Forget Resolutions: Making Your Way Towards Permanent Good Health

If you have started the new year feeling as though you are not as healthy as you might like to be, you are absolutely not alone. This is a feeling that many of us have a lot of the time, and it can often seem like something of a real challenge to be able to make ourselves healthier in life. If you have got to a position where there is so much that you need to do in order to be able to improve your health, then you might be feeling a little lost. However, as long as you make some small steps towards being healthier, you should find that you are able to eventually get to a place where you are in permanent good health, at least as far as possible. In this post, we are going to look at some of the things you might want to do in that regard so that you can ensure that you lead a healthier life in no time at all.

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The Secret To A Good Diet

The trouble with nutritional advice is that everybody’s body is different. There is no real way of telling how your body will respond to a particular diet, even if I know how mine will respond. For that reason, giving nutritional advice to strangers online can be something of a risky affair. It is best in such cases to stick to the absolute known facts, or at least those which are likely to be true for the majority of people. As it happens, there are some things which we can say with near certainty will apply to most people, and if you take the following on board you should find that you are eating a relatively safe and healthy diet which should make you much healthier and feel better in no time.

So what is it that we can say for everyone? It’s pretty simple: eat vegetables. You know already of course that eating vegetables is important, but it is impossible to over-stress this point. Basically the only thing you need to worry about with your diet is that you are eating a lot of vegetables. That means not only the quantity, but also that you are eating a large variety of vegetables too. If you are doing that, you have a pretty good diet, at least if you are also avoiding other foods. Actually, there is increasing evidence that the best diet for humans everywhere is the vegan diet, although not many people are keen on following that strictly. However, in essence, if you are eating a variety of vegetables and not much else, you are doing some amazing things for yourself, the extent of which might even surprise you.

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This diet is shown to lead to a reduction in the risk of developing all types of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and many other illnesses and health issues besides. It leads to more energy and a happier mind, better mood, and a boosted immune system. Red meats are pretty bad for you, and should be kept to a minimum, ideally cut out altogether. And there is one thing that you should absolutely avoid as much as possible if you want to live a full and healthy life: sugar. This, in particular when it is added to something rather than being a natural ingredient of something, causes your weight to balloon, your heart health to decrease, and increases your appetite so that you will generally eat more. Cut out sugar, and your life will change.

If this all seems like a bit much to take on in one go, consider this: try going vegan for a fortnight, and see how you feel. There is a very good chance that you will never look back.

Stop Poisoning Yourself

Humans have a weird tendency to poison themselves in many interesting and diverse ways. Obviously, the main reason for this is usually some kind of recreation or otherwise an attempt at boosting one’s mood or mental state. However, even those substances that appear to do this in the short-term will cause a serotonin deficiency in the long term, thereby actually making it harder to feel naturally happy in the future. And that’s not even to mention the kinds of effects on the body that many of these toxins have. It is absolutely the best thing just to make a point of not poisoning yourself at all, if you can help it.

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We’ll look for now into the most common poison: alcohol. Chances are, you drink alcohol at least once a week, if you are like the majority of people. You might even drink more: many people admit to drinking every night, even if it is just a glass of wine. Here we run into a difficulty, for some medical professionals do claim that an occasional glass of red is quite good for you, even to the point of reducing your risk of heart attack. But if you are drinking too much, and you know that it is damaging you, then you will want to think about what you can do to make sure you stop drinking for good.

For many, this can seem like an impossible task, but it is absolutely something that is going to make a huge difference to your life, and it’s worth putting the effort in. There are a lot of things you can do here: for the truly alcoholic, there are of course rehabilitation programs and AA meetings and so on, but even for the average joe who just wants to stop drinking alcohol, there are many methods which can work. For now, try merely switching out your glass of wine tonight with a non-alcoholic alternative. You will probably find that you enjoy yourself just as much – and you will feel a lot better the following morning, of course.

The other main poison that you will want to avoid is tobacco, the number one preventable cause of deaths in the world. Over 70% of lung cancers are caused by tobacco, and around 40% of heart attacks and strokes. On top of that, it ages you, dries out your skin, deadens your serotonin receptors, and makes your dental hygiene considerably worse. Stopping smoking can be easier than you might think, with Allen Carr’s Easyway being a particularly powerful methodology which has helped an estimated 60 million people stop smoking successfully. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you are that one special case who cannot be helped. Everyone can quit their nicotine habit should they put the effort in.

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Ridding yourself of such toxins is one of the strongest moves you can make towards leading a healthier life, and should be considered an essential part of improving your health in general.

Stress: A Killer

It is a sad indictment of our culture that we consider stress to be not just an unavoidable by-product of our working lives, but somehow a kind of badge of honour. It is often seen as somehow noble if you are frequently stressed, a marker of a good worker. But this is ridiculous for at least one very good reason: it’s killing you.

Far from being a natural state which one should aim to be in perpetually, stress is nature’s way of telling your body that what you are subjecting it to is too much, and that you need to step away and recharge. If you are feeling stressed on a regular basis, you are not taking care of yourself. You might feel that this is a bit strong, but consider that stress makes literally every disease known to humanity worse, with a worsened prognosis, and more likely to occur in the first place, and you can start to see why it might be a good idea to keep it at bay as much as possible.

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And doing so is easier than you might think, with so many stress-busting methods existing three days which you can make use of in your daily life. There is a very good reason that meditation has become so popular in recent years in the West, and it is because we are putting ourselves under such stress that we need a way to deal with it. Done right, a regular meditation practice can help you to nip stress in the bud, so that you rarely experience it in the first place. That will mean that your cortisol is kept to a minimum, which allows your feel-good neurotransmitters to flow more freely, and allows you to be happier and healthier in mind and body. Do yourself a favour this year, and make it your mission to cast stress out of your life as the unworthy and damaging thing that it truly is. You will be so glad you did so, and you will feel as though your life is practically beginning again.

If you take on board all of these tips, you should find that you are making your way towards permanent good health in no time, and that your quality of life is steadily increasing.