How many times have you thought about trying to follow a healthy lifestyle? And how many times have you succeeded? Surely the answer to the first question is a higher number than the second. But there is a solution! You just have to be clear about what it means to have a healthy lifestyle and find the right protective factors.

A healthy lifestyle is not just about individual well-being. It is a global strategy, framed within the World Health Organization’s disease prevention and health promotion. It began in 2004 to improve risk factors such as unhealthy eating and sedentary lifestyles. In this sense, it is necessary to know the factors that generate well-being and help to achieve a healthy lifestyle.

The consequences of not following a healthy lifestyle can be several. These include diseases such as: diabetes, hypertension, heart and arterial disease, cholesterol, triglycerides, overweight, and so on. And not to mention those psychological illnesses that can also carry.

For this reason, we are going to show you the protective factors of a healthy lifestyle and the benefits that each one has. Also if you start to carry them out you will realize that they start to notice immediately.

Practice physical activity.

Physical exercise brings a number of major benefits to the body, such as avoiding excess weight, strengthening bones, and increasing strength and flexibility. As a consequence, indirect benefits are achieved, such as greater agility, the prevention of fractures and muscular pains, the reduction of anxiety, depression, stress, and the possibility of having cardiovascular diseases or diabetes.

But the effects of sport do not end here, it also positively affects psychosocial aspects as it increases academic performance by improving memory, concentration and behaviour. It also promotes personal relationships and companionship.

So the next time your brain tries to dissuade you, remember all the benefits of physical activity. Also, you don’t have to be there every day for 60 minutes. No matter how little time you have to exercise, it’s going to be good for your health. And as you see results, both your body and your brain will ask you for more little by little. Therefore, you don’t need to suddenly resist 60 minutes running or doing some other activity.

Eat a healthy diet.

Diet is the ingestion of food to meet dietary needs and get energy. But the concept of healthy eating goes further. It adds to this definition the nuance that the food that is ingested must provide the necessary nutrients in a balanced way. In order to know if our diet is healthy we must consult the food pyramid.

However, although there are many recommendations and different opinions, the key is that each person adapts the diet to their needs and tastes as long as it is balanced. We are all different in metabolism, genetics or even gastrointestinal level. Of course, always considering three fundamental points:

  • Eat food according to what you spend to achieve an energy balance. An excess of energy in both humans and machines can cause imbalances and spoil the “gear” or organism.
  • Cook food steamed, grilled, cooked, or even raw. You should know that olive oil, although it is very healthy in small quantities, has a high caloric level. And if to the kcal of a food you add the kcal of the oil the result will be an excess of kcal. In addition, the reheated oil presents harmful substances for the health like the free radicals and the acrylamide. Think that with healthy cooking techniques you will taste food better. You will also improve digestion and control your weight.
  • Drink 4 to 6 glasses of water a day. You can drink water directly, or in the form of natural juice or infusions. What you shouldn’t do is drink this amount through sugary drinks, alcoholic beverages or artificial juices. Without realizing it you will be increasing the consumption of sugars and gases and with this your energetic balance can get out of control. On the other hand, do not abuse the liquid if you want to lose weight because this can have negative effects.

Avoid risk consumption.

As is well known, alcohol is one of the most widely used accepted drugs and therefore generates a large number of health and social problems. Alcohol is very accessible to all age groups and its price is not high, so it is increasingly consumed by young people. Clearly, excessive alcoholic beverages are not part of a healthy lifestyle. This is due to both the (toxic) alcohol content and the amount of sugars it contains. This substance not only unbalances the diet, causes hypertension, liver damage, etc., but can also produce irreversible brain damage.

Regarding tobacco, according to the World Health Organization smoking is the second leading cause of death in the world. It is also responsible for the death of one in ten adults worldwide (about five million deaths each year). If the current pattern continues, tobacco will cause ten million deaths a year by 2020. A more than worrying value, after which there is no need to argue more reasons to stop smoking. Tobacco is a health destroyer. It is directly related to lung cancer and death because of its innumerable harmful components.

Ensuring emotional well-being to achieve a healthy lifestyle.

To integrate into the environment around us, we have different physiological adaptations, one of them being stress. Nevertheless, if it is not controlled, it can cause a great list of problems.

This is why it is so important to learn to know and control emotions. Thus you will improve the handling of the same ones in the daily life.

Stress at work

The daily demands of the workplace can cause us stress, to which our body responds with muscular, cardiac or respiratory changes. If this state is prolonged over time, we may feel exhaustion, lack of concentration, insomnia or hyperactivity. Think that all work problems have a solution and that therefore, they will surely end.

There are two approaches to managing stress in the workplace and to ensuring that stress does not negatively influence a healthy lifestyle. It can focus on improving the skills of the person under stress or perform an intervention focused on the organization or the environment.

Stress at home

  • The most common thing is to think that once you get home all the problems are over and we find an atmosphere to relax and disconnect. But a group of experts from the University of Pennsylvania measured the saliva cortisol level of 122 employees on weekdays and weekends to determine stress. The results showed that they had a higher stress level at home than at work. They explained this because working at the end of the day is rewarding. Completing tasks and socializing is experienced as a reward for the brain. In contrast, household chores, child care, paying bills, etc., make stress greater at home.

Ensuring security

According to Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, security is one of the fundamental needs of people. Safety is understood as the prevention of traffic injuries, drownings, falls, burns, asphyxiation and intoxications. Avoiding these is fundamental to leading a healthy lifestyle, as their consequences can seriously interfere with all facets of life.

Most injuries do not occur at random, but are foreseeable and therefore preventable. Therefore, creating safe environments, complying with safety standards, and identifying and avoiding risk situations are some of the essential aspects of prevention.

Therefore, a healthy lifestyle depends on many factors, and not simply on physical activity and healthy eating. To try to control these factors it is necessary to know them, to be informed about them and to be aware of the risks that surround us. Once you are aware of them and you can go capturing the negative factors. This is the main thing. Once you perform the healing phase of these factors, you must implement new ones. These new factors have to help you improve your health.

As you can see, it is quick and easy and you can all do it. So don’t think about it anymore and implement all these factors into your daily life.