Healthy Living
Simple Rules to follow. You don’t need to read an entire book to learn how to live healthy!
Why is a plastic surgeon talking about health? The answer is that there is little chance for a person to achieve optimum beauty without a healthy mind and body. There is a lot of information about how to stay healthy; there are entire books and websites dedicated to this subject. Therefore I will point out the basic principles that one should understand to stay healthy and improve one’s quality of life.
It all starts with your attitude towards life. Do you see your cup half empty or half full? How confident are you? Do you have the will to make things better? Healthy living tips and information:
- Control your outlook on life, be positive, see the good in every thing, and talk positively. For example; “say what a beautiful rainy day” instead of saying “what crumby weather”. The world around us is often like a mirror reflecting our own image and echoing our own voice. Try to keep a smile on your face and you will see more smiles on other people’s faces. Be nice and have a respectful attitude towards every one no matter who they are. Try to be confident. Beauty can bring confidence, but confidence compliments beauty.
- Respect your brain. It seems to be obvious, but so many people tend to forget that without a healthy brain, nothing else is possible. Give your brain what it needs. It needs stimulating activities, proper time to rest and good nutrition. Avoid excess alcohol and stay away from drugs.
- Respect your body. Control your weight by proper exercise and diet. As was said by Molière in Avare (Il faux manger poor vivre et ne pas vivre pour manger), you have to eat to live, but not live to eat. Eating is one of the great pleasures in life that every one should enjoy, but when it comes to eating, it should be more about quality than quantity.
- Try to be conscious of the calories in food and how you are planning to burn them. Go on a treadmill for an hour and see how many calories you can burn. This will give you a good indication of what it takes to burn what you eat. Any calorie which is not accounted for will potentially accumulate as fat. This becomes more significant as we get older because our metabolism slows down.
- Nutrition is a big subject. Here in northern New Jersey we have access to all kinds of foods and restaurants. We have to choose well. I will give you the essence in a paragraph. First of all your gastrointestinal tract needs real food to stay healthy. Do not substitute good nutrition with supplements and pills. Some nutritional supplements could be beneficial, but you need real non-processed food as the basis of your diet. Today it is well established that saturated fats and sugars are not healthy. Replace these with mono-unsaturated fats and reduce sugar intake to a minimum. Be aware that all carbs aren’t the same. You have to understand the glycemic index (GI) of the starchy vegetable. High GI vegetables turn to sugar faster and raise the blood glucose levels which in turn causes an insulin production. Insulin helps make fat to store the energy. Sometimes it’s hard to guess what has a higher GI. for example suite potatos have a lower GI that regular potatos. Bread’s GI is higher than pasta’s. If you have to eat bread, use whole wheat. Make beans, vegetables, fruits and nuts the basis of your diet. These are what I call super foods that we should introduce into our diet. These foods have beneficial effects to our health. Blueberries, beets, avocados, blackberries, walnuts etc. try to snack on these super foods instead of potato chips. A blueberry muffin may have blueberries, but the muffin part is no good. It is difficult to avoid some of these harmful foods because some of us grew up eating them and we have developed a taste for them. These are comfort foods that our parents offered us with all their love and protection. I think it is important to feed your children well. If you give them ice cream every night before you kiss them good night, it becomes their security blanket. They will have a hard time avoiding these foods when they are adults. Instead, give them a piece of fruit. They will not like it at first, but will develop a taste for it and that will become their comfort food. I have done this with my children and I can promise, it works. In a nutshell, watch what you eat, how much you eat and how you plan to burn it.
- Exercise is another big subject. It has a lot of positive effects on health, your sense of well-being and your appearance. It helps your cardiovascular system by allowing your muscles to extract more oxygen from the blood that circulates through them, therefore reducing the work of your heart. That’s why athletes have a lower heart rate. It raises the HDL (good cholesterol) levels. HDL keeps your arteries clean of cholesterol deposits. Exercise increases your lean body mass. Your appearance improves by being more fit. When you exercise, you have more energy. It also helps your brain and memory. Every one has a different way of staying active; some people like to run or work out. Some like to build muscle. I would get bored on a treadmill or walking, unless I can have a great conversation at the same time. I like to exercise by playing games, so I play tennis a few times a week, play ping pong and I also do a lot of yard work. These games and activities are entertaining and stimulating. They help the hand eye coordination, balance and brain function. A simple game like ping pong not only makes your muscles work, but also improves reflexes and increases the brain’s activity. One great way of staying fit is to try to maintain a good posture, hold your stomach in, stretch and do isometric contractions even when watching television. Toning your mid section is extremely important, not only for your appearance but for maintaining your spine in good alignment. We all know about the rectus abdominis and the six packs, but there are three muscles that most people don’t know about. The external obliques, the internal obliques and the transversus abdominis. These three muscles have fibers going in three different directions. They are an active, wide belt holding your abdominal organs in place. You can work on these muscles and the rectus with seven simple exercises, without needing any equipment. I call this the Diamond Core Belly. Get it now.
- Repeat ten times each one of these maneuvers. Breathe out during action and in during relaxation. 1) Crunches: lift your head and shoulders off the ground while laying on your back with you knees bent. 2) Roll-ups: lying on your back, stretch your arms and legs. Slowly curl your body off the ground and try to touch your toes. 3) Leg Drop: lying on your back lift your legs to ninety degrees and slowly bring your legs down to few inches above the ground keeping the small of your back against the floor. 4) Scissors: Lift your head and shoulders off the ground then raise both legs to the ceiling. Slowly allow one leg to go to a few inches off the ground, then raise that leg and do the same thing with the other leg. 5) Hip lift: Lying on your back with arms to your sides raise the legs to the ceiling then curl your hips toward your chest and lift your buttocks to the ceiling extending your legs up in one unit. 6) Twist: Sit on the floor cross-legged. make a large circle with your arms in front of you touching your middle fingers together. Keeping your hips square on the ground, turn 45 degrees to the right, then come to a stop in the center and turn to the left. 7) Suck it in: With your hands and knees on the ground and your back straight suck in your belly button back towards your spine . Count slowly to ten then exhale and relax your muscles.