[How to] Fight for your health

This post is a breakdown of simple things you can do to help jump start your journey to become your healthiest self. You have to fight for your health; nobody else is going to do that for you.

I am starting to write this blog with a mission to get people educated about everything you need to get healthy. So I’m gonna do everything in my power to help anyone who is motivated to get healthy and is willing to make a change.

Let’s get started with the list of things that you’ll wish you would have known earlier:

1) Environment :

The first thing that’s stopping you from getting healthy is the environment you are in. It may be the processed chips in your home, it maybe all the soda and drinks you have in your room. This temps you consciously or sub-consciously. Even if you start eating well, your brain always knows that the unhealthy processed foods are nearby and thus you end up fighting yourself. Then if you indulge in those foods, you feel guilt. That’s not the type of environment you want to be in.

I would suggest you get rid of those foods and keep around some simple healthy snacks at your home like berries, nuts, seeds, eggs, veggies like cucumber, celery, etc which are crunchy and tasty. I know these may not be as tempting as the chips and biscuits but once you’re hungry for a snack, these will be tasty and you’ll feel proud instead of bad.

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2) Commitment

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This is the most important thing. You have to be committed to get healthy. Along this journey, there will be hundreds of things that’ll go against you. There are people who’ll discourage choices that you make, so you’ll need to stay firm.

If you give me commitment, I promise to keep giving you means to become healthier. Being fit is not an overnight thing, but it’s the right choices made over a long period of time. I’m writing this from my personal experience over the last couple of years.

I’m going to give you the tools but you are going to have to make a decision to use them.

3) Ingredients

Food is the most important factor that you need to focus on when you decide to get healthy. This means that you need to know what all ingredients are there in your food.

Food can be medicine or poison depending on its ingredients.

Well, the first ingredient to avoid is sugar.

Also, avoid processed food altogether but that’s not an easy thing to do so for starters, make sure the ingredients are better than most; if not best for you and start to decrease tier consumption slowly but steadily keeping your diet sustainable.

The simplest thing to do is to read all ingredients of every item that you buy and keep at home which includes everything from junk foods to oils and condiments. That’s where the first major change towards the healthy lifestyle will happen

For now I’ll just leave you with things to be beware of:

Maltodextrin, Dextrose, Edible vegetable oil (Soy, Canola, Palm), Flavourings (Artificial or Natural), Invert sugar syrups, Conditioners, Extracts (All types).

If you see the above mentioned ingredients on the packets, make sure to google them and find out how bad they are for your body.

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4) Walking

This is the simplest one and you may think that walking doesn’t burn as many calories, so what’s the point?. What you may not know is that walking is even better than running as it does not spike your Cortisol (stress hormone) levels. Getting 20-30 minutes walk twice a day along with selection of right food will give you so many benefits that you will be shocked. I’m not even suggesting you walk fast, I am only asking you to walk twice a day.

5) Black coffee / Green Tea

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If you already like Black coffee and/or green tea, good for you. If you don’t let me list down the benefits and let you decide if you wanna start consuming these

• Negligible calories
• Helps regulate blood sugar
• Promotes weight loss
• Full of antioxidants
• Anti aging properties
• Cognitive benefits
• And more..

They can also be consumed while fasting which I’ll explain later in this post.

Note : Make sure that black coffee is consumed early morning as high caffeine is not good for your sleep. If you want a beverage post lunch, it has to be green tea.

6) Fasting

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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You must have heard this quote many times. The problem is most people interpret it wrong.

Break-fast is surely the most important meal but it’s not necessary to have it as soon as your wake up or early morning. It can be anytime in the day. If you haven’t guessed it, I am talking about Intermittent fasting(IF). One of the protocol of IF is 16:8 i.e. Eating all your meals and calories in an 8 hour window and then fasting for the next 16 hours

This automatically gives you calorie restriction while still giving you benefits of eating till you are satiated. You get to burn some of your own fat for fuel in the 16 hours.

NOTE: Do not switch directly to 16 hours of fasting from not fasting at all. Slowly increase the time gaps until you get to 16 hours.

Conclusion:

Start following all or at least some of the above tips and start your journey towards becoming healthy and you’ll see the results for yourself. Stay tuned on the blog for more such posts.

If you find this post helpful, please share it on social media or to anyone who might find this helpful.

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Sources:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322426

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/green-tea-vs-black-tea#bottom-line

Best Cooking Oils

https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/research-intermittent-fasting-shows-health-benefits

https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=01938924-201802000-00016

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-nutr-071816-064634?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed