How do I get healthy?

Like many things in life, the simple things work best.

There are basically two things you have to do to get healthy and to stay healthy:

• You need to exercise regularly


• You need to eat healthy foods

Both these things can be refined and personalized to suit your lifestyle and your needs, but they are the basic ingredients.

Why exercise?

Our body is made to move, It thrives on movement. Movement strengthens our muscles, bones and heart. It makes sure oxygen and nutrients are pumped though our body. It lowers our stress level and makes us feel good.

Here again, simple exercise is best - walking, jogging, running, cycling, swimming. These are all easy to do and inexpensive. If you cannot do any of these because you lack motivation or it is not convenient, then join a gym. There is really no excuse not to exercise, as it can be as simple as stretching or doing aerobics at home.

The secret is to find something you can do and do it 3 or 4 times a week. If you have an injury or sore joints because you are overweight, then start with stretching and yoga exercises. In the beginning it would be good if you could find the time to exercise or do some form of movement for 20-30 minutes most days. This will help you get into the habit and to start you on the right track.

Why eat healthy foods?

Our body needs a certain amount of nurtrients - vitamins and minerals - to work properly. If we do not provide these elements it often resources them from within. It does this by pulling on reserves and trying to keep itself going. It can only do this for a certain time. After a while, it starts to suffer from a depletion of the nutrients it needs. That's when it starts to break down by falling victim to illnesses and diseases. The bodily functions are imparied and the aging process accelerates. In some people this starts early in life because they have neglected their body.

Our cells are the basic building blocks of our body. They are in every part of our body and affect every function. For them to work properly they need to be healthy. They will only be healthy if we feed them enough of the right ingredients. The right ingredients come from the food we eat. Some food has no nutritional value at all while other food is actually harmful. On the other hand, there is food that contains the ingredients the body needs for all its components to function properly - food that keeps our cells healthy. It makes sense to eat mainly that food.

Let's face it, our body has reached its peak in around our early 20s. After that it is a slow deterioration for the rest of our lives. How fast it deteriorates is up to us. If we do not care what we put into it and do not maintain it properly, it will not work at its best. As it is, most bodies develop some weaknesses and some are born with them. We can strengthen these weaknessess and some times cure them if we take enough care. Most of our body's nutrients come from the outside in what we eat and what we drink. In this regard we are in control of what goes into our body. Why would we not make sure it is getting as much of as the good food as possible?

Try the 21 Day Test

It's all about changing your mindset and replacing old, bad habits with new, good habits. I have read a number of times if we do something for 21 days it will become a habit. I do not know if the science has changed and there is a better way, but that's not bad and it is a reasonable target. You simply decide you will change your habits for the next 21 days, but you will do it one day at a time. Mark each day off on the calender. Each day you will do some form of exercise, some form of movement.

In addition to that, each day you will replace any bad, high-fat, low-nutrition food with healthy food. For example, if you have a sandwich for lunch, replace white bread with wholegrain bread. If you have a soda or sugary drink, have plain mineral water. If you have cake or cookies for snacks, replace that with fruit or nuts or have a plain cookie instead of one with a sugary filling. A good guide is to try to eat mostly low GI foods - ones that have a rating of 55 or lower.

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To stay healthy you need to develop an exercise and diet regime you can maintain. In the beginning your enthusiasm will get you going but this will wane if you set unrealistic targets. You will not be able to keep up an overstrict, unrealistic approach. You need enthusiasm to get you going and to keep you going.

It's important to be enthusiastic, but be careful enthusiasm does not turn into an obsession. If you find yourself obsessing over every morsel of food you eat, particularly some of the ones you really like, or over the amount of exercise you are doing and pushing yourself harder and harder, you are almost doomed to fail. This will not only make your life a misery but it will make the lives of those around you a misery. While you must exercise regularly and eat healthy food, you need to do that in a balanced way.

Enthusiasm is what will get you out of bed on a cold morning for a 30 minute walk or run or an aerobic or gym session. It is what will make you get up a bit earlier to eat a proper breakfast or to plan ahead for a home cooked meal of lean meat or fish or fresh vegetables.

Mind you, there will still be times when you would rather stay in bed than get up and exercise, but after a while you will know this is not you, and the feeling will not last. Besides, if you do not do it today, you know you will have to do it tomorrow if you want to stay on track. The good part about it is, you will find that you will want to do it and actually find yourself looking forward to it. You will like the bounce in your step and the energy and strength in your body. You will like the positive feeling that comes from taking control of your lifestyle and accepting the responsibility of shaping your own life.

Try the 80 percent rule

I am happy to do what I have to do about 80 percent of the time. I know there are going to be times when I am going to have to eat food I would not normally eat and there are going to be times when I will want to eat food for the shear pleasure. For example, if I am eating out with friends or eating at a friend's home, I may be served food that is not on my preferred list of healthy foods. I regard these occasions as falling into the 20 percent area and I do not have to worry about it.

