Varied diets include foods from different food groups. That is, it makes sense to get a little from each food group of vegetables, berries and fruits, dried fruits, nuts, grains, seeds, whole grains, meat and/or lentils and beans, possibly potatoes as well as dairy products if you can tolerate them.

Eating within these food groups in moderate amounts, as well as combining meals so that both fat, protein, and carbohydrate are present, gives a good feeling of satisfaction and satiety. Here is some inspiration for meals if you want to live a healthy lifestyle.

Breakfast - oatmeal with chia seeds, nuts, and fresh berries, and almond milk

Lunch - coarse rye bread with avocado and chicken cold cuts as well as vegetable sticks

Dinner - quinoa, salad, or vegetables as well as a piece of fish/chicken/beef or lentils/beans.

Snacks during the day could be 1 piece of fruit with a small handful of nuts and seeds or 1 slice of crispbread with tahini and banana or toasted chickpeas in coconut oil and chili.

Try it out and find out what your body needs and what it is happy with. Not all bodies are the same, but all bodies need and appreciate variation and stimulation of the senses.

Eat organic and clean ingredients - avoid processed 

Organic foods are not sprayed with pesticides, and better animal welfare and consideration for the environment have been taken into account here. There are many opinions about health and ecology, but several studies have shown that pesticides can have a harmful effect and that organic foods contain more vitamins than conventional foods. Therefore, we believe that ecology is related to a healthy lifestyle.

In addition, it is a good idea to limit the number of processed foods. The more a food is processed, the more its original structure and its nutritional value change. A healthy raw material in the pure sense is basically packed with vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, and various energy-giving macronutrients.

Therefore, I recommend that these be prioritized while avoiding foods with additives, flavor enhancers and endocrine disruptors.

Cart

No more products available for purchase

Your cart is currently empty.