Tips on a healthy lifestyle

Hello!

After sharing with you my favourite healthy snacks, I found it time to give you some tips on how to create a healthy lifestyle. I want to start by with telling you that I am in no way a professional and if you find yourself at some point in a position where you might need professional help to deal with an unhealthy weight, I do recommend that. I am in no way a replacement for seeing a dietitian or doctor. I am only sharing the things that work for me to stay healthy and happy, hoping this might give you some inspiration. Also I want to point out that every body is different and every body reacts different to certain foods and regimes. I am only telling you some of my basic principles!

Drink water
This cannot be said enough: drink your water! Your body consists for 55-60% out of water. Just drinking 2 liters a day will help you feel healthier: your skin will glow and it helps a lot when you have intestine problems for example. Also, if you want to loose weight, drinking water makes an amazing difference. Now I know it is hard to drink 2 liters a day (sometimes you just forget or don't feel like drinking), so I carry a big bottle of water (1L) with me all day. I have to drink twice the amount of water that goes in a day. This helps me to keep track of my water intake.

Eat your fruits and veggies
There used to be a campaign saying you need 2 ounces of vegetables and 2 pieces of fruit a day. Now I must admit that, on regular days, I eat more than that, but that is especially because I don't eat a lot of wheat and also, just because I love fresh fruits and vegs. As you know (or at least, I hope you do), fruits and vegetables are a great source of vitamins. If you are not that much of a fan of the fruits and vegs or simply do not manage to eat them every day, try to eat them in different, easy ways. For example, mix some fruits with a bit of water in a blender and make a good smoothie out of it (or, if you're going hard, try a green smoothie). You can take this as a snack, or you could add in some nutritional products such as nuts and make it your breakfast. Also, there are many ways to fit your fruits into your meals: strawberries go great with goat cheese in a salad, and pineapple is a lovely addition to curries.

Eat healthy fats
It is not wrong to go easy on saturated fats, but don't forget that your body needs fats to stay alive. As I mentioned in a previous post about healthy snacking, especially when you are all about paleo and your fat intake is low, you should eat products that contain healthy fats such as avocados, fish (salmon for example) and nuts. My favourites are cashews, pecans and almonds. As I mentioned in my breakfast-post, I like eating my nuts at breakfast, because due to the amount of healthy fats they help keeping the fulfilled feeling until lunchtime.



Calories aren't bad!
Even more important than your fat intake is your calorie intake. A human body needs calories. All foods contain calories. That is how we live. Of course it is not bad to mind them, but it is even more efficient to watch the kind of foods that you are eating. Nuts may contain a lot of calories, but your body needs those to stay alive.



Do not be too hard on yourself
I do not quite believe in diets, to be honest. Starving yourself and eating completely different than you are used to is not a good way to loose weight. In my opinion, the best way to become and stay healthy is change your life on a day-to-day basis. That is one of the reasons why I don't believe in cheat-days: days where you can eat everything you cannot eat during the week. If you push yourself too hard, your will end up suffering from stress, gaining even more weight than you lost. So don't cut out your snacks; there are a lot of healthy options available. And eating cake every once in a while isn't a sin: life is too good to not enjoy. As long as you do not binge or fall into a bad pattern of eating 'guilty' foods, you are safe.

Reward yourself
Now this does not mean 'eat the whole cookie jar every time you eat healthy for more than two days', but life is good. Life is great. Do not waste your time on being unhappy and forcing yourself into some pattern that is not you. Of course you can eat less healthy foods every now and then. But, as far as I have experienced, ice cream tastes much better if you save it for certain occasions. And if you do want to eat a lot of cake, why not try this one?