Seven Simple Steps
Let’s start off with seven simple ideas of how you can start today to live a healthy lifestyle and then a little later on we’ll provide more practical help as well as motivation.
1. Eat the correct servings
Healthy eating habits are essential to fitness and longevity. Being fit and staying fit doesn’t mean starving yourself—you need food for energy and nutrients. The secret to eating right is eating the right amount of food per day. This should be the first step when you start living a healthy lifestyle. Have 3-5 cups of whole grains, pasta or cereal a day; 3-5 servings of vegetables; 2-4 servings of fruit; 2-3 servings of protein foods (fish, lean meat, or eggs), and 2-3 servings of milk or cheese. Alcohol and chips are not included in the food pyramid!
2. Free up 20-30 minutes a day for physical activities
One way to live a healthy life is to exercise. Exercise burns fat, raises your metabolism, increases your lung capacity, improves cardiovascular health, enhances your mood, and boosts your immunity against disease and stress. Women who exercise are less prone to depression. It’s also easier to maintain your weight when you’re burning calories every day. You can engage in your favorite sports activity. You can jog or swim. No costly gym equipment necessary. Who said it was expensive to live a healthy lifestyle?
3. De-stress every now and then
It’s not enough to simply keep your body healthy—a healthy body should be accompanied by a healthy mind. Daily stress can take a toll on your psyche. Hence, you need to relax your mind once in a while. A healthy lifestyle involves relaxation, which frees the mind of clutter. Relaxation techniques can range from simply tuning out and spending time alone in a quiet place, to breathing exercises and meditation. Another way to de-stress is to engage in recreation—sports, hobbies, and vacations. 
4. Get enough sleep
Get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Most people nowadays don’t get enough sleep—and women concerned about problems at work don’t get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep affects brain function, cardiovascular health, and the immune system.
Do you notice how you’re easily angry and irritated on those days when you’ve to drag yourself to work after only 3 or 4 hours sleep?
5. Never engage in harmful habits
Many women start drinking and smoking when they’re young and single. Are you one of them? If not, do yourself a favor. Don’t ever try these unhealthful habits, and live a healthy lifestyle instead. That way, you won’t have to figure out how to quit! You know how binge drinking and chain smoking start? They start with a couple of social drinks and a few puffs on a cigarette. Then one day you realize you can’t last a day without the smokes, and you hang out with friends who drink every weekend. More importantly, don’t ever use drugs! If your friends introduce you to marijuana or cocaine, maybe you should steer clear of them—you’re with the wrong people. Be with people who live a healthy lifestyle.
6. Drive safely
Follow traffic rules. There are more single women involved in car accidents than married women. Single women tend to be more adventurous on the road. There’s a reason why drivers are supposed to follow speed limits—aside from getting pulled over and apprehended by the police.
Injuries from a car accident can limit your movement and prevent you from doing daily tasks. Imagine taking a bath or even going to the toilet with a broken leg!Moreover, treatment and rehabilitation are expensive and can keep you at home for some time.
7. Visit your doctor
Many single women don’t think of visiting their doctor until they’re very sick. When was the last time you set an appointment with your doctor? An annual medical checkup is imperative if you wish to live a healthy lifestyle. Only through yearly checkups can you find out if you’ve any early signs of a medical condition.
More importantly, don’t hesitate to get an appointment if you suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, constipation, pain, dizziness, or other symptoms that have arisen lately. These could be early signs of health problems that should be diagnosed right away. Also, ask your doctor about vaccinations.
To a Healthy Lifestyle!
I’ve always believed that health is wealth. But then there’s actually a difference between just believing it and actually living it. Sometimes, though we already know that it won’t do us any good to eat unhealthy foods or not maintain a healthy lifestyle, we still do a lot of things that are not good for our body and health. I guess every one of us has this stubborn part that’s difficult to change, and even I’m guilty for having this stubborn and obstinate part within myself.
Like other women, I actually believe in the benefits of exercise and a balanced meal to the body. But I’m just too lazy to do any exercise and I’m fond of starving myself and not eating much (especially my breakfast) so that I can go on a diet (thinking that by not eating, I can get rid of the calories that I would have burned if I had just exercised). On top of it all, I worship coffee and fast food.
But then yesterday, I experienced severe abdominal pain that caused me to be rushed to the hospital. The doctor’s diagnosis was gastritis and hyper-acidity. After prescribing my medications, she enumerated the many foods and drinks that I’m not allowed to have, which included coffee and many of my favorite foods. In my mind, I was screaming and saying NOOO! 
