So many of us have followed a certain diet and failed miserably to achieve our goals of looking good and feeling good. Soon, our issues with our weight also affect us mentally. This can sometimes lead to hating how we look or body dissatisfaction. Body dissatisfaction is a sign of possible depression in many adults. According to psychologist and author, Dr. Vivian Diller, beauty is physical and psychological that is based on three qualities:
- How we actually look – based on genetics
- How we take care of ourselves – based on health and grooming
- How we feel about how we look – based on our positive self-regard
While we do not have control over the first quality, two and three are items that we have power over. You can even say that these two are interrelated, of one which cannot do without the other. These are qualities that need to work side by side or one after the other to be a fully healthy human being.
Back to Basics: Food and Exercise
To accept who we are and what we look like and to address the two qualities that we have control over, we need to start looking at how we can change our views on health. To be physically healthy is to eat the right kinds of food coupled with exercise to get our organs going. This is where our journey to a healthy lifestyle begins. Most of us spend our time in offices or out on official business. It is in these times that we are tempted to eat unhealthily, relying on fast food or junk food to satisfy our hunger. In addition to our own junk food issues or reasons for eating unhealthily, media is a proliferation of what is wrong with our eating habits. Hopefully, this too can change. As a start, we can incorporate healthier snacks to our lives. A healthy lifestyle is a cycle, so we need to think about what we fill in our bodies, from start to finish, from eating to exercising. After food, you also need to think about exercise. Choose a wider array of workouts that suit you. You might want to try High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), Yoga, Zumba, Pilates, or running to help sustain a healthy lifestyle. Perhaps, what is making the healthy journey more difficult is on how we put pressure on ourselves. Many of us think that most recommended diet plans are expensive or take too long to do. We have been used to the concept of ?instant? and dependent on technology at the expense of our health. We have to rewire our brain to start accepting simplicity once again. Back to basics is a concept that helps us return to our roots, to a state before technology and complexity. Going back to the basics, as it implies, is the simple things that we can do. These are no frills, plain, artless, and straightforward ways that we can do with the food we eat. Most of them are eaten raw, such as fruits and vegetables that you do not need to cook. Toss them, slice them, put them in a container and you have yourself breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for that in-between meal hunger pangs. On the other hand, you don’t need technology to exercise. Most exercises do not even involve the use of any type of machinery to be effective. Staying healthy is a commitment. When we commit to eating good food, this starts to show on the outside. The effects of healthy eating are visible on our physical attributes. You must admit that when you look good, you feel good about yourself. You develop self-esteem that is needed to form a positive view of yourself and how you behave with other people.
A Healthy Journey
Sometimes the simplest things can help us solve our problems about ourselves. Eating habits and exercise are parts of your journey towards a truly healthy outlook in life. There is nothing complicated about that. We fail to see this at first because we feel, and maybe others make us also feel that to be healthy inside out, is to undergo many complicated things. How far from that! When you feel like your lifestyle is heading back to an unhealthy state, remember that you don’t need to complicate things in order to get back on track. Food is just one part of your journey, but the right perspective towards how you see it is already a major turning point to the next steps that you need to take. Change your view of healthy eating as part of a series of experiences that can become a positive habit. Once you establish that, you can focus on taking care of the rest.
Moving on to the Next Steps
Moving forward should be the next step. There are certainly other matters that you need to do and think about to fulfill the healthy lifestyle that you want. You have taken the first and most basic step. Look forward to the next that is how you were prepared by undergoing the inside-out healthy habits. To some, food is food. But to the healthy person, food is more than just something that you stuff your body with. There are intangible benefits as well as tangible ones that will help you move forward. Without understanding what food can do for you not just in the physical aspect, you will not be able to move along the next steps without difficulties. Food is basic. Food is a foundation that has to be kept strong to handle the load for the next journey. Take care to be aware of it. The journey to healthy inside and out is continuous and it does not stop with us. When we have something good happening in our lives, it is meant to be shared with others. As the social media world keeps saying, ?sharing is caring?. The most fulfilling part of this journey is our capability to help others achieve a healthy state as well.