Tag Archives: healthy habits

Health & Fitness

5 Healthy Habits You Can Start Today

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How many times have you said to yourself “I really should exercise more” or “I should drink more water”? If you’re like most people, you want to make changes to your health but don’t know where to start. 

The good news is that small changes can have big impacts on your health and wellbeing. Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to do everything at once. Here are 5 healthy habits you can begin any time to start living a healthy lifestyle. 

1. Drinking More Water

Be honest: how much water do you really drink each day? There are lots of different calculations out there for figuring out how much you need to drink and you’ve probably heard that you should drink 8 glasses of water a day. 

This might be plenty of water for some people but not enough for others. Drink when you are thirsty and consider drinking more water if it is hot and humid, you are pregnant or breastfeeding, you are exercising or out in the heat, etc. To know if you are drinking enough, evaluate your thirst levels and urine. If you are rarely thirsty and your urine is light yellow to clear, you’re probably well hydrated. 

A good way to start your day is with a glass of water with fresh-squeezed lemon juice. This helps get your digestive tract moving, encourages detoxification, and alkalizes your body. 

2. Moving Every Day

Even if it’s just a walk, make it a goal to move your body for 30 minutes every day. While you can and should incorporate more intense exercise sessions (if you are cleared to do so by your doctor), low impact exercise such as walking, cycling, yoga, or swimming are all great ways to move your body to help your circulation, cardiovascular health, and respiratory health. 

3. Cutting Back on Sugar 

You might be shocked to learn how many foods have sugar in them. From pasta sauce to ketchup to premade soups, hidden sugars are lurking in many foods that you might not expect. 

Excessive sugar contributes to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, tooth decay, and other health problems. While it might be hard to cut out all sugar, try to pay attention to the amount of sugar that you are eating and start slowly reducing it. 

4. Incorporating Vitamins

A daily multivitamin is an effective way to make sure you are getting all of the necessary vitamins and minerals. If you are lacking something and not getting it from fruits, veggies, or other foods, a multivitamin can make up for that deficiency.

There are many options, such as ones geared towards men or women, those for seniors, and options such as chewable gummy vitamins or ones that you swallow. Check out these multivitamin tablets from Vitabiotics for some options.

5. Eating More Fruits and Veggies

We could all use more fruits and veggies in our diets. Try to eat one green thing every day and incorporate veggies in every meal. Fruit can be used as a snack or even dessert if you have a sweet tooth after your lunch or dinner. You could even designate one night of the week to be meatless, such as “Meatless Monday” and use veggies as the main component of your meals.

Start Small With Your Healthy Habits

If you start incorporating these healthy habits into your life one by one, you won’t feel overwhelmed and you’ll be on your way to health and wellness in no time. Pick one to start today and once that becomes like second nature, choose another to build into your lifestyle. 

If you found these tips useful, be sure to check out some of our other health, wellbeing, and lifestyle articles before you go.

Health & Fitness

How Regular Biking Can Help Boost Immunity

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Few activities are as enjoyable and stress-relieving as a casual bike ride. When you take your standard or electric beach cruiser on a boardwalk ride, you take in plenty of fresh air and sunlight, while barely noticing the work your body is doing. Biking is also healthy, and can give you a significant boost in immunity that you take with you wherever you go. In fact, the more often you go for a ride, the better this boost to your system will be.

1. Reducing Stress

Exercise isn’t just good for your muscles. It also signals to your brain that your body is exerting itself as intended by nature. Humans evolved to spend serious calories every day getting food and resources. When you get yourself out of the house to do physical work, your body lets your mind know that you have done what you were designed to do. This results in a flood of endorphins that, in turn, counteract the immunity-reducing stress hormone, cortisol.

2. Promoting Healthy Habits

By incorporating regular bike rides into your life, you encourage yourself to make other healthy choices. Biking to work, for example, can cause you to crave healthier foods at lunch and sleep better at night. These kinds of double-benefits mean that biking is often well worth the extra travel time over certain other means of transportation. If you live far from work, consider an electric bike. The best electric bike for commuting is one that allows you to comfortably get to work without sacrificing the exercise benefits that bicycle commuting affords you.

3. Influencing Critical Immune Processes

The low-impact, cardiovascular exercise that your body gets while biking directly improves your immune system. As your lungs take in oxygen and pump blood through your veins, your body is better able to detect and flush out bacteria and viruses. Exercise also influences the amount of white blood cells and antibodies available to you, which are key in fighting off infections. While it is not clear to science exactly how this happens, there is plenty of data available to show that people who exercise regularly get sick less often and live longer, healthier lives.

4. Getting You Away From Crowded Gyms

Because bicycles are both a means of exercise and transportation, they can take you far from crowded gyms full of other people and their various bodily fluids. In light of the Covid-19 outbreak, it is now especially important that you find ways to exercise and have fun away from others whenever possible. If you are interested in purchasing a new electric cruiser or hybrid for your routine, try to buy electric bike online. This way, you can avoid the hassle and confusion of visiting a bike shop with limited inventory during pandemic conditions.

In light of recent health concerns, some people have taken the misguided precautionary step of withdrawing from regular exercise outdoors. While it is no secret that biking is good for your body and mind under normal conditions, it is worth knowing that biking can actually keep you safer under the unusual circumstances of an extended disease outbreak.