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The Complete Guide to Women's Health PART 2

Here is the second part in the series called The Complete Guide to Women’s Health. Here we will go over a few more important diet and lifestyle issues before getting onto some specifics about exercise and weight loss. Get ready for a big read!

Rehash of Part 1

Just to refresh your memory in the first part we looked at:

1. Taking some time for yourself
2. Giving up smoking, alcohol and drugs
3. Eating fruit as a whole meal

Now we will kick off this installment with number four.

4 - Exercise everyday

Before I get into the specifics about exercise (which will be in Part 3) I have to mention this major lifestyle change.

Exercise has been scientifically proven to have amazing health benefits. You can increase your lifespan by years by simply going for a relaxing jog for 20 minutes a day. You can lose weight and thus avoid all the weight related problems like diabetes, heart disease and some cancer.

Women should also be specifically aware that exercise has a tremendous effect on preventing osteoporosis. By perfroming cardio and weight training exercises frequently you can cut your chances of getting osteoporosis by over 20%.

Now the reason I say exercise every day is because it gets you into good habits. It will help you live a healthier life both with your exercise and your diet. Have you ever been for an hour long jog and then come home and cooked a healthy meal because you don’t want to ‘undo’ all your hard work? I do that all the time and you will notice the positive habits growing and maturing.

You don’t have to do a full blown workout every day, however. If you don’t have a lot of time try to at least for for a walk or do a abs routine or something simple. Get your blood flowing, lungs breathing and heart pumping.

5 - Cut out refined sugar

I am a big believer that many of today’s health problems are caused by bad diet. And, I think the leading ‘posion’ in bad diets is refined, processed sugar. This stuff has a detrimental effect on many areas of your body and will leech good nutrients as well.

Refined sugar is found in almost every single processed food on the market. You put it in your tea and coffee, you add it to cooking recipes and it is in all your inbetween meal snacks. Not only is it bad for your health, it is bad for your weight. This stuff makes you fat.

A big diet problem that people face these days is that they are eating too many ‘empty’ calories. What this means is that too much of the food we eat is high in calories and low in nutritional value. For example, if you have a milkshake as your snack then you are getting a huge number of calories, salt and fat and almost no protein or any of the essential vitamins and minerals that you need. And, this milkshake fills you up so you don’t feel like eating a health meal then or later.

One of the best things you can do for your health and your waist line is to cut out all foods with refined sugar in them and start eating foods that are high in nutritional content. To be honest, it doesn’t matter if a piece of fruit or a vegetable based meal is high in calories (which it won’t be) because all of the calories come with benefits. And this is good for you.

Some of the major food items that you should cut out are:

• cookies
• fizzy drinks and sodas
• ice creams and candy

Need healthy, free advice? Ask us on our Women's Fitness Forum.

6 - Beware of ‘Low Fat’ foods

This is a big point that many women simply will not have thought about or been introduced to. Low fat foods are very often high in calories and will thus make you fat. WHAT! What did you say? That’s right. Low fat foods are really just a marketing trick to get weight concious individuals to buy their product. Check the back of the label and you will see that there is a huge amount of added salt and sugar, both of which will make you fat.

I guess the main problem here is that many women think that the only thing that makes you fat is fat. This is a little bit incorrect, the main thing that makes you fat is sugar and carbohydrates and these are often present in large quantities in low fat foods.

So, next time you want to make a healthy choice for your meal or snack and are reaching for a low fat food, read the nutritional information on the back and you might just decide to put it down.

7 - Learn how to sleep properly

My mum’s sleeping patterns are all over the place and as a result she lives a tired and weary life. If you feel like you are low on energy during the day then there is a strong chance it is your sleep habits that are to blame.

First of all you need to forget about the “I need eight hours a night” rumor. This rumor (and that’s all it is!) does more harm than good because when people look at the clock in the morning and calculate that they didn’t get a full eight hours they automatically think they didn’t get enough sleep. Wrong.

Everybody is differnt and as long as you are getting about five hours of sleep a night you won’t be doing yourself any harm. In fact, scientists now think that a healthy sleep is anywhere between 5 and 9 hours a night, any more or less and you could be causing yourself a problem.

The most IMPORTANT sleep tip that you can adopt is to make it regular. If you go to sleep at 10pm one night and then 11pm the next and then 1am the night after then you probably will become tired. Likewise, getting up at varying times is a good way to make yourself tired.

The first step you need to take in order to get a healthy sleep is to wake up at the same time everday, regardless of what time you went to bed. This is another excellent habit that will have positive offshoots in other areas of your life. Secondly, start trying to go to bed at the same time everynight. These two things alone will make a dramatic difference in your waking life.

It is also vital to know the three foods that will ruin your sleep. Doctors say that these three foods interrupt your normal bowel function and upset your sleep. So, even if you are getting a full eight hours of sleep per night you might not be sleeping enough. These three foods are

• coffee,
• alcohol, and
• chocolate

So, get rid of your chocolate desert and don’t have a coffee before bed.

Conclusion

That’s it for the second installment of The Complete Guide to Women’s Health. In the next article we will look at some specifics to do with exercise as well as some more diet changes you can make that will not only increase the quality of your life, they might actually help you live longer.

This article continues in Women's Health Part III »

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