The Benefits of Eating Healthy
and a Healthy Lifestyle
The benefits of eating healthy are many as you'd expect. The information on this page will hopefully help to motivate you to make a change from your existing diet to a healthier way of eating.
Some of the Many Benefits of Eating Healthy
- Weight-loss and weight management
- Your overall health & reduced risk of serious illnesses
- Increased mobility
- Less breathless
- More energy & less lethargy or sluggishness
- Clearer thinking
- Better condition skin, hair & nails
- A sense of achievement
Weight-loss and Weight Management
Weight-loss and weight management are the most obvious benefits of eating healthy, as we can all tell if someone has put weight on or they've lost it. This makes people very conscious of the way they look, and why losing weight is probably the most common reason why people start eating healthier, or at least try to.
If your weight is something that you're concerned about, and you're struggling to lose it, then this list will hopefully help to motivate you to get started. And, if you've already started to eat healthy, then this list will hopefully help you to stick with it to keep shedding those pounds!
If you are overweight, please consider the following facts.
Overweight people are more likely to suffer from;
- Heart disease
- Diabetes
- Hypertension (high blood pressure)
- Stroke
- Arthritis.
The fact that these conditions are more difficult to treat if you are overweight will hopefully help to motivate you to change your diet and start eating healthier?!
If you do want to lose weight and benefit from better health, which in turn will make you less likely to develop serious health conditions, then changing your eating habits to a healthy diet plan of some type or another is essential.
If you're finding it hard to stick with healthy eating, or the whole idea of starting to eat healthy just seems way too difficult for you, then please also take a look at how to start eating healthy to help to give you another perspective.
Your Health
We have already touched on health when talking about weight-loss and weight management above, as they are all interrelated, but the fact remains, small changes to your eating habits can lead to big changes in your health. Of all the benefits of eating healthy, your general, overall health, is without doubt, the biggest and most important benefit of all by far!
Eating healthy, and being healthy, not only affects your everyday life in a positive way, but it also lays the foundation for the quality of your life to come, and may even affect how long you might live. Health is our most important asset in life. If we have 'good health', serious illness is kept at bay. If we become ill, our life ceases to function in a 'normal' way.
Poor health can obviously bring a multitude of problems, from feelings of discomfort, pain, frustration and a lack of self-worth, as well as the possible feeling of being a burden to others. It can also affect our finances through loss of income etc.
Increased Mobility
If you're suffering from excess weight problems then you'll more than likely be having some difficulty getting around. As you gradually introduce more healthy foods to your diet you'll begin to slowly lose weight. This weight-loss will free up your joints and release those areas of your body that were once inhibited by adipose tissue (fat) and/or inflammation.
Experiencing an increase in your mobility truly is one of the great benefits of eating healthy. If you are suffering from excess weight problems, and mobility is an issue, moving around in ways that you've forgotten, or never experienced before, will bring a real feeling of personal achievement and joy.
Pressure on your joints will also be greatly reduced. This will help to take away the symptoms of arthritis and joint pain, as well as help to reduce the potential of them developing in the first place if they haven't already. The main joints to benefit from a healthy diet and a reduction in body weight are; the lower back, hips, knees and ankles. Although all joints will benefit from eating healthy.
Less Breathlessness
Once again, this tends to target those who are suffering from excess weight problems. The more weight you carry around, the more tiring to the system as a whole it will be. If I were to carry a rucksack on my back filled with 10-30 kilos or more of sand and had weights strapped to my arms, legs and stomach and tried to lead a normal life, I would soon become very breathless and tired.
Under such conditions the lungs and heart are doing overtime! The long-term effects of which could be disastrous. The most common of which is a heart attack! There are obvious benefits of eating healthy?!
I'm sure many of you are already experiencing these conditions so please also read how to start eating healthy if you're struggling with a change of diet.
More Energy
Another of the many benefits of eating healthy is increased energy levels. Whether you're overweight or not, if you are eating an unhealthy diet that lacks nutrients there's a good chance that you could be deficient in some way. This will obviously have a negative effect on your energy levels to a greater or lesser degree.
