The Importance of Moderation for Your Overall Health and Wellbeing
Contributed by Ryan Peterson.
Moderation is key when it comes to leading a healthy lifestyle. Now, moderation can be an extremely difficult thing to achieve in any aspect of life. You have to draw boundaries and clear lines in otherwise grey areas and you have to make sure that you don’t become too dependent on any given substance or activity that you consume or engage with. But, for the sake of your overall health and wellbeing, you do need to take active steps to determine what is best for you in terms of helping your body to function as it should without completely denying yourself any pleasures that really make life worth living! So, let’s take a moment to look at a few areas where people find difficulty in striking the right balance between “too much” and “not enough”!
Exercise
We need to exercise in order to keep our bodies in shape. Regular exercise can help us build muscle, build stamina, and lose any excess weight or fat that we might be carrying. But it’s important that you only engage with a healthy amount of exercise that our bodies can handle. It is recommended that the average adult gets one hundred and fifty minutes of moderate aerobic exercise and week or seventy-five minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise a week. If you haven’t exercised in a long time and are planning on getting back into it, make sure to ease yourself into the process. Going from doing nothing to forcing your body to work out for an excessive period of time can cause you serious damage – your heart rate could rise to a dangerous level and this could prove to be fatal. You might also injure yourself if you are not used to carrying out different exercises and throw yourself into the deep end with weights or techniques that are out of your comfort zone. In order to get back into fitness the right way, you could benefit from hiring a personal trainer. This professional will be able to survey your current fitness levels and can ease you into getting into good shape. They can come up with an appropriate programme and slowly build up the amount of time that you exercise for or the weights that you are using.
Non-Essential Medication
We live in a society that teaches us that medical professionals are to be listened to. We place medical knowledge above all else and alternative remedies are often shunned or looked down upon. Now, this is with good reason. Medical institutions and medical professionals around the world save the lives and improve the overall health and wellbeing of an untold number of people every single day. Medical research has provided cures and pain relief that have helped millions of people to overcome illnesses, recover from injury, and deal with terrible ordeals as quickly and comfortably as possible. But it is important to remember that you also need to play an active role when it comes to moderating the medicine that you are prescribed or the over-the-counter medicine that you may purchase of your own accord. When you are prescribed a medication by a doctor, read their instructions and follow them. But also be aware of how these different medicines may be affecting you. Take note of whether they seem to be improving your health or not. Consider the different side effects that you are experiencing. Make sure to report back to your doctor on all of these different things and speak to someone if you have any concerns. This can help you to better understand the process that you are going through. If you feel that you have become overly reliant or even addicted to any medication that you have been using and that you are going out of your way trying to find more than your prescription allows, take a look at https://www.resolutionsbh.com/resources/mat-fact-vs-fiction. This will set you in the right direction to find help on bringing your medicinal usage of different substances back under control.
Fast Food
There are plenty of benefits that come hand in hand with fast food. The first is that it is easy and convenient. There are fast food outlets pretty much anywhere you go. If you’re hungry, you can alleviate your hunger within a matter of minutes by heading to a fast food outlet – you will be served a hot and filling meal on demand. If you’re on the go a lot, if you have particularly short lunch breaks, if you work long hours and feel too tired to make a wholesome home cooked meal when you return home in the evening, fast food can prove extremely tempting. A second benefit that’s tied to fast food is cost. Fast food is becoming increasingly cheaper as more and more companies try their hand at setting up a new outlet – competition inevitably lowers prices, as business try to sway you to them with their custom. A low quality burger and chips is likely to cost a lot less than a dish containing multiple varieties of organic fruit and veg and higher quality ingredients. A third alluring aspect of fast food? Taste. These meals are packed with additives and artificial flavourings that stimulate our taste buds and leave us longing for more. But do these combined benefits really outweigh the cons of fast food? At the end of the day, you may be able to access these seemingly tasty meals easily and at a low cost, but your health will pay the ultimate price. They tend to have extremely low nutritional value, with many options not even offering one of your five a day. They generally have a high saturated fat content and excessive levels of salt and sugar. So, come up with a good balance. Cook your own meals the majority of the time, filling your body with all of the essential foods that it needs to function healthily. Then treat yourself to fast food every once in a while.
Sugar
Sugar, like fast food, has little nutritional benefit for your body. While it may add a lot of sweet flavor to whatever it is added to, it is essentially empty calories. So, like fast food, limit your consumption of it. You don’t necessarily have to completely cut it out. But just consider treating yourself to something sugary every once in a while around an otherwise healthy diet. If you really have a sweet tooth, try to make your sugary fix as healthy as possible. Consume more sweet fruits that contain natural sugars!
These are just a few different things that you might want to consider moderating in your day to day life. As you can see, you don’t necessarily have to completely cut these different things out. It’s just important that you recognise the potential hazards they pose to your overall health and wellbeing and that you don’t overindulge in them or engage with them against professional medical advice. So, start cutting down. If you are struggling, you can always reach out for help. There are plenty of sources of support out there that can help you to engage with different substances and activities in a healthy manner. Whether that’s your doctor, a support group, a helpline, or any other service out there. Remember that the sooner you start making positive changes to an unhealthy routine, the sooner your body will feel the benefits. So, get started today!
