The keys to a Healthy Life

Paloma Quintana 8 min. of reading Well-being habits Leave a comment

Staying fit and playing sports is important not only so you can show off a great body, but for ensuring you live a Healthy Life too.

What is Healthy Life?

A Healthy Life involves building certain healthy habits.

It encompasses all our actions that have direct or indirect repercussions on our health: nutrition, physical activity, rest…

Although most people do this to “show off” an aesthetic body, the truth is that it goes beyond that: we should be establishing “Mind-Body” work.

Mind-Body Work

From a physical point of view, sport helps in weight control, improving body composition and maintaining an athletic profile that we can transfer to many facets of our daily life.

Carrying grocery bags, climbing up several flights of stairs, sprinting to catch the bus… these are everyday examples that has to do, and if we maintain a sporty lifestyle, it’ll be a whole lot easier.

From a mental point of view, sport helps by segregating endorphins – called the happiness hormones as they have the ability to stimulate the pleasure centres in our brain.

This happens as a consequence of our body’s response to situations that cause us pain or fatigue, or even stress, releasing the aforementioned chemical elements, and establishing a feeling of well-being.

How to start living a Healthy Life

Perhaps you abandoned it a bit in the summer, or on the contrary, you started it in the summer and with the return to work and its associated stress you’ve found it difficult to keep up certain aspects.

What I’ve come to tell you is based on my experience in consultation.

Where I’ve learned from patients who have changed their lives forever and live healthier by following our advice and avoiding falling into their old bad habits.

Others, despite having made great progress in consultation, having achieved their goals of body composition optimisation and even in sports performance, return years later because they feel that they’re unable to maintain what we worked on.

We’re going to analyse what causes us to fall back into habits that really don’t make us happier.

Intrinsic motivation

The most important thing when it comes to keeping up your good habits, as well as adjusting them when you notice you’re returning to certainbad habits, is THAT YOU REALLY WANT that healthy life that you’ve built.

To find our inner motivation, I recommend you to sit down for a moment, take a pen and paper and answer the following questions:

What value does it have for me to live in a healthy way?
What will it bring me?
Why do I want to live this way?
How can I do it?
How am I going to feel if I keep up these good habits?

Write down the positive feelings you currently have in relation to specific habits, such as following your planned diet, going to training, having given up harmful habits such as alcohol and tobacco, having cut down on sugars and refined flours, having regular sleep and rest habits.

Write down those positive feelings next to each good habit that makes up or made up your healthy life, as well as others you’re considering taking up.

Learning to manage your new lifestyle in society

The main problem that the vast majority of my patients have in maintaining their lifestyle is related to the social customs in which we move, usually far removed from what’s considered Healthy Living:

Celebrating with lots of food and alcohol;
Friends, couples, family, who ridicule even our way of life;
Sedentary work and leisure;

When first trying to follow a healthy lifestyle, people prefer to isolate themselves from this type of behaviour, but that’s unsustainable, we need to connect with our environment.

My advice is to manage your new habits in society as follows:

Stay firm and proud of your new lifestyle;
Overcome the fear of being judged;
Don’t feel you have to explain yourself, or on the contrary, explain the advantages for your health and mood, be an example and spread the word around you.

But also don’t feel you have to change everyone, just be who you are and manifest the way you feel and live in a healthier way.

Healthy Diet

Both those who do sport for recreational purposes and those who do it intensively and competitively must maintain balanced nutrition in accordance with their activity so that you don’t fatigue and the body can function properly.

Diets for training plans often avoid saturated fats and carbohydrates.The truth is that these are assumptions based on nutrition myths that still get passed around day.

The best way to eat when playing sports is through a diet that is as varied and balanced as possible, which helps us provide out body with the macronutrients and micronutrients it needs, adapted to our context, and avoiding any deficiencies.

Alongside this, it’s essential not to forget to keep the body hydrated, before, during or after training.

What is healthy food?

Healthy food are those that provide us with nutrients for the proper maintenance of our health, as well as providing energy.

They are mostly unprocessed or minimally processed foods.

They’re obtained from healthy sources, including: vegetables, fruits, lean meats, fish, eggs, quality dairy, seeds…

Practice being flexible

We know that having a cheat day doesn’t necessarily mean you’re giving up your lifestyle.

If you feel like it, without feeling obliged, you can let yourself enjoy an unhealthy pleasure from time to time.

Going to bed a little later, eating some dessert, or not going to the gym for some reason, and not suffering for it, is also healthy.

Sport and Fitness

It’s important that you like what you do.

That you like your diet, that it’s composed of healthy foods but that they are coordinated with your tastes.

If you like the type of training you do, this doesn’t mean it’s easy, but within strength training for example, there are different types of modalities, and I even recommend complementing it with a sporting activity that you enjoy.

For example, if you like football, padel, surfing, coordinate your strength training with these disciplines.

You may hate running, but maybe you love dancing, walking or cycling, or maybe you love running and can combine it with your strength training. It’ll help you keep it up.

It can be anything, but it should be something you enjoy rather than what you’re obliged to do.

Avoid a sedentary lifestyle

The human body is designed for movement, so inactivity affects its functioning.

This is why avoiding sedentary lifestyle decreases the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and ensures a better quality of life.

Keeping up an active lifestyle can improve your quality of life, give you more decision-making power in your work, and help in every other facet of life…

Regular sports activity is intrinsically linked to establishing a positive state of mind.

Starting the day by practising your favourite sport will have a direct impact on your good mood and positive attitude, and you’ll be able to face your day with greater guarantees of success as a result.

Sleep and rest for a healthy life

Resting the body is as important as training and nourishing it, as endurance and subsequent performance depends on how well you’ve recovered.

The more intense the workout, the more time the body will need to recover to get back to its original state.

When resting it’s important not to do any additional training, as this will prolong the recovery time of the tissues and affect the body’s response, complicating its functioning.

The intensity and progress of training, as well as the amount of training and rest periods, vary according to the performance and experience of each athlete.

HSN’s 10 Keys to Being Healthy

Reducing stress and anxiety, controlling body weight, preventing health problems and the proper functioning of joints, are all directly affected by your physical activity – these are some of the greatest benefits of a Healthy Life!

HSN is here to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle!

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