In addition to that, if your diet consists of high fat, starchy and/or greasy foods, your system could be struggling to deal with them big time! These types of foods are harder for the digestive system to break down and absorb. Digestion and absorption uses up a lot of energy at the best of times. We all know how we feel after a big meal don't we? Very sluggish, right? Well, if you're eating BIG MEALS most of the time and those meals also consist of unhealthy, difficult to digest starchy and greasy foods that will also be lacking in nutrients, you will be using up a lot of energy for very little gain. The result is feeling very slow, sluggish and tired.
If you add the probability of carrying around quite a bit of extra body weight too, then you'll hopefully start to see how eating a cleaner, healthier diet will help to increase your energy levels, making lethargy and sluggishness things of the past. Having more energy is one of the best benefits of eating healthy.
Better Quality Skin, Hair and Nails
Through years of eating a nutrient deficient diet, that the body often struggles to digest, the hair skin and nails may start to reflect this in their appearance. The skin and hair may be dry to the touch and the nails pale as may be the complexion.
Chinese medicine, which I believe has proved itself to hold much truth, states; 'the nails are the windows of the blood'. It also says that the skin and hair are nourished by the Yin (moisture/fluid) and also blood, and that dry hair but also dry skin is due to deficient blood. Blood is formed by the organs of the body from nutrients that are absorbed from the food we eat.
With this in mind, it only makes sense to suggest that a poor quality diet can lead to poor quality blood, which in turn can lead to dry skin and hair, and also pale and brittle nails. A healthy blood supply is another one of the many benefits of eating healthy that not only affects the skin, hair and nails, but also our overall health and vitality.
Some of the main functions of blood are;
- Transportation of oxygen from the lungs to bodily cells
- Transportation of absorbed nutrients to bodily cells
- Transportation of wastes from bodily cells
- Distribution of hormones and various chemical substances that regulate many bodily functions
As we can see, our blood is extremely important, so increasing the quality of our blood through increasing the quality of our food will have obvious health benefits.
Clearer Thinking
Another of the benefits of eating healthy is clarity of thought. As you can see from our discussion above on blood, a clean and healthy blood supply is necessary for many important bodily functions. As your blood becomes cleaner, healthier and more potent through a clean, nutrient-rich diet of healthy foods, your thought process will become sharper and more responsive. Your mind will start to work better than when you were eating an unhealthy, nutrient-poor diet.
A diet that is deficient in nutrients can't possibly supply the body with enough vital substances to form healthy blood to nourish the brain properly. A good supply of oxygen and nutrients to the brain are essential for clear thinking and good mental faculties.
Oxygen and nutrients rely on the blood for their transportation. I would just like to go back to Chinese medicine for a moment. Chinese medicine recognises muddled thinking, poor memory, mental confusion etc. to be conditions that are caused by 'deficient blood'. I tend to listen to systems that have stood the test of time, and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of those systems. It has been practiced virtually unchanged for thousands of years. The Shaolin monks themselves follow it's principles, who are actually vegetarian by the way, but that's for another discussion!
Another thing to remember, is an unhealthy diet can leave you feeling physically sluggish and tired, as discussed further up under 'more energy'. This can also leave you feeling mentally sluggish and tired too, because the mind and body both affect one another. If one is tired then the other is tired too, to a greater or lesser degree. Therefore, with more physical energy our mental faculties are automatically clearer and sharper.
I know this to be true, as I have personally experienced clearer thinking and sharper wits and responses in conversation when eating cleaner and healthier over a longer period of time. This is especially so when I've fasted and detoxed my system during which I felt as sharp and as bright as a new pin!
Sense of Achievement
When you begin to take control of yourself and your life through eating a natural healthy diet, you should hopefully start to feel good about yourself. After all, it is something to feel good about, is it not? Especially when you get into those clothes that you once did but haven't for a while, or those types of clothes that you always wanted to buy?
The sense of achievement that you could experience by making a real change to your life through a healthier diet really could be something quite amazing and is well within your grasp. The benefits of eating healthy are not only related to the physical body, but also to your emotional state and well-being too.
The sense of achievement that you'll feel when you start to reap the many benefits of eating healthy will make you want to shout from the roof tops!
Food For Thought
There are many reasons why you may want or need to start eating healthy and hopefully the above list of benefits have helped you to get motivated?
So why not make a change to your diet today, so you can begin to take advantage of the many benefits of eating healthy? And remember, a small change to your diet is all you need to get started towards a happier, healthier life. So don't waste anymore time, get started today!
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