habits

12 Habits of Super-Healthy People

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Have Breakfast

Have Breakfast

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It’s important for a bunch of reasons. It jump-starts your metabolism and stops you from overeating later. Plus, studies show that adults who have a healthy breakfast do better at work, and kids who eat a morning meal score higher on tests. If a big plateful first thing isn’t for you, keep it light with a granola bar or a piece of fruit. Just don’t skip it.

Plan Your Meals

Plan Your Meals

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It’ll help you save time and money in the long run. Block out some time, then sit down and consider your goals and needs. Do you want to lose weight? Cut back on sugar, fat, or carbs? Add protein or vitamins? Meal prep keeps you in control. You know what you’re eating and when. A bonus: It’ll be that much easier to skip those doughnuts in the breakroom at work.

Drink Plenty of Water

Drink Plenty of Water

3/12

It can do so many good things for you. Staying hydrated is at the top of the list, but it may also help you lose weight. Another reason to go for H2O? Sugary drinks are linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes. If you aren’t a fan of plain water, add flavor with slices of orange, lemon, lime, watermelon, or cucumber.

Take an Exercise Break

Take an Exercise Break

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Don’t just grab another cup of coffee — get up and move. Do some deep lunges or stretches. It’s great for your body and mind. Just 30 minutes of walking five times a week may help keep the blues at bay. And if you can’t do those minutes all at once, short bursts help, too.

Go Offline

Go Offline

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Checking your email and social media a lot? Sure, your friends’ and family’s latest updates are just a click away, but do you really need to see pictures of your cousin’s latest meal? Let it wait until morning. Set a time to log off and put the phone down. When you cut back on screen time, it frees you to do other things. Take a walk, read a book, or help your cousin chop veggies for their next great dinner.

Learn Something New

Learn Something New

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New skills help keep your brain healthy. Sign up for a dance class or a creative writing workshop. Better yet, master a new language. The mental work it takes can slow the signs of aging and may even delay the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

Don't Smoke

Don’t Smoke

7/12

If you light up, quit. It’s a big move toward better health. Your body repairs itself quickly. As soon as 20 minutes after your last cigarette, your heart rate and blood pressure drop. Why wait? Kick the habit, today. Your doctor will be happy to help you get started.

Sleep Well

Sleep Well

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There are almost too many benefits to list. A good night’s sleep keeps you in a better mood, sharpens memory and focus, and helps you learn new things. In the long term, it lowers your risk of heart disease and helps you keep trim. Aim to get 7 to 9 hours a night. For the best rest, do it on schedule — turning in and waking up at about the same times every day.

Train Your Muscles

Train Your Muscles

9/12

Strength training helps your body trade fat for muscle mass. That means you’ll burn more calories even when you’re being a couch potato. But these workouts can also help you slim down, strengthen your heart, and build up your bones. Do strength-training exercises — like push-ups, lunges, and weight lifting — at least twice a week.

Head Outdoors

Head Outdoors

10/12

A few minutes in the sunshine raises vitamin D levels, and that’s good for your bones, your heart, and your mood. Plus, being outside means you’re more likely to move your body instead of parking it in front of the TV or computer. Choose nature over city streets, if you can. One study found that people who strolled in urban green spaces were calmer than people who walked in built-up areas.

Keep Your Balance

Keep Your Balance

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If you’re young and active, good balance will help you avoid injuries. If you’re older, it will keep you active longer and lower the chances you’ll fall and break a bone. No matter your age, good balance means better muscle tone, a healthier heart, and greater confidence. Yoga and tai chi are great ways to work on it, but just about anything that keeps you moving, even walking, can help.

Be Mindful

Be Mindful

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It can mean meditating or simply stopping to smell the roses. However you do it, studies show mindfulness slashes stress, relieves pain, and improves your mood. And scientists are beginning to understand how. One study found that 8 weeks of regular meditation can change parts of your brain related to emotions, learning, and memory. Even washing dishes can be good for your brain, as long as you do it mindfully.

