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Benefits of A Healthy Lifestyle: Good Nutrition, Diet, and Exercise - Sky Fitness

Benefits of A Healthy Lifestyle: Good Nutrition, Diet, and Exercise

Guest Blog Written By Luke Mitchell

At this point, you’ve most likely heart the term ‘healthy living’ being thrown around by various wellness and fitness websites. But what does it actually mean? Well, in a nutshell, this approach presupposes adopting a diet based around nutrient-rich, organic foods, coupled with working out regularly, even daily if possible.

Although it might sound like a challenge, the beauty of this entire thing is that you can start slow and add new things along the way. Cutting out processed foods and walking for ten minutes each day is more than enough to build on, and you will notice that your abilities increase with each passing month.

And if you’re looking for something a bit more intensive and demanding, read more about the max workouts and see if this approach to training is suited for you. There are quite a few reasons to do this. Here are five benefits that come with adopting a better living plan and focusing on your fitness and nutrition.

The Benefits

1. Disease Prevention

Even though most of us are aware of what the consequences of not living right are, we might not always realize their severity. Statistics published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services attest that both morbidly obese and people who are of a healthy weight struggle with complications as a result of their poor diet and sedentary lifestyle.

The most commonly encountered afflictions that are developed as a result of not making the right choices are heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, and even cancer in some more unfortunate cases. Furthermore, the age at which these tend to happen nowadays is increasingly lower, which means children and teenagers are equally at risk.

The HHS emphasizes the importance of concentrating on your well-being and nourishing your body to maintain it in tip-top shape. By doing this, your risk of falling prey to the aforementioned illnesses decreases. And the benefits don’t end here. In fact, your immune system will also be stronger thanks to a nutrient-rich diet.

And when your immune system is functioning seamlessly and at full capacity, you are instantly better protected against additional dangers induced by external factors, such as bacterial or viral infections like pneumonia or the common cold. All in all, it’s safe to say that eating right and working out on the regular is the best medicine.

2. Weight Control

It’s no secret that a healthy and nutritious diet combined with regular exercise represents the key to slimming down and meeting your fitness goals. But did you know that it is also a good way to control your weight too? Regardless of whether you want to maintain what you’ve got, or you want to tone your body and shed some extra pounds, this is still the best approach.

The ideal duration of your weekly physical activity should be somewhere around 150 minutes, which boils down to more or less 30 minutes of daily exercise and an entire weekend to rest and recover afterward. And to meet this requirement, you don’t even have to hit the gym. Simply walking or biking to work instead of driving or taking the bus will suffice.

As for what you choose to eat, contrary to popular belief, consuming only small portions and obsessing over your daily calorie count aren’t the most reliable methods. Instead, try eating clean, organic foods at regular intervals during the day, and never skip a meal. Starving yourself can lead to binge eating later in the day, and you certainly don’t want to go down that path.

3. Energy Boost

Anyone who’s eaten junk food more than a couple of times in their life knows how lethargic and heavy a full meal of the stuff leaves you feeling. This is usually because such options lack essential nutrients. So, while your stomach might be full, your body won’t be nourished at all, and you’ll spend the day running on fumes.

Therefore, ensuring that you get a balanced dose of healthy fats, protein, carbs, fiber, vitamins, and minerals with each meal is essential for a daily energy boost. And exercising can help you train your body into being more active as well. Sustained movement and effort put all your systems into motion, which carries you successfully through any task.

4. Improved Mood

There are a few ways in which adopting a healthy lifestyle can improve your mood overall. According to the Mayo Clinic, regular physical exercise stimulates the production of endorphins, which are the brain chemicals helping you feel relaxed and happy. This is why we tend to feel a lot better after a workout session.

Furthermore, doing this in parallel with keeping up a diet improves your physical appearance, which heightens your self-esteem and works wonders for your confidence. Feeling better about yourself is a good way to work on your mental health, and it might even give you the boost you need to embrace life with more enthusiasm each day.

5. Longer Lifespan

As a final benefit, people who adopt a healthy lifestyle are more likely to live longer than those who are sedentary and engage in poor eating habits. This comes as a natural outcome of all the aforementioned improvements such an approach brings, namely disease prevention, weight control and an overall better outlook. And the statistics back it up.

Data made available by the American Council on Exercise attests that as little as 30 minutes of walking each day prolongs a persons life expectancy tremendously. This goes to show that you don’t need to make complicated changes and turn everything upside down to see visible results. Starting small is good enough.

Conclusion

Adopting a healthy lifestyle isn’t just something that Instagram influencers promote on their social media accounts to seem unique. It’s a viable change that can bring a lot of good into your life if you allow it to. And the positive results won’t take too long to appear. All you need to start out on this path is some ambition.

Need more guidance? Sign up for Personal Training or Nutrition Consulting at Sky Fitness to start your journey toward a healthy lifestyle!