After my initial denial of the situation, I realized that this would not have happened if I had just taken care of my health before. Life has really a bitter way of teaching us lessons, because it’s only when we are already suffering from the consequences of our actions that we come to realize our past mistakes and errors.
If I had just eaten healthy foods, if I had just maintained a healthy lifestyle, then I would not have experienced such pain and discomfort, and I would still be able to eat my favorite foods moderately.
Now, I realized that indeed, prevention is better than cure. We should never take our health for granted, because it’s one of our greatest treasures. We must not wait to be sick or ill or for something bad to happen to ourselves in order to start becoming more conscious of our health. We must live a healthy lifestyle, not tomorrow, not next month, but NOW.
Simple Tricks to Live a Healthy Lifestyle
Just because you’re a single woman doesn’t mean you can set aside your health. In fact, this is the best time for you to begin to live a healthy lifestyle. There are very simple tricks that could add good years to your life.
Laugh
Laughter is the best medicine. One of the tricks to living a good life is to have fun. Sometimes it’s hard to smile, let alone laugh, when you’re inundated by problems. But that’s what comedy shows and movies are for. You need to laugh every once in a while. We all do. That’s one great secret to living a healthy lifestyle. Laughing lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety, and relieves stress. Laughing also bolsters your immunity.
Eat Breakfast
If there’s one meal you shouldn’t miss, it’s breakfast. How many times have you skipped breakfast because you had to hurry to work? Skipping meals in the morning starves the body. When you starve your body, your brain tends to overcompensate by making you overeat. You skip breakfast, but you overeat at lunch and dinner. You don’t live a healthy life by missing out on brekkies.
However, don’t just eat anything in the morning. Trade bacon and hotdogs for oatmeal or cereal. Don’t start your morning with foods high in fat or simple sugars. Instead, have complex carbs and fiber.
Turn in Before 11
What time do you usually sleep? Research shows that your body begins its cellular rejuvenation before 11 o’clock in the evening, but it’s easy to disrupt this process by staying up until 2 in the morning. To have a healthy lifestyle, close your laptop and turn off your smartphone at 10 in the evening. Start a habit of sleeping early, so you won’t have to rush to work feeling groggy in the morning.
If you’re getting 8 hours of sleep but still feel sleepy all day long, you should visit your doctor. It could be a sign of a number of conditions like sleep apnea, hypothyroidism, or anemia.
If you can’t sleep, try reading a book or have a warm bath before getting to bed.
Watch Your Bowel Movement
Ideally, you should have a bowel movement every day—in the morning. Not being able to poo for 3 days or more is a sign of constipation, and constipation is due to a lack of water, lack of fiber, or lack of exercise. Also, watch your poop. It should be long and s-shaped. If it comes as lumps, then you’re probably constipated. Constipation is a sign that you don’t live a healthy lifestyle.
Keep a Good Posture
You’re probably slouching on your chair now while reading this. Slouching doesn’t only make you look inelegant (even if you’re wearing signature clothes). It also strains your back muscles and gives you that infamous back pain. Also, bad posture makes your stomach protrude. To have a healthy lifestyle, maintain good posture, especially when sitting down.
Nix Sugar
Men and women who live a healthy lifestyle don’t indulge in too much sugar. They skip soda. They don’t help themselves to ice cream, cakes, and anything that has a lot of simple sugars. These foods have a high glycemic index. When you eat them, they are quickly broken down into glucose, thus rapidly increasing your blood glucose levels. After several years of eating sweets, your body suffers. You develop insulin resistance. The next thing you know, you’re seeing early signs of type 2 diabetes.
Also read: Top Healthy Desserts
It’s easy to neglect your health while you’re still young and single, when you’re free, and when you don’t have kids. But you can make a few changes now. Turn your back from bad habits and live a healthy lifestyle. It’s for your future.
Why You Won’t Succeed in Living a Healthy Lifestyle
How many times have people told you that your health is the priority above everything else? Probably more than a dozen, right? There’s no question that eating healthier foods and having a regular exercise regimen are often thought of as the keys to living a healthy lifestyle. Yes, these are indeed vital for living the healthy lifestyle, but there are other ways to accomplish this. In fact, the most important key on how to live a healthy lifestyle is hiding right under your nose.
This isn’t your ordinary ‘living a healthy lifestyle’ article. This article allows you to become more proactive in your quest for a healthy lifestyle. How? By pointing out to you what you’re not doing – and what you should be doing. Are you ready to know what these are?
