Healthy lifestyle hacks to help you feel better

Many asso­ciate a healthy lifestyle with major changes: habits, nutri­tion, dai­ly rou­tine, sports. But any changes in life are eas­i­er and more psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly com­fort­able to bring in when they are grad­ual and not too large-scale. 12 sim­ple hacks that we have select­ed will help you take the first steps towards a healthy lifestyle.

Get tested for vitamins and minerals

Many peo­ple, start­ing to lead a healthy lifestyle, include var­i­ous vit­a­min com­plex­es in their diet. But vit­a­mins can­not be tak­en uncon­trol­lably, since many of them do not com­bine with each oth­er, and an over­dose can lead to hyper­vi­t­a­minosis, which threat­ens no less seri­ous prob­lems than the lack of these sub­stances. There­fore, before you change your lifestyle, you need to under­stand which vit­a­mins and min­er­als you lack.

Of course, there is no sin­gle analy­sis that would cov­er all groups of vit­a­mins, but a doc­tor, based on cer­tain symp­toms, can assume which sub­stances your body is defi­cient in and write out an appoint­ment for a par­tic­u­lar analy­sis.

Keep a food diary

There are many rea­sons to start keep­ing a food diary: iden­ti­fy­ing food habits and addic­tions, mon­i­tor­ing weight loss, fre­quen­cy and time of meals, por­tion size. Those who start it will be sur­prised how many hid­den calo­ries are present in their diet.

By keep­ing a diary, you can adjust the diet, the qual­i­ty and fre­quen­cy of what you eat, and iden­ti­fy the main rea­sons why weight does not decrease. For exam­ple, you eat at the com­put­er or are used to snack­ing on the run, your diet is too high in sat­u­rat­ed fats and sug­ars. The diary is espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend­ed for busy peo­ple who would like to eat right, but they do not have time to mon­i­tor their diet and eat­ing habits. A diary will help you see an objec­tive pic­ture of your nutri­tion. More­over, now there are many con­ve­nient appli­ca­tions that make cal­cu­la­tions them­selves, draw up graphs, and cal­cu­late calo­rie con­tent.

Avoid gadgets before bed

Good health is impos­si­ble with­out qual­i­ty sleep. One of the sim­ple hacks that will help nor­mal­ize sleep is to put your gad­gets away at least an hour before bed­time. This is not only a smart­phone or tablet, but also a com­put­er, TV. Depen­dence on social net­works and seri­als inter­feres with ear­ly falling asleep and achiev­ing a deep phase of sleep. More­over, you should not read the news before going to bed: an over­abun­dance of new infor­ma­tion leads to an increase in the lev­el of anx­i­ety. Freed up time can be spent on read­ing, hygiene pro­ce­dures, light warm-up.

Remem­ber about the cul­ture of sleep. A per­son should fall asleep in the dark, because elec­tric light­ing, which arti­fi­cial­ly pro­longs day­light hours, leads to a lack of sleep. Arti­fi­cial light sup­press­es the pro­duc­tion of the hor­mone mela­tonin, which is involved in the reg­u­la­tion of the bio­rhythm of sleep and wake­ful­ness. Accord­ing­ly, the less this hor­mone is pro­duced, the lat­er falling asleep occurs, and the per­son does not get enough sleep.

Install a reminder app

A seden­tary lifestyle is the dis­ease of our time. A per­son can spend the whole work­ing day with­out get­ting up from an office chair — and this is a vio­la­tion of pos­ture, headache, joint pain, con­ges­tion, mus­cle spasms. And this is only a small part of what a seden­tary lifestyle can lead to.

Dur­ing the work­ing day, try to get up reg­u­lar­ly to stretch your mus­cles. The eas­i­est way is to install a spe­cial appli­ca­tion on your phone that will remind you to move, or sim­ply set a timer on your phone.

Replace a chair with a fitball

If you work from home, try replac­ing your chair with a fit­ness ball. By sim­ply sit­ting on this fit­ness ball, you will main­tain your pos­ture and there­by reduce the risk of back pain. The effort that a per­son makes while sit­ting on the ball to main­tain bal­ance forces him to sit in an upright posi­tion, there­by avoid­ing back strain. In addi­tion, the ball elim­i­nates the habit of sit­ting cross-legged, which is bad for pos­ture. Fit­ball instead of a chair, it is strength­en­ing mus­cles, improv­ing blood cir­cu­la­tion, devel­op­ing a sense of bal­ance.

Review your cosmetics

A healthy lifestyle is not only what we eat inside, but also what we put on the skin. What cos­met­ics we use affects the health of our skin in the long run. There­fore, reg­u­lar­ly review your cos­met­ics and throw away prod­ucts that have already expired with­out regrets.

