Essays on Healthy Lifestyle

According to World Health organization Committee (2015), a healthy lifestyle can be defined as a way of living that helps us enjoy more aspects of our life. Health is not just avoiding a disease or illness, it is about physical, mental and social well-being too.” (p.10). The social media have been many times publish news about a healthy lifestyle as there is already a review that the percentage of obesity among Malaysians increasing day by day. We should take care of our health because a healthy body also can help our growth and develop well to ensure that we can live a long and happy life. Other than that, we cannot achieve our goals without a good health, good health inspire us to not give up and patience to tackle with problems in life. Life is not about the fastest to the top first. Each day is a slow process of growth and improvement in our health. As long were are improving our health each day, we will reach a completely healthy lifestyle. We won’t change over night but change is essential. There are a few ways to take action on how to live in a healthy lifestyle.

First and foremost, the most effective way is we have to exercise regularly. As recommended by Caspersen (2005), we can do physical activity in our daily life that can be categorized into sports and household such as house cleaning and play badminton to speed up our heart rate and enjoy breathing the fresh air. During exercise, our body able to take in more oxygen and increase our metabolism in our body. Besides, when we exercise it will help us to reduce stress and improve our blood circulation flow. Research by Fletcher (1992), exercise training favorably alters lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. The exercise-induced increase in high-density lipoproteins is strongly associated with changes in body weight.' In addition, regular exercise in overweight women and men enhances the beneficial effect on blood lipoprotein levels of a low-saturated-fat and low-cholesterol diet. We should set aside and make it a habit at least 4 to 3 times per week doing exercise for only 30 minutes to keep us fit. Moreover, the best way to meet our friend who is a stone throw away from our house is by a walk, cycle or jog instead of going to meet them by car. When we are taking care of ourselves and exercise regularly, we likely notice that we are not only feeling better during the day but it can provide excellent benefits for our sleep. Hence, we can maintain our health by exercising more often because exercise is the best medicine.

Secondly, get adequate sleep also play an important role in a healthy lifestyle. As suggested by Heslop (2002), we are required to get a good night’s sleep 7 to 9 hours because when we sleep our body system and brain get rest to function during waking hours. Enough sleep and rest can help us to boost energy and be more energetic to go through our daily routine productively. Not getting enough sleep can cause our brain to eat itself. Moreover, as reported by Noland (2009), the effects of lack of sleep may cause heart disease, obesity, stress and poor grade in academic performance. Researchers conducting a study of almost 5,000 Japanese adults with type 2 diabetes found that those who slept fewer than 4.5 hours or more than 8.5 hours had a higher body mass index (BMI) and higher A1C values (Benedict, 2012). We should set our regular bedtime because we can manage to get enough time to rest and turn off our daytime worries by finishing any next-day preparations about an hour before bed. Other than that, make sure we are not drinking caffeine before we go to sleep, it will make us stay up during the whole night. In doing so, if really want to drink the coffee, try resisting the coffee six to eight hours before bed. Therefore, making sleep time a priority can significantly improve our mental and physical health.

Last but not least, to maintain a good lifestyle is we need to have a balanced diet. We should take balanced meals by referring to pyramid food that contains carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, fats and fiber, and water. We should consume all the proportions in a different class of food in our meals in a day to stay healthy. Now, we were surprised that our society loves to eat junk food and fried food such as instant noodles, snacks, and Mac Donald’s. In doing so, our society has nowadays been too busy with their career so they decide to eat junk food because it is easy to get, save time and delicious. As smart consumers, we should always refer to the food pyramid so that we would not make any insensible choice of foods. We also have to plan our meals so that our meals contain a healthy balanced diet, fiber in whole grains, fruits and vegetables help fill us up faster and keep our full longer than foods that are loaded with sugar. The longer we are satiated, the less likely we are to exceed our ideal calorie range. Based on research by Mansour (2008), junk food contains a lot of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and excessive of salt and sugar which is can make us fat. It can affect our brain means it can be very toxic to the brain and cause nervous system problems. Hence, planning our meals ahead of time reduces our chances of making unhealthy food choices.

In nutshell, life is the greatest gift from good to keep our body in a good health because health is better than wealth. We should be stronger than our strongest excuse to have a healthy lifestyle as our daily routine habitual. Furthermore, healthy habits leads to a healthy lifestyle by taking care of ourselves holistically, we will have a beaming glow from inside out. Life is too short to waste it hating our body, do something about the things we can and love our body. Thus, changing our thoughts is the first step to changing everything in and around us. In doing so, prevention is better than cure in many aspects of our lives from health to finances. As we know, life is unpredictable.