(Newswire.net — April 25, 2017) — The excuses can be never-ending and seem legitimate. If you are looking to cut down on your excuses, try these two-for-one specials that promise multiple benefits for the price of one activity.
Garden pride, exercise, and better eating habits.
Want to eat better, get your exercise in, and do something good for the environment? Plant a garden and start growing some of what you eat. The hours you spend outside, shoveling dirt, planting seedlings, and weeding can climb to 340 calories an hour. Apart from being an excellent source of exercise, growing your own vegetables means you decide what chemicals, if any, to use. Which makes going organic much easier. Another way to ease into the organic lifestyle? Automated light deprivation greenhouses will extend your planting and harvesting seasons. Not only can you be gardening and harvesting all year round, you also can rely on gardening as your exercise throughout the year. (Unlike other season-specific exercise options.)
Walks, talks, and social things.
Friends make most experiences better. If you must exercise, why not use that time to catch up with a friend? If they can’t make it over to your place for a walk, schedule a phone call that you can have while you walk. It will help pass the time and also keep you connected with those people in your friendship network. Nurturing friendships are an important aspect of one’s total health. Friendships give you a sense of belonging and can help you cope with difficult times. They can boost your feelings of well-being and self-confidence. In one study, those with a strong network of friends lived 10 years longer than their counterparts.
Supercharge your work breaks.
There is hardly a person who will miss their breaks at work. But the kind of break you take could be contributing to your health, or damaging it. If you want to make the most of your work break, include the following in your next bit of downtime:
- Drink water. Most of us are not reaching our quota. Make it a habit to use break time to hydrate.
- Stretch. Stretching helps to relieve stress and improves your mental cognition. Learn some simple moves that you can do in the breakroom.
- Get some fresh air. Feeling muddled? You could need a shot of oxygen. If you can, step outside and breath in deeply. Fresh air will improve your blood pressure, clean your lungs, and help you feel more energized for the rest of your workday.
- Take a nap. When all else fails to perk you up, what you might need is a catnap. One study showed that volunteers did better in written tests after napping.
Work and walk for your snack.
So you are hit with a craving and you do not know what to do. Sometimes, having a little of what you crave can help to ward off a binge session down the line. But to make snacking a healthy option, walk for your snack. The method is, allow yourself to snack on anything, but only if you skip the car and walk to the supermarket to get it. The benefits of a daily walk are too many to list.
To aid with this resolution, never keep snacks in the house. Learn to associate snacks with walks. This will get you exercising more, and snacking only when you have exercised. Of course, if you live across the street from a supermarket, you will want to put in a couple more caveats. Such as only purchasing snacks from the supermarket a couple miles away, ensuring at least an hour of walking.
Multitasking has its naysayers. But sometimes it can aid in getting us to make healthier choices. Let us do what we can to care for our most vital resource that makes the rest possible. Our health.