Over time, the model of society has evolved as far as lifestyle is concerned and nowadays, taking advantage of the rise of certain technologies (such as internet, mobile apps, fitness accessories, etc.) .) More and more people are deciding to try to start taking care of their health.
At 20, at 30, at 40 … No matter what age you decide to start taking care of yourself (change your diet, change your lifestyle, start practicing a sport or physical activity …), at the moment you start committing some, or several, of the errors that we are going to analyze next.
The importance of taking care of yourself
With the frenetic pace to which we subject our body and mind with continuous rush, boisterous displacements, tensions and stress in the workplace, family, mortgage … being able to devote some time to our health has become indispensable for Many people, either through sports, with some relaxation technique, acquiring new hobbies, etc.
In addition, factors such as stress, poor diet or pollution to which we are subjected to living in a large city, are factors that negatively affect our health and make it necessary to change our habits in order to start caring our body.
Taking care of our diet: what you should not do
The food is perhaps the most important factor underestimates people and more complicated can be to control and take care largely due to the frenetic pace of city life, the number of hours spent away from home … However, there are certain points that we must take into account in order not to make the situation worse:
Miracle diets and superfoods
Every so often a new miracle diet emerges that follows this or that famous that makes them have an incredible body and with which they promise us that we will be stupendous and we will not lack nutrients. At the same time, a new superfoodusually emerges , easily recognizable by the infinite super-properties for our organism that they tell us they have (and that may or may not be true, let’s not fall into alarmism either).
As we have already mentioned, miracle diets and detox products are not going to have any positive effect on our lifestyle. For a diet to work, it must produce an adherence in us that we are able to maintain over time to avoid the rebound effect.
And on superfoods , we must clarify that while it is true that some may have certain properties that help us in our lifestyle, the European Union has banned the use of this term in the packaging of products since 2007. Foods such as quinoa , goji berries , cranberries or spirulina have been branded as superfoods, and although it is true that they all contain beneficial properties for us, the use of this term responds more to a marketing strategy than to another thing.
In addition, we usually find that when reference is made to a food as “super-food”, in the later explanation they speak of the compound X present in the food Y has been shown effective in “blah blah blah”. This can lead to an incorrect use of the term super-food because what really possesses those properties is the compound and not the food itself (evidently the food will not necessarily be bad, let’s not fall into extremes now).
“Copy-paste” diets and copy the neighbor’s diet
For a diet to be effective and beneficial, it must be prescribed by a true professional , assessing each case individually and adapting the nutrients according to the particularities of each person.
The “copy-paste” diets are those that take us out of a drawer in which a lot of different diets are stacked and the doctor or therapist on duty gives us simply by doing a check-up and based on two or three questions ( usually biased) about what eating habits we usually follow.
On the other hand, the case of ” the neighbor’s diet “, is another very similar case, since it is based on following the same diet that our neighbor, who has a cuerazo, has been following, without stopping to think about what can not be adequate for our nutritional requirements and our needs .
Ultraprocessed, sugars and fats
It seems obvious, but we must emphasize this point. If we want to start taking care of our diet , we must avoid these three ingredients. But beware, there are fats (like avocado or salmon) that are good and beneficial for us, so we must know how to distinguish. Not everything is white or black, but food myths and Internet searches can do a lot of damage.
A separate issue is sugars and ultra-processed , two food ingredients that are highly present in many homes and shopping baskets, partly because of its lower economic cost and partly because of its speed of preparation, something very useful especially for people who work long days of work (which could also take a couple of tupes from home with real food).
Taking care of our body: physical activity
It is normal that when we make the purpose of starting to take care of ourselves, one of the first decisions is to start doing physical exercise , either on our own or to join a gym. The main problem of this, is that many people start without previous evaluations, without medical checkups and let themselves be guided by sports apps , Youtube, Google and their friend “the one of the gym that has been around for a long time and that’s what he understands” , and then the problems appear.
It is important before carrying out any physical activity, and especially from 40 , to have a medical check-up and, if our activity is going to be running, a test of effortat least, to detect and prevent any anomaly that may cause serious problems of health.
It is also important that we know how to choose the activity that we are going to do based not only on our tastes, but also on our abilities and physical aptitudesand to start calmly, without setting too unrealistic objectives that after a couple of months the only thing that they are going to provoke is discouragement and that we abandon our attempt to take care of our physical health.
And in the same way it is important, and extremely undervalued, the rest : and for rest we not only understand the rest between days of training, rather we make reference to the number of hours that we sleep , and that in many cases it is between six and eight hours (and in some cases barely reaches six).
Taking care of our health: heart, lungs and brain
Considering the close relationship of these three organs of our body, you can imagine what we are going to tell you that you should not continue doing: smoking and consuming alcohol.
Both tobacco and alcohol are closely related to serious health problems such as various types of cancer, alcoholism, liver problems, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, cerebrovascular accidents or erectile dysfunction (both in men and women, and more serious). even if she is pregnant).