By Maharani Dewanti Setiaputri
Today, about 30 percent of the world’s population are obese. This percentage might increase in the future if there are no awareness campaigns from the society itself on how dangerous obesity can affect our health.
At the worst, obesity can impact our blood pressure and lead to heart attack.
Some people still not do not consider their health as a big concern, not thinking much of what they consume. There are certain things that we can do to avoid from the cause that leads to obese or prevent our body from any kind of diseases.
Exercises can help us in maintaining our health, but on top of that our health also depends on what we consume. These two things must be balanced if we want to live in a healthy lifestyle.
Unfortunately, based on the statistics reported above, the number of people nowadays who are diagnosed with obesity has increased every year caused by many factors including eating unhealthy food, from a young age. It is because some people do not have good knowledge and enough information about the needed ingredients for their body and the importance of eating healthy food.
Therefore, this feature story is aimed to acknowledge people with the important information for those who do not really know well how to take care of their health, especially the younger generation, on how to live a happy and healthy lifestyle.
We should have known this since a young age because if we were to start eating healthy food from a young age it will help our body to remain healthy throughout our life.
Our food choice is very important for the metabolism process in our body. The more food we consume which contains nutrients, the healthier our body will be. The nutrient is one of the important parts in helping us to live a healthy lifestyle.
If our body does not receive enough nutrients from the food, our nail, hair, skin, will be affected. Nutrients include protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and water. Therefore, to achieve a healthy lifestyle we must know the ingredients of the food that we consume.
- The importance of protein for our body is to maintain our hormones, and it becomes antibodies that can prevent the disease. It also gives the benefit for the growth of our hair and nail. Some of the protein comes from vegetables, lean protein, fruits, low-fat dairy. The protein also much contained in the chicken meat, beef and seafood.
- Secondly, carbohydrates also become one of the sources for our energy and also in helping the work system in our brain. Carbohydrates include fats and peanuts that can help in maintaining and balancing our blood sugar.
- We should also consume bread oatmeal, brown rice. These are among the grains that become the source of energy for our body. As we do our daily activities as well as exercise, it will affect our muscles. Hence, when we consume, these types of food will minimise the effect as well as strengthen back and repair our muscles.
- Another type of food that helps our body in maintaining strong bones is dairy products such as yogurt, low-fat milk, as well as cheese.
Drink more water
Despite healthy food, another thing that is important for our body, but some people still underestimate the benefit of it, is drinking water. Many people still do not know how important it is, even though it has become a key aspect of the process of metabolism in our body. These are some of the importance of drinking water:
Water helps our body maximise physical performance for daily activities
Sixty percent of our body contains water. Can we imagine if our body does not receive enough water? It will make us dehydrated and make our body suffer. As we dehydrated it will make our body to have the abnormal temperature that will affect the rest of our system, which is our body might not function as it used to be.
Drinking water helps maintain balance of body
Without drinking enough water would impact on the system of the body in general. The bodily fluid from the water helps in some of the process in our body such as circulation, transportation from the food that we eat as well as to maintain our body.
Drinking enough prevent headache
In fact, not enough drinking water can be one of the causes of having headaches. As has been mentioned in the previous point, when the body’s system does not function as it has to be, all of this can result in a pain in our brain, because of the circulation of the blood or blood pressure.
Water helps skin to look good
Many women complain of their dry skin even though they already consume healthy food and use good skincare. Little did they know that water also becomes an important aspect that people tend to forget. Drinking a lot of water makes our skin look fresh and not dry because the water helps hydrated our skin.
Based on one study conducted on the woman at the age of 30, before and after she tried to drink more water per day than before, between the two photos of her face before and after, it has shown the changes of her skin.
Water helps to fight against illness
We have heard a lot of cases that people who are diagnosed, for instance with the kidney stone, what is a kidney stone? It is the process of the shape of crystal or known as crystallisation of mineral material in our kidney due to lack of drinking water. Therefore, drinking more water daily will help us to prevent this kind of illness, which can affect our body system. These are some of the benefits of eating good food as well as the importance of drinking a lot of water.