I am certainly not going to make others feel uncomfortable about serving me the wrong food nor am I going to miss out on a particularly delicious dessert. It does not matter, because most of the time I do not eat in this way and I will be back into my healthy food, healthy lifestyle mode soon after.

This is simply my way of of modifying my approach so that it fits into my life and does not rule it in an unbalanced way. Having said that, I am aware of the food I eat and of its nutritional value. I choose what goes into my body and I make sure I make healthy choices most of the time. This works for me.

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Getting into a regular exercise routine can be difficult. I have gone through different stages. In the early years my main exercise was running but, because there is a danger to joint damage and wear and tear, I changed to swimming. I did this for many years, mainly because my job made it easier to get to swimming pools. Now, I do aerobic and strength exercises at home.

My aerobic exercise is very simple - I walk and run on the spot carrying one pound (2.2 kg) hand weights. Usually, I turn it into an interval training session by walking or running at a normal speed for 12 seconds and then very fast for 8 seconds. I do this for about 30 minutes every second day. I finish off with yoga and stretching exercises. I also go for a vigouous, 40-minute walk when I can. I have a route I follow which is 4 kilometers. I do this a couple of times a week and I walk instead of drive as much as I can.

On alternate days I exercise with 12 pound weights and I do a number of core workout exercises. This only takes 15 or 20 minutes.

I have gradually incorporated various exercises into my routine so I regularly get cardio and strength training. This has happened over a number of years. I do not drive myself too hard but I go hard enough to give my heart, lungs and muscles a good workout. This has worked well for me because I have no health issues and I move easily and freely. The only medication I take is the smallest dose of anti-cholesterol I can find. This keeps it at around 4. I have tried to lower it with diet but that has not worked.

I am not suggesting you should adopt what I am doing but you do need to get a routine together so you do not have to think too hard about what you are going to do. Think about all the elements you want to cover to keep you healthy and design your exercise routine around that.

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Keeping our body strong is a basic part of being healthy for life. A vital part of this is keeping our core muscles strong. These are the muscles in our stomach, lower back, hips and pelvis. They are the muscles we use whenever we move. They affect our balance and our movement. If they are strong they help us move more easily. They give us fluidity and flexibility. They play a vital role in protecting us against back problems, which are all too common. In fact, most people seem to have a bad back story and it is most often the lower back. Doing core workout exercises can help protect us from that.

Core muscles work together. For example, when we lift something, we use our back and stomach muscles. When we walk or run we use all the muscles. If any one of the group is weak, then the others have to work harder. This can result in strain on that muscle or strain on the back, if the lower back muscles are weak. This can result in permanent back problems.

That's why it is best to do exercises for core muscles as a whole rather than concentrate on any one group. Some people focus on exercising the stomach to get rid of stomach fat, but this can cause an imbalance in the body. It is best to do exercises for core strength, which will also exercise the stomach muscles.

The good part about this is you can do these core exercises without any special equipment. You can do them at home and make them a part of your exercise routine.

The Mayo Clinic website has an excellent series of slides which illustrate the positions for a number of these exercises. I encourage you to make some of them part of you regular routine.

You will find the slides here: www.mayoclinic.com/health/core-strength/SM00047

Sugar has been called the sweet poison. There is good reason for this as It has been linked to many of our modern lifestyle diseases. Not only does it contribute significantly to obesity, which leads to diabetes, but it also contributes to heart disease. Heart disease is the biggest killer in the Western world. These are the extreme results of eating too much sugar but there are other ways our body is affected.

When we eat sugar our body quickly converts it to glucose, which raises our blood sugar. Our body releases insulin to control the blood sugar. Normally this is not a problem but if we overload our system, the insulin stores any excess energy in the form of fat. Unless we are using up the excess then we will put on weight.

Insulin also affects our appetite. When insulin is produced it it makes us hungry. That's one of the main reasons people who eat a lot of sugar get fat - they are on a constant cycle of sudden surges of blood sugar, triggering the release of insulin, which stimulates their appetite and stores excess fat.

Our body does need sugar and produces this from some food. It produces sugar in the form of glucose, which goes into our blood stream and is then distributed throughout out body. Glucose feeds every cell in our body, so it is an important element in good health. But we should get this from good food - fruit, vegetables and complex carbohydrates. The sugar in fruit is a simple sugar, in other words there is only one sugar. For example, fructose is the sugar in fruit. The body deals with this in the same way as added sugar but it is healthy because it is natural and carries with it nutrients the body needs.

Simple sugars, such as those found in fruit, are quickly converted to glucose and give us a quick surge of energy. That's why we get a lift when we eat them. On the other hand, complex carbohydrates have more than one sugar, which take longer to convert to glucose. That's why we get more sustained energy from these foods and we feel fuller after eating them. This means we are not looking for food soon after eating, as we are with simple carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates are foods like like whole grain bread, pasta and potatoes.

If we want to be healthy we need to limit the amount of added sugar we are feeding our body. The Western diet has more sugar now than at any time in our history. That's why we are seeing a rise in the lifestyle disease I have mentioned.

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