Blog: 8 ways to improve your physical health

All of us would have observed how rejuvenated and energetic you feel after a hiking holiday or time spent in the mountains, woods or by the sea. Modern lifestyle and professions don’t allow us to spend as much time outdoors as our ancestors could easily manage. Spending at least half an hour a day outdoors, tending to your terrace garden, walking around in your yard, playing an outdoor game or running your dog would add a lot of value to your health.

Getting 7 to 8 hrs sleep every night – We hear of highly successful, visibly fit looking people following healthy diets falling dead at a young age when walking on a treadmill or while giving a lecture. One of the most underrated malaises that our generation suffers from is lack of sleep. It could be the stress of a very demanding professional or professional life that prevents one from sleeping well or it could be the fixation we have with our digital world; of being constantly logged into social media, an obsessive need to communicate or unrealistic deadlines we give ourselves for responding to demands. As boring as it may sound, and as cliched, it is important to be off devices a few hours before your sleep and instead read, meditate or listen to music to fall asleep and relax. A deep long sleep at night is necessary for repair and rejuvenation of your body. We have to remember that our body and mind never shut down completely throughout our lifetime. The only rest it gets is when we sleep and we owe it to ourselves.

Managing to clock in 3 days each of cardiovascular exercises, strength training and yoga/ stretches every week – Some form of intentional exercise is mandatory everyday as muscles joints and bones need activity. If not, they go bad with disuse. Our body too behaves like a machine if it’s kept idle. It just turns rusty. The energy that we consume in terms of food is always in excess of our needs with the highly nutritive food available to modern man. The extra unused calories accumulate as fat inside, clogging our arteries and turning us progressively unhealthy. Three days of moderate cardio vascular exercises like walking, running, jogging, cycling, swimming or field games can do a lot of good to your endurance. As we age muscles degenerate and to keep them strong enough it is important that we strengthen them. Weight training does that for you. The importance of adding a schedule for active relaxation and increasing mobility like stretching or yoga can’t be undermined as well.

Meditating everyday – Wealth, physical health, power, status all comes secondary to mental peace and equanimity. Meditation increases your self-awareness and also helps all our other faculties to function at peak capacity. While not an easy practice to get into because the mind is indeed a monkey. However, once it becomes a habit, focus becomes easier and we would have that quiet space to withdraw into whenever we feel agitated. Meditation helps you to get back and deal with the issue on hand much better. It can add more years to your life and more life to your years.

Not missing breakfast – It is called breakfast for the simple reason that we are breaking a fast we had for all the hours we were in our night sleep. Physical exercise and a nutritious meal immediately after that, can power up the system well for all the rigor the day has in store for you. A protein and nutrient dense breakfast should Ideally be your most important meal of the day. The saying ‘breakfast like a kind and dine like a pauper’ still stands good. Your food pattern in the form of an inverted pyramid where, as the day progresses, the quantum of intake reduces makes it easier for the body to process.

Drinking 8 glasses of water – Water is indeed a miracle drink that can cleanse our system of toxins and keep our body well hydrated. Many of the everyday ailments that we suffer with are usually because of insufficient water intake. So, keeping alarms for yourself and being tuned into the body’s need for hydration is important to keep aches, cramps, skin and hair issues all at bay. Plain water should be your go to drink and not aerated drink, sugar laden juices or beer. They just add empty calories and make your body thirstier.

Avoiding fast food – In the kind of fast paced lives we live, it is not easy to have balanced, nutritious home cooked food always. Therefore, we resort to having fast food and eating out way too often. While these situations are unavoidable occasionally, keeping it minimum would be nice. Fast food industry just focuses on getting to you the food as quickly as possible and making it the tastiest best. The health of the food or nutrition is not their concern. But it has to be yours. Like it says in our favorite pareto principle, doing it right 80 percent of the time is good enough.  That is more realistic.

Maintaining a gap of 2 to 3 hours before your supper and nightcap – The last meal for the day should be digested before we go to sleep. Else, acid refluxes and indigestion would make it tough to get a sound sleep. A light dinner, a three-hour gap before sleeping and a glass of milk is the kind of boring sounding grandmother wisdom which would serve you well in the long run. It will maintain your health and give you a good sleep pattern.

If you are looking for coaching help or mentorship in understanding the purpose of life or taking steps in the direction of finding it, do write to us at harish@harishrao.world and get to know how we can help you with it. We would love to work with you on this or any other business coaching needs you may have!