These 5 habits will make your life 10 times better (according to science)

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What are the best habits for a healthy mind and body?

I see this question asked ALL the time.

Here’s the thing…With pretty much any “habit” someone is promoting, it doesn’t mean it will benefit you as well. We’re not all the same. What works for some people might not work for you.

So, how can you work out the “healthy habits” that give you the best chance of helping you?

Scientific research, and lots of it!

Research is designed to eliminate factors you can’t control, and also be statistically significant for the majority of participants. And the more positive research there is, the higher chance it will actually benefit you.

So, in this post, I’m going to go over 5 natural habits that science says will probably work. Enjoy!

1) Running

Humans are built to run. We evolved to run great distances hunting prey and gathering food.

So it’s no surprise that research suggests running could be one of the most effective habits for your health, physically and mentally.

A 2014 study that appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that “running, even 5-10 minutes a day, at slow speeds, even slower than 6 miles per hour [10:00 minute pace], is associated with markedly reduced risks of death from all causes and cardiovascular disease.”

A 2017 study found that, in general, runners have a 25%-40% reduced risk of premature mortality and live approximately 3 years longer than non-runners.

It’s not just your physical health, either. Running, and other forms of exercise, can reduce anxiety symptoms and help you relax, according to studies cited by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. In some studies, running may work as well as medication to relieve anxiety.

Running has also been found to help people with depression. Science has found that depression is related to low levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine, both of which are stimulated by exercise.

So, what’s the “perfect” amount of running per week? According to Carl. J. Lavie, MD, “Running for 20 to 30 minutes, or about a mile-and-a-half to three miles, twice per week would appear to be perfect.”

2) Intermittent Fasting

If you were to do intermittent fasting, you would not eat from say, 7 PM until 11 am (16 hours) and during 11 am to 7 PM, you would eat as much as you want.

There are other ways to practice it. You could not eat for 24 hours, once or twice a week.

Of course, it doesn’t mean you can just eat junk food and you will experience the benefits. It’s still important to eat healthy food.

There’s starting to be a lot more research on intermittent fasting.

First, intermittent fasting has been found to boost metabolic rate (increase calories out) and reduce the amount of food you eat (reduces calories in).

According to a 2014 review, intermittent fasting can cause weight loss of 3-8% over 3-24 weeks. The people also lost 4-7% of their waist circumference, which indicates that they lost lots of belly fat, which is harmful in the abdominal cavity that causes disease.

Studies also show that intermittent fasting can reduce oxidative damage and inflammation in the body. This should have benefits against aging and development of numerous diseases.

Also, intermittent fasting has been shown to improve several risk factors for heart disease, such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, triglycerides and inflammatory markers.

3) Lift weights

Weightlifting is not something that readily comes up when it comes to health. But it can actually be very beneficial for your body and mood.

Research suggests that lifting weights can add years to your life. A 2014 UCLA study suggested that the more muscle mass we have, the less likely we are to die prematurely.

The lead researcher said in a statement, “the greater your muscle mass, the lower your risk of death….Thus, rather than worrying about weight or body mass index, we should be trying to maximize and maintain muscle mass.”

Your sleep also improves when you do resistance training. In a small 2012 study in older men, researchers found that resistance training reduce the number of times the study participants woke up during the night.

4) Stop using Facebook

You may not like this one, as you’re probably reading this article from Facebook.

But research is starting to show that staying off Facebook will probably make you happier.

Researchers in Denmark asked people to stop using Facebook for one week to see if it made them happier. Compared to the control group who continued to use Facebook, they appeared more satisfied with their life once the experiment was complete.

The lead researcher of the study attributed the results to people’s tendencies to compare themselves to others on social media. The researcher stated:

“Facebook distorts our perception of reality and of what other people’s lives really look like. We take into account how we’re doing in life through comparisons to everyone else, and since most people only post positive things on Facebook, that gives us a very biased perception of reality…If we are constantly exposed to great news, we risk evaluating our own lives as less good.”

