A healthy life is important to lead a good life. Our health is like a prerequisite wall to draw a picture. We are the architect of our own health. Either we avoid being unhealthy or we heal the damage already done. Physical fitness is very vital. Fitness is a relative term. A sprinter must have a different degree of fitness than a music teacher. There are many more dimensions that one can bring to define fitness. Depending on the required level of fitness, appropriate measures should be taken.
More than five billion people live in this world. The body constitution of each of us is different. The calories needed for each individual is different. There is no common recipe for everyone in this world. Let’s take some examples. The level of energy that a professional designer needs is different from that of a taxi driver. Prescribing a worker to have a cereal bar for breakfast is ridiculous. My dad’s friend, a chain smoker, died at the age of 83! Trust me, I watched him lead a healthy life. I am not recommending you to smoke to live a healthy life. I try to drive home the point that you should not get carried away with the exciting information that is available around you and overdo it in order to apply it in your daily life as well. That is dangerous for a healthy life.
While we may not have five billion suggestions for fitness and healthy living, we can identify common needs for all of us. Whether you are an Olympic champion or an office worker; a celebrity or a hairdresser, you only need to take three appropriate steps. Look at your eating habits, physical exercise and exercise for the mind. You can build more with many plugins to achieve laurels in life.
We can use our common sense to lead a healthy life. It does not require great knowledge of science or medicine or physical exercise. Leave that in the hands of the specialists. We are all aware that food is very important for sustenance. Our body is a mysterious workshop containing various machines. Food is your ticket. The machine processes food and provides the body with energy to carry out our activities of daily living. If the input to the machine is greater than its processing capacity, obviously the machine will break down. If the quality of the input to the machine is not conducive to building the machine, again the machine will crash. Apart from the quality and quantity of the intake, we must pay attention to the moment. There’s a saying. I’m sure we all know this. We should eat breakfast like a prince. In the afternoon, we should have lunch like a king. At night, we must eat like a beggar. The power of digestion during the night is very poor. Also, there is no physical activity involved at night when we sleep. So let the stomach be half full. Have dinner a couple of hours before bed. When we get up in the morning, if we drink a glass of water, it helps the body to hydrate itself to prepare for the day’s work. How can we not start our car with 4th gear, in the same way that we should consider our body. After 10 hours of fasting when we break the fast, we should start with simple and easily digestible foods. Basically, we need to start with first gear and keep going. In my opinion, to be physically fit, 3 times of intake – morning, noon and night is enough. Perhaps a snack can also be incorporated between lunch and dinner. The key driver is to scrupulously follow the routine intake schedule. This is a good recipe for a healthy life.
Our stomach is the origin of all our food. Even the main reason for bad breath originates solely from the stomach. If we don’t take care of our stomach and brush our teeth with the most expensive toothpaste and wash our mouth with the most expensive liquid mouthwash, bad breath will not go away. We must keep our stomach clean by taking the proper quantity and quality of food at routine times. It is easier said than done, but not impossible. Do you know who is to blame? It is our language. If we pay attention to the taste, then we would not be able to control the quantity. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy the taste. In fact, the tongue contributes greatly to a healthy life. When we enjoy food, we feel good. Feeling good is a sign of healthy living. If someone asks you to eat only green vegetables for fitness, there is no difference between us and herbivores. But the trick is not to cross the limit of moderation. That will be counterproductive. Give importance to the taste but be careful. We must eat to live and not live to eat.
Many of us believe that being thin leads to a healthy life. One of my friends is skinny but has cholesterol. It is a wrong notion. The body structure of each of us is different. An elephant must not try to become a horse. Nature has created that way. The important thing is to avoid being overweight, obese or underweight. If the damage is already done, consult a specialist to get back on track. Do not perform any physical conditioning exercise without proper guidance from a physical education expert. Sometimes you are the expert in knowing your own pros and cons. The first day I went to learn Tai Chi, the Chinese version of Yoga, the teacher told me to rotate my neck clockwise and counterclockwise as a warm-up exercise. However, earlier my orthopedic surgeon told me not to rotate my neck to recover from a type of spondylitis he had. What was good for others was not good for me. There will be many situations where we should use our wisdom. We especially have to be careful with physical exercise.
Life is a series of experiences. If our experiences are good, we say that life is good; otherwise, we say that life is bad. The mind determines whether an experience is good or bad. Healthy living is achieved through the combination of a healthy body and a healthy mind. The mind does not exist in our brain. The mind is a subtle matter that manifests in our astral body between the soul and the physical body. The food we eat is converted into energy through the blood and the finer particles of food reach the subtle mind and then the still more subtle intellect. While healthy food definitely supports a healthy mind, mental exercise is also very important for a healthy life. Yoga is considered one of the best ways to exercise the body and mind. A branch of Yoga also has physical exercise. Meditation is another way to give the mind healthy exercise. These have to be practiced with the help of specialists. This is the body-mind-intellect complex. A simple but effective understanding and application of the above will go a long way towards achieving a healthy life.