You did not start by having a goal
You would be like a robot and not really alive if you didn’t have a goal. Goals make you. A single woman who is successful in living a healthy lifestyle has goals. She isn’t just attempting to reach those goals, she is moving heaven and earth to reach those goals. There’s a big difference between a single woman who only makes an attempt to have goals, and a single woman who is totally focused on achieving that goal.
What is referred to here is a lifetime goal. This isn’t the kind of goal where you want to buy that designer bag or go somewhere exotic. To have a goal is to determine what your purpose is. Be more in tune with your surroundings and how the world works, so you’ll know how to have a healthy lifestyle.
You need to let yourself relax
You know that when you’re living a healthy lifestyle you should be doing everything in moderation. Understandably, as human as you are, you’re bound to do things beyond what is moderate. But if you come to see yourself as a product of a healthy lifestyle, you’ll realize that rare bouts of extremeness are nothing to be alarmed at. In fact, it’s suggested that ‘cheat’ days should be part of a healthy lifestyle in order to stay sane. So go ahead, give in a little to that temptation. 
You don’t know who you are
Yes, the great debate on ‘nurture versus nature’ isn’t part of this. Genetic tendencies play a big role in determining whether you’re indeed living a healthy lifestyle or not. You have to admit that there are certain diseases that you’re more prone to.
Knowing what these diseases are is part of this lifestyle. By understanding this, you become more aware that you need to take care of your body, and you must try to live healthier. This might be a conscious move or something that just happened, but you’re actually undertaking the first step to living a healthy lifestyle.
You’re too much of a loner
Being alone is one thing. But being alone all the time has been proven to be counter-productive. You were created to be a sociable being. By talking and interacting with all sorts of people, you’ll experience different kinds of emotions – often positive ones.
Living a healthy lifestyle doesn’t really require that you perform drastic measures to achieve this milestone. A simple change in the way you think and act can also be a sure-fire way to being healthy.
Tips for Women Who Want to Live a Healthy Lifestyle
You can do a lot to live healthy and live a longer life. Well, that’s if you want to see your grandkids.
And it doesn’t matter whether you’re 28 and single or whether you’re just 35 and enjoying life with friends. You have to start to live a healthy lifestyle—and you’ll thank yourself when you’re older.
Learn your family’s medical history
Some diseases run in families. Your grandparents and parents must have passed on to you some genes that predispose you to heart diseases or diabetes or certain types of disease. Maybe you should look at your grandma’s and grandpa’s medical records, no matter how silly that sounds, just so you know what to avoid. Also, look at the health status of your parents. There’s a good chance that when you get to their age, you’ll be in the same health status, unless you can help it now.
If you’ve a significant number of relatives who are overweight and have high blood pressure, it’s time to live a healthy lifestyle now while you’re still young to avoid getting in the same predicament.
A regular visit to the doctor is good
It’s not just good. It’s essential. You should get a health checkup at least once a year. Many companies actually require employees to have a yearly checkup. If you’re part of a company that does that, good for you. If not, make sure to include health checkups in your yearly must-do’s. Only through seeing your GP yearly can you determine early signs of diseases. Early detection means more treatment options and less expensive treatment. Also, with early detection of diseases, you’re able to live a healthy lifestyle earlier and possibly reverse the condition, if not halt its progress. 
Check your dining table
To live a healthy lifestyle means to eat right, and to eat right means to have the right servings of food and a balanced diet. Start to eat good food now. Anything that is high in sugar, fat, cholesterol, and preservatives should be discarded from the grocery list.
Go for vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean meat, legumes, and fish. Don’t think eating is no longer fun. Learn great healthy recipes!
Aside from choosing the right foods, eating in right amounts is also important. Eating too much isn’t good for your weight in the long run. If you’re binging on snacks high in fat, you’re in the lane that leads to obesity. Living healthy means smart eating.
Burn calories
You know what this means. Unfortunately, it’s not for lazy couch potatoes. Why do you think there are women who are lean? It’s not just because they’re genetically lucky. It’s also because they live a healthy lifestyle. If you envy them, then use that envy to motivate you to sweat the fat out. It’s very possible. You have so many options that being busy isn’t an excuse for having no time to burn fat. Join fitness classes. Enroll in a dance class. Or you can always choose the classic brisk walking and jogging. You don’t need to spend a lot to live a healthy lifestyle.
Throw away the cigarettes
A lot of girls learn to smoke in high school or college. Of course, they carry the bad habit after school and sometimes for the rest of their lives. There’s a reason why the first try to puff smoke is unbearable. Your lungs don’t like it. If you carry on, your body gets used to it, but at the cost of gradual deterioration of your bronchial lining, lung tissue, and arteries. You can nix the smokes now and regain a good life free of emphysema, lung disease, sexual dysfunction, and arteriosclerosis.