There have also been plenty of studies that have found correlations between heavier Facebook use and depression, feelings of envy and isolation and lower self-esteem.

There’s no doubt that Facebook is great for keeping in touch with people, but there’s no shortage of messaging apps. So instead of mindlessly scrolling Facebook, your time might be better spent using constructive apps that help you learn and gain knowledge.

5) Get outside in nature

We’re spending a lot more time indoors, thanks to urbanization and technology controlling our lives.

Unfortunately, this means we’re not getting enough time out in nature. However, there’s plenty of research to suggest that getting out in nature, whether it’s forests, mountains or the sea, can reduce stress and make you happier.

A study in Japan found that participants who were assigned to walk in a forest (compared to an urban center) were found to have significantly lower heart rates and increased relaxation and less stress.

Another study in Finland found that urban dwellers who strolled for as little as 20 minutes through an urban park or woodland reported significantly more stress relief than those who strolled in the city center.

The reasons are unclear, but scientists believe that we evolved to be more relaxed in natural spaces.

Looking to reduce stress and live a calmer, more focused life? Mindfulness is the easy way to gently let go of stress and be in the moment. It has fast become the slow way to manage the modern world – without chanting mantras or finding hours of special time to meditate.

In Hack Spirit’s new eBook, The Art of Mindfulness, we explain how you can use mindfulness practically to help you clear your mind, let go of your worries and live peacefully in the present moment.

By devoting full attention on what we are doing in the moment, we can alleviate suffering, fear and anxiety.

With the power of mindfulness at our fingertips and the beauty of looking deeply, we can find insights to transform and heal any situation.

Education & Experience Don’t Guarantee Success—Attitude & Habits Do

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Professional success is a culmination of many factors. Your education matters—maybe not as much as you think, but a degree in your field can really jump-start your progress. Your experience certainly matters, but that can only come to you after years of dedication. Your talent matters, too, but aside from skills (which develop from experience) most of your talent is innate, meaning you have a natural tendency to perform well in certain areas more than others. Your network of contacts matters, but you can’t always control who you interact with. And ultimately, at least some of your career success is going to come down to a factor of luck.

Looking at these things, it seems like there is little you can control. But none of these things will matter if you neglect the most important things you need to create for yourself:

1. A Positive Attitude

The whole “positive attitude” angle might seem like a gimmick—after all, can you think of anybody successful who got to where they are only because they thought positive thoughts? Of course not. But you can trace almost any successful entrepreneur or professional’s journey and find at least one major obstacle that nearly disrupted everything. And in the face of that obstacle, they remained positive, which motivated action rather than submission, and eventually, they rose to the top.

Positive thinking is about more than helping you through the tough times. Research shows that positive self-talk, rather than negative self-talk, can actively reduce your stress levels, giving you greater physical and mental health and a greater capacity to perform to your maximum potential. The best part is that there aren’t any naturally positive or naturally negative people—your thoughts and your self-talk can be controlled with practice, meaning a positive attitude is something you can, and should, create for yourself.

2. Ongoing Habits

Our habits make us who we are. Over time, our repeated actions become automatic, or second nature, and once we’re in that groove it’s nearly impossible to break the chain. With bad habits, like sleeping through your first alarm or working through your breaks, this unbroken chain can come to destroy you. But with positive habits, like regularly reading or fact checking all of your work, this unbroken chain can lead you to success.

Though many habits form unconsciously through our natural actions, it is possible to create ongoing habits for yourself. The key to creating these habits is consistency—if you want to start doing something every day, you must force yourself to start doing it on a daily basis, and don’t allow yourself to slip in the first few weeks. After a few rounds of consistent effort, it will become easier. Breaking bad habits can be tougher, but it’s entirely within your power.

3. Goals

While your specific job may have company goals that dictate your actions, your professional goals are entirely within your control. Create goals that are too lofty and you’ll never be able to make significant progress. Create goals that are too easy, and you’ll never reach your true potential.