Remem­ber that the indi­ca­tor of spoiled cos­met­ics is not only a bad smell and a changed tex­ture. Be sure to check the expi­ra­tion date indi­cat­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er. At the same time, please note that two dates can be indi­cat­ed on the prod­uct: the first is the shelf life of the sealed tube, the sec­ond is the opened one.

Expired cos­met­ics lose their prop­er­ties over time, but this is the least of the prob­lems. It is much more dan­ger­ous that microor­gan­isms mul­ti­ply in the prod­uct, the risk of aller­gies and reac­tions of vary­ing sever­i­ty increas­es: red­ness, dry skin, rash, itchy spots, exac­er­ba­tion of acne, con­junc­tivi­tis from expired car­cass­es and even Quinck­e’s ede­ma.

Train yourself not to skip breakfast

The first meal of the day is con­sid­ered the most impor­tant. Skip­ping break­fast can lead to a rapid drop in ener­gy lev­els and overeat­ing through­out the day. In addi­tion, the con­stant neglect of break­fast can lead to irri­ta­tion of the gas­tric mucosa, since hydrochlo­ric acid is pro­duced reg­u­lar­ly, and a large amount of it accu­mu­lates overnight by morn­ing.

It is not nec­es­sary to cook some­thing com­pli­cat­ed for break­fast. It can be the so-called “break­fast in a jar” — oat­meal soaked overnight with fruits, berries, nuts, or whole-grain bread sand­wich­es with boiled meat, cheese and let­tuce.

Add smoothies to your diet

If you are unable to eat break­fast, lunch and din­ner every day with the required amount of veg­eta­bles and fruits, add veg­etable and fruit smooth­ies to your diet. Prepar­ing them is very sim­ple — just load veg­eta­bles or fruits into a blender and chop. Smooth­ie recipes are very diverse: car­rot, apple, banana, as well as greens, beets, zuc­chi­ni, cucum­bers and many oth­ers.

Stop eating at your desk

An office table, even if it is a desk­top at home, is not meant for eat­ing. In front of the com­put­er, a per­son is dis­tract­ed from the process of eat­ing and eats much more than nec­es­sary. And reg­u­lar overeat­ing is the path to obe­si­ty. Sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, USA, urge peo­ple to refuse to eat in front of a com­put­er or TV, because in this case a per­son does not real­ize what and how much he eats, and the process of digest­ing food in front of the mon­i­tor is uncon­trolled, and the food enters the stom­ach bad­ly chewed. It is also impor­tant that the key­board is a very dirty place where thou­sands of bac­te­ria live.

Find workout videos online

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, going to the gym has become dif­fi­cult. To keep fit with­out hav­ing to go to the gym, find the right work­out videos on Youtube. On this site you can find both train­ing and entire marathons of all kinds. So you can keep fit even at home.

Use a pedometer

Accord­ing to WHO rec­om­men­da­tions, a per­son should take at least 8–10 thou­sand steps per day. This is the norm that every per­son needs for heart health and main­tain­ing mus­cle tone. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many of us do not pass even half the norm per day. The eas­i­est way to accus­tom your­self to such a load is to use a pedome­ter.

There are sev­er­al pos­si­bil­i­ties. You can buy a fit­ness bracelet or a smart­watch with a pedome­ter func­tion. Mod­ern gad­gets not only count steps and dis­tance trav­eled, but also track heart rate, calo­ries burned, moti­vate to move more. An even more afford­able option is to install an appli­ca­tion with a pedome­ter on your phone. How­ev­er, the sec­ond method has a large error com­pared to fit­ness bracelets and smart watch­es.

Don’t try to change everything at once

How many times in our lives do we try to start exer­cis­ing, change our diet to a healthy one, and get rid of bad habits. And in most cas­es, these ini­tia­tives are not crowned with suc­cess. Do not try to start a healthy lifestyle in all areas at once — change one thing first. For exam­ple, sign up for a tri­al class at the gym and see if you like it. If you get involved, notice pos­i­tive changes, you will want to fol­low and change your diet.

Or start with your diet. But do not dras­ti­cal­ly go on a diet and deprive your­self of your favorite foods — first add some­thing use­ful to your diet. For exam­ple, add chia seeds or a spoon­ful of bran to por­ridge, fla­vor a sal­ad with a hand­ful of nuts and unre­fined lin­seed, sesame or pump­kin oil. If you can’t stop fried right away, buy an oil dis­penser or a reg­u­lar sil­i­cone brush to grease the pan — and you will already use it less.

Remem­ber that a healthy lifestyle starts with small steps. After each change, eval­u­ate the results: what has changed? Have you begun to feel bet­ter? Grad­u­al­ly, you will begin to live a health­i­er life.