It’s Time to Live a Healthy Lifestyle
Women can delight in advanced medical science now. Life expectancy of women is around 82 years, and that’s a huge leap from what was possible a hundred years ago. It’s also worth pointing out that women tend to live longer than men. If you’re a woman, your chance at living longer is bigger.
Is it because women tend to live a healthier lifestyle than men? It’s hard to answer that question. But we can always look at the data. We now know that the ratio between men and women 100 years old and above is 1:6. That means for every man 100 years old and above, there are 6 women. But demographic data says that the difference is getting narrow from 9 women for every 1 male centenarian in year 2000 to about 5 recently. Perhaps more men have chosen to live a healthy lifestyle in the recent years.
Also read: Top Weight Loss Shakes on Amazon
Anyway, this is only to show how women in general are more in tune with their health. Today’s number of elderly women is a far cry from the number in the early 1900s, when women didn’t usually live longer than 50 years. Health science has found a way to successfully treat diseases that were fatal 100 years ago. Now hearing about a woman dying of tuberculosis is rare. 
However, does the rise in life expectancy in women signify that they now know how to live a healthy lifestyle? It seems as though that many women don’t do this. You can deduce this from the data of the leading causes of death in women, which are chronic diseases. At the top of the list, you’ll see heart disease, diabetes, disease, and lung disease.
These conditions happen to people who don’t choose to live a healthy lifestyle. Most of these diseases are caused by bad lifestyle choices. What’s even more alarming is that statistics of people affected by heart disease or diabetes creeps to younger ages. It’s not uncommon to hear that a single woman who’s 29 years old has hypertension.
Living more years now doesn’t seem to have anything to do with living a better, comfortable, healthier life. One reason people live longer now is because the field of medicine has so advanced to the point that it can keep you up despite having diabetes or disease. Back in the day, people with any of these conditions would succumb to a few years of agony before finally bidding goodbye.
Now they can live for decades thanks to our modern understanding of human health and diseases and more revolutionized medical treatment and therapies. But this doesn’t mean you can skip living a healthy lifestyle now to endure illness in your latter years.
Live a healthy lifestyle while you’re young. You may be thinking that it’s fun to go out with friends and party, try beer, and puff smoke for the first time.You may be thinking taking care of your health is so anticlimactic. But the little efforts you do to live a healthy lifestyle will surely pay off later on. When you don’t smoke, you keep your skin healthy and young-looking for a longer time. When you start eating healthy foods and eating balanced meals, you won’t have to worry about diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
Live a Healthy Lifestyle Now! Start with One Workout
You may think a single workout doesn’t do anything. You sweat, but you’re still far from the ideal weight, and you still can’t fit into that dress you’re so dying to wear. If you’re single and either you want to keep your sexy figure or you want to revert to that figure you once had, you probably need to burn calories and live a healthy lifestyle. It’s time you watched what you eat and went to the gym to burn unwanted fat.
The problem is you got so tired and your muscles were so sore on the first day, and you felt so terrible. It was as though that first-day workout didn’t help at all and only left your thighs and arms aching.
Well, to live a healthy lifestyle really means working your butt off. As the cliché goes, no pain, no gain. You may think that week you spent running and planking didn’t do any good, but it did.
Your body goes through a few changes at the onset of lifestyle change, whether you change your diet, do yoga, or jog for 30 minutes.
That 30-minute jog can turn on certain genes
It’s seems unlikely that you can alter your DNA by simply doing jogging or brisk walking or lifting weights in the gym for half an hour, but that’s what a Swedish study shows. That study suggests that you can alter the genetic material—at least in your muscle cells—through exercise. When you switch from being virtually sedentary to being physically active to live a healthy lifestyle, you’re doing small changes to your genes, slowly turning on genes responsible for strength, endurance, and metabolism. 
It changes your mood
When you start burning calories vigorously, your brain releases endorphins and serotonins. These chemicals, known as neurotransmitters, make you feel good. So, running for ten minutes doesn’t only give you that facial glow. It also gives you the so-called runner’s high, attributed to the rush of endorphins in your brain. Endorphins also act as your natural pain killers. Serotonin, on the other hand, enhances mood in general and alleviates depression. You doubt this? Try jogging for 20 minutes and see how you feel afterward.
People engage in exercise—running, bicycling, swimming, sports—not just to live a healthy lifestyle but also to feel good about themselves.