Exercising improves our health
Despite the food that we consume, exercise also one of the things that we can do to improve our health. It not necessary for heavy exercise, but the most important thing is we have to be consistent, maintain and doing it continuously. The two factors that can impact the heart disease are obesity as well as physical inactivity. That is why we should spend some time to exercise.
Based on the study, children are encouraged to exercise 60 minutes daily, and for the adult its 150 minutes weekly. There are 24 hours per day, and spending one hour for exercise should not be something hard to do. There must be sacrifice to reach the criteria of living a healthy life.
The exercise here does not mean merely going to the gym, doing heavy sport. As long as it involves a movement of our body and exercise our muscle. For example, riding bicycles, walking around the road around your house and many more.
Living a happy life
We can enjoy a healthy life by doing exercise as well as taking care of what we eat. How about to live a happy life? When we talk about living a happy life, it is a big scoop that needs some aspects to be fulfilled to achieve that level. It is not merely coming from the food that we eat, or our daily exercise, but also our habit and activities.
Happiness and a positive mindset can also influence our health and help us to live a healthy lifestyle. Our thoughts and mindset will affect our body system. Therefore, one of the ways to live a happy life and enjoy healthy living is to throw away our negative thoughts and adopt positivity.
As we know, the number of people who commit suicide especially among teenagers has increased, it could be the result of negative thoughts that they have or because of the society that they live in. Therefore, by putting our mindset to be positive all the time, our whole body will also support us and we become healthier than we have ever been.
Having enough sleep
Another way to achieve our wellbeing is by having enough sleep because it can make our body healthier. We are encouraged to have enough sleep according to our age, for age 14-17 years it is recommended to sleep 8 to 10 hours, and for adult 7-9 hours. Good sleep can improve our concentration and productivity in doing something.
People who have less sleep tend to have a risk of heart attack, if the sleep deprivation continues in the long term it will have the effect of another health problem such as diabetes as well as obesity, the worst will have the risk of early death.
Another way to live happily is to spend our time with people we love, and leave the toxic relationship with people who make us feel pressured and lead us to depression. By knowing ourselves more what makes us happy, by knowing our self more, it will surely help us find the true meaning of happiness.
Going on vacation
Next is vacation. It is something that can help us live a happy and healthy lifestyle. Why is that so? Take a vacation and get out from our daily routine to lessen our stress. Therefore, it is believed that when we take a vacation we could be happier and refresh our mind.
Another thing that we can do is take time to rest from technology and social media. Some people might be wondering why is it that becomes one of the ways to live a happy life? Even though the social media and technology have helped us on a daily basis to connect us with other people, but many cases happened nowadays like teenagers committing suicide, because of bullying and deception that happened in real life, and it all started from the social media. Many factors can make this happen.
Firstly, the fact is that we could not control what had been shared on social media. It is hard to filter something, certain things should not be seen by people especially those who are under-age. Therefore, this thing happens when many people receive negative comment for instance, seeing other people’s life more interesting than theirs, and this is when negative thoughts come to their mind and they start to compare and underestimate themselves.
This would lead people to feel pressured and stressful. That is why taking a break from social media can help us feel less stressful.
Another activity to reduce stress is by reading. It also helps us to stimulate our brain, relax our body, and based on some studies, it also lowers our heart rate. That is the benefit of reading to reduce stress.
From what have been mentioned above, there are many things that we can do to help us in achieving our well-being to live a happy and healthy life. It is not only food but other activities and other things that we feel can create our own happiness and reduce our stress from the daily routine.
Because without knowing what we can do with ourselves to be happy and maintain our healthy living, it will be so stressful that this will affect our physical body. Therefore, from a young age we need to train ourselves to live happily and eat something good for our body. Do not let our bodies suffer from lack of consuming good food as well as having negative thoughts.
It is my wish that what have been explained here can help people, especially the young generation, to improve their wellbeing, as well as to decrease the number of obesity rate that happened in our society. It is sad that certain sections of our society today is not really aware of the importance of maintaining good health.
Hopefully people would be more concerned of their health and be motivated to live the best of their life. Therefore, with a healthy lifestyle, it would not only create beauty outside us but would increase the beauty inside us as well. ***