The reliable standby for creating good goals is the SMART criteria—an acronym that describes the five key qualities that all goals must have: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-specific. In addition to meeting these criteria, you should create goals on multiple scales. For example, you should have broad, flexible long-term goals detailing your plans for your long-term success, but you should also have smaller, more immediate, actionable goals that can lead you to those broader visions, and medium-sized goals in between the two to act as milestones.

4. Tactical Plans

Goals are good for helping you to hone your desires and set the tone for your career, but without a solid plan of execution, those desires are only pipe dreams. As an extension of your goals, you must learn to create tactical plans that detail how you’re going to achieve those goals. That might include a list of tasks you must accomplish before reaching the goal, a series of strategies you’re going to use while pursuing that goal, or a list of prerequisites you’ll need to have before moving on to the next phase of your plan. If you’re having trouble coming up with an initial plan, you may need to do additional research before moving forward.

5. A Healthy Environment

As humans, we are often products of our environments, and in the professional world, this is no different. If your desk is messy, your mind may be more frantic and cluttered. If you work in a noisy area full of distractions, you’ll never be able to focus. But perhaps more importantly, if you’re surrounded with negative, apathetic or downright lazy people, you’ll never be able to motivate yourself to achieve your goals. If you’re working in a place that doesn’t acknowledge hard work, you’ll never be able to progress.

Create your own environment to maximize your chances for success, whether that means working within the confines of your current organization or moving on to a better opportunity. Surround yourself with the types of people who will lead you to success, and structure your work environment so you can be your most productive.

Once you start creating these things for yourself consistently and with dedication, you will find yourself naturally gravitating toward a path of success. With a strong vision in your mind and the right attitude and environment to carry you through the obstacles that lie ahead, there should be nothing stopping you from achieving your goals.

– See more at: http://www.success.com/article/education-experience-dont-guarantee-success-attitude-habits-do#sthash.5C1mGixY.dpuf

People under stress stick to habits, good or bad.

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It seems old habits really do die hard – whether they are good or bad.

The study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, contradicts the idea that being under pressure leads to bad habits like over-eating or shopping sprees.

Instead, people are just as likely to maintain gym habits or eat healthily.

In short, they say stress does lead to relapses into bad behaviour – but that it can reinforce good habits too.

Doughnuts v oatmeal

The University of Southern California team looked at the behaviour of 65 students over a 10-week term.

They wanted to study how much willpower someone had in a time of stress – in this case, during exams.

They found that during testing periods, when students were stressed and sleep-deprived, they were even more likely to stick to old habits – as if they didn’t have the energy to do something new,

So those who ate pastries or doughnuts for breakfast during the term ate even more junk food during exams.

But the same was true of the healthy “oatmeal eaters” – they too were likely to stick to their routine and habits.

Those who read the editorial pages of the newspaper every day continued even when they were short of time.

And regular gym-goers were even more likely to go to the gym even more when stressed.

Willpower

Prof Wendy Wood, who led the study, said: “When we try to change our behaviour, we strategise about our motivation and self-control. But what we should be thinking about instead is how to set up new habits.

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What we know about habit formation is that you want to make the behaviour easy to perform, so that people repeat it often and it becomes part of their daily routine”

Prof Wendy WoodUniversity of Southern California

“Habits persist even when we’re tired and don’t have the energy to exert self-control.”

She added: “Everybody gets stressed. The whole focus on controlling your behaviour may not actually be the best way to get people to meet goals.

“If you are somebody who doesn’t have a lot of willpower, our study showed that habits are much more important.”

Prof Wood said the findings had implications for those seeking to affect people’s behaviour.

“The central question for behaviour-change efforts should be, how can you form healthy, productive habits?

“What we know about habit formation is that you want to make the behaviour easy to perform, so that people repeat it often and it becomes part of their daily routine.”

Source: BBC