It enhances insulin sensitivity
This small change can happen even in just a few minutes of exercise. Even in that first 30 minutes of running or swimming, your muscles begin to store fat. When your muscle tissue stores fat, your body’s insulin sensitivity improves. Higher insulin sensitivity means lower insulin resistance, a condition that preludes diabetes. So, don’t think that the initial steps you take to live a healthy lifestyle don’t count.
Mental concentration improves
You notice your heart beats faster and you breathe faster when you’re engaged in physical activity. The results are immediate. When your heart beats faster, it causes blood to surge throughout your body, delivering more nutrients and oxygen. Note that when you breathe faster, you’re taking in more oxygen. More nutrients and oxygen reach the brain, thus improving your mental alertness and concentration. Together with the release of endorphins and serotonin, the results are just fantastic, possibly better than any brain supplement on the market.
It’s amazing to realize how these changes can happen in just a few minutes of switching from inactivity to activity. If you want to live a healthy lifestyle, you can begin by doing something as simple as brisk walking.
Jumpstart Living a Healthy Lifestyle Now!
Living a healthy lifestyle isn’t just about eating your greens and diligently following your exercise regimen. A healthy kind of lifestyle is the total package. Imagine yourself as a human body. Treating just one part of your body won’t give you a clean bill of health by your physician – you need to treat your whole body because everything is interrelated.
This is very similar to the principle of living a healthy lifestyle. You’re talking about a lifestyle here – and that encompasses everything in your life. Relationships, finances and the like should also be a part of the change you want to make.
People can talk all they want about a healthy lifestyle, but if there’s no action involved, everything just falls apart. This non-active pursuit is like a certain type of disease that creeps up on you, surprising you by what it can do to you sooner or later.
If you’re young and single, perhaps a healthy lifestyle isn’t on the top of your list – but it should be. Perhaps you’re aware of this, but you’ve not taken any action. Perhaps that is where the problem is rooted. Don’t be discouraged –you are like most young single women. But, then again, if you’re not going to start living a healthy lifestyle now, when will you? Don’t wait until it’s too late. That said, here are some strategies that can help you jumpstart your goal of a healthy lifestyle.
Start with a plan
Yes, plan it and live it. Everything begins with a plan. It’s better if you begin with a plan, especially when you try living a healthy lifestyle. But a plan is just a plan if you don’t act on it. Perhaps it has dawned on you that the first step is one of the hardest to tackle. So, how do you make this plan work?
Cut it down into simple steps
A plan may be overwhelming. It often is. There’s no denying that. Some plans are so overwhelming that the mere thought of them causes one to be stressed. So how do you make it attainable? Reduce it by using simple words. To make realistic plans, you need to simplify them. Do you want to know how to create a healthy lifestyle plan? 
Goals are important
First, you need to have a goal. You may begin by brainstorming lots of goals. You should come up with several. From there, choose the one you feel is the most attainable at the moment.
Yes, goals are critical!
Think what the outcome of that goal may be
This is your reward once you reach that goal. If you relate this to a healthy lifestyle, for example, perhaps your goal is to lose weight. Then your reward, possibly, is to fit into that little black dress hidden at the back of your closet.
How would you make the change?
There are so many ways to choose from. There are many strategies you can employ for that change, and this can be too overwhelming. To eliminate this kind of feeling, you just need to choose one kind of strategy. You don’t have to be too ambitious – actually, that is the last thing you should do. To be able to reach your goal of living a healthy lifestyle, pick the strategy that you know you can achieve – the safest bet.
Stick to your goal
Yes, this might be easier said than done. But to make this easier for you, you need to have a support group. This group can act as your reality check, and tell you whether you’re still right on track or you’ve fallen by the wayside. Explain to your support group what you want to achieve. Be clear about your goal.
Know how to overcome obstacles
There are all sorts of temptations out there when you’re trying to live a healthy lifestyle. That said, you need think of the roadblocks that might hinder you from achieving your goal of a healthy lifestyle.
Living a healthy lifestyle isn’t as hard as one would think. By mapping out what you want to achieve and how you can accomplish this, you’ll also know what lies ahead. By becoming more realistic in your expectations, a single woman can indeed choose a healthy lifestyle.
Living a Healthy Lifestyle: What Can You Learn From Olympians
The Winter Olympics are about to begin a week from now . It’s hard not to notice the anticipation and excitement felt by almost everyone across the globe – from the international news coverage down to the ordinary people. The Winter Olympics, like its summer counterpart, has its appeal. But what is most interesting is that people seem to marvel at how athletic these sportsmen and women are.
