All diets have an expiry date, and common diets aren’t sustainable in the long term. But why? Diets are unstainable commonly due to being too restrictive, lacking variety, or being too complicated. This, in turn, can lead to behaviours such as binge eating becoming unmotivated and lethargic.
So, how can you start living a healthy lifestyle?  To maintain a healthy body weight and have ideal body composition we need to scrap the idea of diets and instead look at our overall lifestyle. We can achieve this by including things such as increased water consumption, regular exercise, and better sleep.
Continue reading and enlighten yourself on how diets aren’t all they’re made out to be and how a different approach should be used for longevity and sustainability
Top 3 Tips For Creating a Healthy Lifestyle
To maintain a healthy body weight and have ideal body composition we need to scrap the idea of diets and instead look at our overall lifestyle.
We can achieve this by including things such as increased water consumption and regular exercise. So here are our top three suggestions for leading a healthy lifestyle. Each is as important, and when you combine them, you will feel soon start to feel more fulfilled.
Continue reading to learn how we can change our ways of life.
1. Change Your Lifestyle, Not Diet
Creating a healthy lifestyle likely won’t need any drastic changes, rather small bitesize changes which can be integrated slowly and progressively over time to help build healthy routines which then form healthy habits which when combined produce a healthier lifestyle.
Forming a healthy lifestyle is a marathon, not a sprint, jumping in all guns blazing inevitably leads to falling off the wagon and returning to unhealthier habits!
With this in mind, let’s take water consumption and exercise to start with!
2. Increasing Your Water Consumption
With the human body consisting of 60% water, it’s no surprise how important water is when keeping the body running efficiently.
Below we have listed a couple of tips to help you realise the benefit of water and typically how much you should be drinking.
Water Consumption Advice
- As a general rule of thumb, we should be aiming to drink 2.5 litres daily, with this amount increasing when necessary due to weather, increased exercise, and increased dietary fibre intake.
- Not drinking enough water potentially leads to dehydration, fatigue, headache, poor digestion, and reduced mental clarity.
- 2.5 litres roughly equates to 5 pints of water, so a good starting point which is more than bitesize is for every morning to drink 1 pint of water with your breakfast.
- Continue to drink 1 pint of water with your breakfast for 1/2 weeks and it will soon come as routine as brushing your teeth! Once you’ve conquered this first step, add another pint of water with your lunch… and so on so forth.
Using this simple yet progressive concept means adopting a healthier lifestyle becomes less of a drastic shift as we gradually become accustomed to it over time, resulting in increased sustainability. Give it a try!
3. Increasing Your Exercise/Activity Levels
For adults aged 19-64 years of age, the NHS recommends two sessions of strength exercise each week to work on all the major muscle groups. Its also advised completing at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity or 75 vigorous-intensity activities weekly, whereby the exercise is spread evenly over 4-5 days a week.
Furthermore, the NHS recommends reducing time spent sitting, lying down, and breaking up long periods of not moving with some light activity.
This of course needs to be a slow progressive increase in our exercise levels to not over-face ourselves! Nevertheless, ensuring that we over time meet these exercise guidelines is so vitally important for our health and wellness that there’s no better time to start than right now!
Beginning the Couch to 5K or engaging in two sessions of pilates or strength & conditioning classes weekly would be a brilliant starting point to start your progressive journey to reaching the above exercise recommendations.
Regular exercise works our cardiovascular system, resulting in a fitter and stronger heart and lungs, our muscles develop stronger, making everyday tasks like walking, climbing stairs, and running less difficult. Our mental health also improves due to the powerful release of endorphins…
The list of benefits of regular exercise is truly endless!
Additional Factors of a Healthy Lifestyle
Here are some other factors that contribute to living a healthy lifestyle. You’re not expected to include all these factors in your life overnight, they will need time and patience, so take one step at a time at your own pace. But once you’re ready, embrace all of these points and you’ll never look back.
- Regular exercise (cardiovascular and strengthening)
- A well-balanced diet (fat, protein & carbohydrates)
- Sufficient water consumption
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Sleep
- Reduced stress levels
- And many more factors!
Nutrition Advice at Katie Bell Physio Sheffield
At Katie Bell Physiotherapy & Wellness we are lucky to have an in-house nutritionist, Helen Everatt from Mission Nutrition!
Helen is a Certified Nutrition Coach who has been with Katie Bell Physio since 2019, shortly after completing her Fitness Instructor qualification. Her passion is food and nutrition, and she enjoys working 1-2-1 with clients to teach nutrition, mindfulness, and the power of habit.
Helen understands the difficulty of fat loss and the complex messages we are bombarded with in order to achieve it, having been an overweight teen and adult. Helen is adamant that people may reduce excess body fat in a healthy, nutritious way and keep it off for good.
Interested in learning more about the nutritional services Helen offers or keen on liaising with one of our Physiotherapists in creating an individualised exercise plan to safely incorporate regular exercise into your routine?