The Temptations of the Holidays with a Healthy Lifestyle

November 10, 2014

The Temptations of the Holidays with a Healthy Lifestyle

Many people are obese today not because they were born that way, but because they have forgotten about some of the healthy practices necessary for every individual.

Eating too much during the holidays is a problem that does not only face the adults or a particular age bracket or group of people. Rather, this is a problem that is faced by the youth, grownups and children in equal ratio.

No one is safe when it comes to the holiday err. It is easy to understand why and how this happens. Holidays involve coming together as families. This is the time when you want to offer your little family the time of their lives. You want them to eat to their fill, whatever they want.

So as the daddy you make sure you shop plenty of stuff and keep a large stock of food at home. You know what happens with the kids and the youngsters at home?

They are home all the time. Watching television dominates their daily programs. No schools, no homework to burden their thoughts at this season. So, bored as they may get, they will need some sort of entertainment.

What do you consider entertainment? Well, I do not expect you to actually answer. Just put yourself inside the head of a bored kid. They go for whatever provides the most ‘high’. Just the kind of ‘high’ you get from taking your favorite hard drink.

The latest movies would do, but food will be the preference. Children eat what there is in the house. And since they need something entertaining in the eating so they will go for the sweetest stuff in your holiday shopping.

What is the sweetest stuff you would opt for as a kid? With no knowledge about the downsides of the sweetness?

holidays

The snacks, no doubt. Sweet cakes, bacon, sweetest bread around, a lot of it. The biscuits are such a nice little pastime, if you are not aware. They can cause a nice little distraction as you crush and enjoy the crunchy sound and the effect that creates in the mood. Good times.

Popcorns. Not bad for sweeping away some intruding boredom. Popping them would do for the kids at these moments.

With all that oil in popcorns. With all that sugar in biscuits. With all that fat in fried foods. Imagine the health dangers the kids are exposed to. Imagine how long it would take them to accumulate sugar or fat in their bodies.

The tempting adult holiday lifestyle

These temptations are not just for the children. Most grownups make some of the most serious mistakes you can ever imagine of during the holidays. It is true a lot of tempting stuff unfold at such seasons.

These are the times you want to go around partying with friends. You will be offered some of the select dishes around. If not careful you will easily be tempted to eat everything. If not everything then anything you are offered.

Chances are that you may come across something that simply does not work for your system. You may be allergic to it or you may not respond to it favorably. The body is going to treat such meals as foreign and may react negatively. Your health may be affected.

In these occasions you may as well lose count of the meals you take. With some drink in the mix, you may just pick and eat-pick and eat. Before you know it you have taken too much for your digestion. So, what follows? Bloating stomach, aches…I do not want to mention nausea and possible diarrhea.

Temptations. Temptations may be more for a healthy lifestyle during times for the holidays. These are the times when overdrinking is common. You drink out with friends or with some family members.

The possibility of developing an addiction is on the looming. You do not want to appear as a nerd among your peers so you just keep taking more of what the binge can offer. No one notices that you are actually trying out a totally new thing so it is actually a win for you.

But it may be a severe loss for your health. You face a growing habit of drinking more and more of the substance. It could even be some smoking habit you develop because of hanging out with friends. And learning from those friends.

holidays

Way out?

You do not have to be a victim of the holidays. You have a variety of mechanisms that can help you get through the holiday seasons unscathed. Want to take some?

Plan ahead. Always have a prior set of things you wish to do and how. For the case of those with kids, always make arrangements to limit their access to unhealthy foodstuffs or programs. Put in place everything that is going to help you achieve this as you approach the holidays so you do not get bumped up with the situations.

As you eat, remember to exercise regularly. Make exercises part of your regular routine so that the effect of possibly unhealthy meals can be neutralized.

Learn to say no! You must be aware of what works and what does not work for you. That way you will know what your limits are exactly. When you get there, end it. This is a question of self-awareness. You don’t want to forget this.

And, if you suspect that you are not fully self-aware, if you feel that there are areas you still are unsure about, then there is help. You are the type of persons why AwareMed exists. We at AwareMed are here to help you get all the relevant knowledge regarding how to sail safely through your delicate holiday festivities. Just get in touch with us.

The Temptations of the Holidays with a Healthy Lifestyle

Eating Clean Seasonally

November 7, 2014

Eating Clean Seasonally

It is general knowledge that we all ought to live healthier lives by observing certain uncomplicated dietary rules. These are things we do not have to be taught. We just know through simple intuition that taking excess sugar is unhealthy, consuming too much fat can be fatal in the long run, eating excessive salt could cause life threatening diseases like diabetes among others.

We hear these things every day. We meet these warnings almost everywhere we go. Yet, it is very much obvious that most youths around the world continue to take processed foods that are high in sugar, cholesterol and salt.

You find the head of a family suffering from diabetes. He no longer takes tea with sugar. Oftentimes we would assume that that is a close lesson for the rest of the family that are still healthy to take caution when approaching the amounts of these nutritional contents as found in their daily regimens.

Yet that is not the case. The youngster in the same family still views the father’s case as an old man’s destiny; something far from their own course. So the girl of the house proceeds to observe a portion of fries in her daily routine and the boy keeps on with his double-the-required-amount of sugar for his everyday tea.

clean eating diet

The results? Teenage vulnerability. Even if they do not directly begin to suffer the ultimate diseases such as diabetes, they often experience a variety of ulcers and other frequent disorders. Chances are that even after starting to suffer such ailments these young folks still find it hard to change course and observe healthier diets.

Stubborn generation

It is not sufficient to say that the youth are the people who do not eat clean diets. That would actually be preposterous. Yes there might be difficulty establishing a clear-cut age line separating youth from adulthood. But we can seek logic to help us go about this topic. It is not decent language to refer to some married fellow with a family in his mid-thirties as youth! In my view that is just not good.

These are the people who are highly affected, second only to the teenagers. At this age you find that the person is stably employed or is running some successful business. Money is not a problem. So what does he do?

Out he goes every evening after work to drink with colleagues; members of the same age bracket. They drink a lot of vodka and eat roasted meat. As a routine. Surrounded by a bunch of willing ladies who take shifts for different days.

Another breed also take beer as a staple food. They let their bellies develop into a pot and get proud of it. Then they do no exercise to burn the excess fats and cholesterol.

What then will contrast this generation of people from that of the teenagers who do not have much money but get enough for their daily fast foods? Bottom line: both have inappropriate eating habits.

Clean-Eating

Eating clean

What then does eating clean entail? Of course there are certain world cultures that observe healthy eating habits. This is why you will seldom find overweight people in Japan. Their diet is highly comprised of sea foods and vegetables and just like the Chinese, food to them is majorly regarded from a healing perspective.

This is in contrast to the Western, and specifically American culture where most of the food that make their diet consist of processed materials, candy, fried foodstuffs or soda that are basically low in nutrients.

The Mediterranean is another region that can be said to observe safe eating styles throughout the seasons. Diet here majorly comprises of green vegetables in large quantities, nuts, fresh fruits, beans and varieties of fish. From a health perspective such diets contain healthy antioxidants and the beta-carotene which are the best for disease prevention.

Generally speaking then, we all need to try pursuing some form of traditional eating lifestyles seasonally in order to stay healthier. Diets that are enriched with fruit varieties, vegetables, lean proteins and natural oils may just be the ideal culinary composition for the contemporary mankind.

Tag Archives: Food safety