It isn’t just about the grace that one sees in ice skating or the athleticism in the ski competitions. What is most appealing, perhaps, for most people is that these special athletes are somewhat like superhumans. For the most part, they inspire almost everyone in their quest for living a healthy lifestyle.
Having said that, what can you learn from these exceptional athletes in terms of living a healthy lifestyle?
Tip #1: Become active
They are called athletes for a reason. They are strong-willed people who don’t want to miss a single day without training. Excuses are not in their vocabulary. Okay, maybe you’re not cut out to become one of these super athletes. But this doesn’t mean you cannot become active. Becoming more active is one of those factors that will definitely lead you to be living a healthy lifestyle. Be dedicated in your chosen sport, be it running, swimming or some other kind of activity. Begin to exercise regularly. The point here is to be consistent.
Additionally, you also need to listen to what your body tells you. Some athletes don’t count calories – they just know what to do when their body tells them what to do. For example, if they are hungry, then they eat. Starving isn’t a good way of living a healthy lifestyle, nor is gluttony. Furthermore, you’ll need to add some strength training in addition to the cardio exercises that you already perform. This will increase your muscle stability.
Tip #2: Eat
In terms of diet, do you know what makes these athletes different from the average person? They know that eating is important. They know that they should eat before and after a strenuous exercise. There’s a difference in knowing the right food to eat when living a healthy lifestyle – or not. Athletes also know that breakfast is vital. But do you know what they mean when they talk about breakfast?
Also read: Top Meal Replacement Shakes on Amazon
These athletes understand that breakfast should be all about high-protein foods, not a meal consisting of empty calories. Protein provides the body with the needed fuel for the long haul ahead. But then again, this doesn’t mean that they follow a strict diet all the time. Like them, you should also indulge a little, with the emphasis on ‘little’. Living a healthy lifestyle also means you need to live a little, right? 
Tip #3: Be adventurous
What better way to live a little than to try something different – something that you don’t normally do? If you keep on doing the same exercises over and over again, you’ll reach a plateau. That isn’t a good thing. If you get tired of doing the same things, the best way to get out of the rut is to look for something more challenging. You might be surprised at what you can do!
So there you are, the three tips that you can learn from this special breed of people. Yes, they may be a cut above the rest of us, but they can be an inspiration for all of us.
Living a Healthy Lifestyle by Eating More Fruit
When living a healthy lifestyle, fruit should be part of our daily lives. Fruit provides the fiber, micronutrients, and carbohydrates that are needed by our bodies to function properly. The fiber and micronutrients help support important functions in the human body, while the carbohydrates that are contained in fruit are easier to digest than those that come from eating cereals. Is eating fruit part of your lifestyle? It should be!
The conventional medical groups and natural health practitioners recognize the unchallenged benefits that fruit contributes to living a healthy lifestyle.
Living a healthy lifestyle means eating fruits in these common classifications: apples, tomatoes, blueberries, bananas and oranges.
Why don’t we take a closer look on the benefits that these fruits bring…
An apple a day keeps the doctor away
For optimum health, apples are the best source of Vitamin C, which is a powerful natural antioxidant. It’s capable of blocking some of the damage caused by free radicals. Also, apples contain vitamin B complex (riboflavin, thiamine, and vitamin B-6), which are necessary to keep the nervous system and red blood cells in good condition.
Apples are rich in dietary fiber. The British National Health Service says that a diet high in fiber can help prevent the development of certain diseases, and may help prevent the increase of bad cholesterol in the blood.
Tomatoes don’t simply reduce the risk of having disease
Tomatoes are very rich in an antioxidant called lycopene. This is a disease fighter. Getting some lycopene-rich foods into your meals everyday may help battle against certain diseases.
The risk of developing heart disease can also be prevented or reduced by eating tomatoes, because tomato-based foods have the highest amount of lycopene which can be easily absorbed by the body.
Apparently, to gain these health benefits, cooked or uncooked tomatoes are wonderful food. 
Blueberries have no reason to be blue
Blueberries are packed full of antioxidants, which can help protect against a whole host of diseases, including coronary artery disease, and even memory loss. But, don’t forget that all fruits are a rich source of antioxidants.
Bananas are not just for monkeys
Bananas are rich in vitamin B-6, which reduces swelling, protects against Type II diabetes, helps with weight loss, boosts the nervous system, and aids in the production of white blood cells.
Eating bananas also leads to good digestion. They act as a probiotic that stimulates the growth of friendly bacteria in the digestive system and contain digestive enzymes to absorb nutrients.
Oranges should be consumed whole
Oranges are highly beneficial for your body. Many people prefer drinking orange juice to eating them whole. It’s true that orange juice is full of nutrients, but the fiber content is lacking. Therefore, eating the whole fruit is best.
Oranges are full of soluble fiber that lowers cholesterol, and which eventually decreases the risk of suffering from heart disease. Furthermore, when potassium levels in the body get too low, an abnormal heart rhythm may develop. This makes the consumption of oranges a benefit for the human body.
Other forms of fruits are also necessary when living a healthy lifestyle. The benefits of fruit can be found in both juices and dried fruit. Many nutrients are found in dried fruit, since they are in concentrated form. Eating the correct amount of fruit will be an assurance that your body receives the full benefits it needs to live a healthy lifestyle.
Always make it a habit to include a wide variety of different colored fruits in your diet to make sure you get the whole spectrum of nutrients.
Healthy Lifestyle Tips Specifically For Single Women
When women are single they become stereotyped as someone who has to eat alone. Perhaps another image of a single woman is of one who just sits in front of the TV, eats loads of ice cream, and may not even bother taking care of herself. This scenario isn’t even within the boundaries of living a healthy lifestyle!
Yet there’s another breed of single women – women who like to take matters into their own hands. These types of women, although single and alone, are not even close to the definition of the single woman described previously. These women have realized and acknowledged that there’s a need for living a healthy lifestyle.
For these women, living a healthy lifestyle begins with the right mind-set; but they know that they are prone to make mistakes while they are trying this kind of lifestyle. One mistake they make is in the way they prepare food. For women who prefer a healthy lifestyle, what they ingest is important, but what they should be more aware of is the way they prepare their food.
No more eating takeout meals and doing more cooking for herself, a busy single woman may not have the time to prepare recipes for the day. One should take note that most recipes call for four to six servings. If you’re a single woman who wants to make food just for herself, how do you work around this dilemma? Here are some situations that many single women encounter, and of course, the solutions to these situations.
Situation #1: I live in a small space 
If you live in a cosmopolitan city, say, New York, renting large spaces can be staggeringly expensive. The cost can really put a large dent on your bank balance. If you’re just starting up, renting a small space is reasonable. However, within a cramped area, you might have to forego having a kitchen. But you’ve to consider that you’re trying to be living a healthy lifestyle.
You can’t just put a six-burner stove with an oven into a small, studio-type room, right? Settle for some small appliance that won’t cramp your living space. Purchase a slow cooker. This is like killing two birds with one stone! Slow cookers reduce the smell of food being cooked, thus you eliminate the problem of having clothes that smell like yesterday’s dinner. Additionally, slow cookers retain the nutrients in your food.
Situation #2: I hate buying packaged food in the grocery store
Living a healthy lifestyle means you’re trying to cut down on the additives that go into your body. But being a woman on the go, frozen dinners are basically very convenient for you, right? If you want to be sure of what you’re eating, you need to take time to cook meals that you can divide into individual servings and freeze to be used at a later date.
You can cook up stews, soups and the like, divide these into smaller individual servings and freeze them. Just defrost it by using the microwave or dunking in hot boiling water when you want to eat.
Situation #3: I don’t know if I’m doing it right
Living a healthy lifestyle is about choosing healthier options. A woman who wants to follow this trend must realize it’s important to swap food ingredients for a much healthier option. Take for example, coffee. Instead of that hot cappuccino, why not go Americano? The latter has fewer calories.
Instead of potato chips, settle for the much healthier sweet potato chips, from which you’ll get more vitamins and nutrients. Arm yourself with some books about living a healthy lifestyle. Stock up on knowledge. This is the best strategy you need for living a healthy lifestyle.
Living healthy isn’t just a fad. It should be a way of life. There are many benefits for the young single woman when she follows the ‘live healthy’ bandwagon. What do you think?
Your First Step to Living a Healthy Lifestyle: Reading Food Labels!
You have decided to quit smoking and ditch the junk food. Congratulations! That is your first step to living a healthy lifestyle. Another way to pump up your living a healthy lifestyle mode is to be more aware of the food you eat.
On one hand, you cannot just do away with the processed food altogether; at some point or another, you’re bound to eat or purchase one of these kinds of food. So how can you protect yourself from the very thing that you’re trying to avoid?
Living a healthy lifestyle comes from ultimately making better choices. One way to be more conscious about these is to know what you’re eating. The first step to that is to understand food labels. As previously mentioned, you cannot remove processed food from your diet immediately, so one way to better combat this dilemma and bring the advantage to your side is to understand nutrition labels. From there you can map out how you can serve better food to yourself and your family.
Alien or not?
The ingredients in food labels may sound alien to a lot of people. Ditch the food that contains all the unpronounceable items you find on its label. Look for a better alternative. If the ingredients don’t sound natural, the contents are usually full of harmful additives. Living a healthy lifestyle is also about cutting down on your sugar intake.
Recently, there’s a move to consider sugar as junk food. Sugar isn’t good for the body; but sugar is often needed in processed foods. What manufacturers do is to hide sugar behind alternative names, such as syrup, sweetener, or anything that ends with ‘ose’, such as maltose, dextrose, sucrose or fructose. Basically, these are still sugars with very scientific-sounding names.
Inspect, inspect and inspect some more.
Not only should you check the food label on the back of the box, but also what is stated on the front. Compare what the product claims on the front packaging and see if that matches what is written on the food label at the back. For example, a high fiber food must contain at more than or equal to 5 grams of fiber in its serving.
What’s in a food label?
It’s important that you know and understand how to read these labels. There may be a lot to take note of, but for a person hoping for a change to living a healthy lifestyle, there are things that you need to take note of when reading food labels.
• The serving size – One package may contain four or more servings, or may contain just one. Always check the serving size. You might have been eating the wrong size. So instead of trying to cut down on the additives, you may have given yourself some more! Also, take note of for who the serving size is recommended. Sometimes you might forget that you’re giving it to a child whose needs are entirely different from the serving size indicated on the label.
• What does it contain? The ingredients listed are based on how much of each the food contains. If the first ingredient is carbohydrates, then this is the major ingredient of the package. Similarly, if sugar is the first one on the list, take note of that – you might be eating empty calories. Also, you should know that many manufacturers are revising the common names of sugar and salt (sodium). Don’t forget to check out the sugar content or the way the sugar is labeled on it. It might be listed under a different name, as stated above.
• How much is the recommended amount in a serving? This is often based on the RDA or the recommended daily allowance per person. However, you must remember that each person has different needs, hence, a different caloric intake.
Reading food labels is a conscious take on being healthy. But the best way to living a healthy lifestyle is to choose foods that don’t have any form of additives added to them. What do you think?
Healthy = Organic
There is no denying that if you want to follow the trend for living a healthy lifestyle, you’ll be more attracted to eating organic food in your daily diet. However, there’s also no denying that organic food is often more expensive than the regular kind. Living healthy should not be just about the price tag on products.
The healthy lifestyle goes beyond that. If you’re going to change to living a healthy lifestyle, you’ll need to make some sacrifices. After all, living a healthy lifestyle is a very conscious decision. How will you equip yourself if you want to transition from the usual run-of-the-mill kind of lifestyle to living healthy. Here are some tips that you can employ so that you can follow the living a healthy lifestyle regime diligently. 
Know it
Perhaps this is the most vital tip you can get if living a healthy lifestyle the organic way is what you’re aiming for. Just because the product says it’s organic doesn’t mean that the companies that are manufacturing such products are using organic ingredients. You need to inform yourself which products are indeed organic in nature, and which are just claiming to be.
For starters, you can check blogs and some other online sites to determine whether products are organic or not. Another tip for living healthy is basically understanding the product. Read the labels. Be thorough about it. Don’t just read the labels on the front of the box; read even the ones at the back. Here’s a tip: if it takes you more than thirty seconds to read the label, put it down and pick another one. If reading the labels takes a long time, either you’re undecided about what you’re buying, or you’re wondering if the product is indeed staying true to what it claims.
The lesser, the better
If there are more than 5 ingredients on the label, better ditch the product. It may contain more additives than you know. Make sure that you recognize the ingredients that are in the product you wish to buy. Furthermore, you also need to make sure that what you’re buying isn’t GMO (genetically modified organism), especially when you’re buying soy, potatoes or corn.
Buy local
It’s also suggested that you buy locally. Become acquainted with the local farmers. By personally knowing them, there’s a trust factor that you can always count on. Checkout farmer’s markets for better deals and better products. Most of what is sold in these markets is home-grown. You can always ask the farmers if they use organic farming techniques or not on their produce. That is the beauty of buying locally grown products – you become more knowledgeable about what you eat.
In conclusion, living a healthy lifestyle is already a great way to live in the first place, but to add the organic style to the recipe makes living healthy much better. But you need to note that this does comes with a price. However, one should not put a price on health, right? What do you think?
