Healthy Lifestyle
Having a healthy lifestyle will help your mind and body work more efficiently. It will help with how you feel and can stop you from picking up any illnesses. These include the things that you eat and drink, how much exercise you get and how long you sleep for.
Emotional and mental health is also an important part of a healthy lifestyle. Looking after your emotional and mental health is just as important as your physical health.
Eat
Here are 5 reasons for eating 5 fruit and vegetables a day –
- Fruit and vegetables are a good source of vitamins and minerals, including folate, vitamin C and potassium.
- They’re an excellent source of dietary fibre, which can help to maintain a healthy gut and prevent constipation and other digestion problems. A diet high in fibre can also reduce your risk of bowel cancer.
- They can help to reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke and some types of cancer.
- Fruit and vegetables contribute to a healthy, balanced diet.
- Fruit and vegetables taste delicious and there’s so much variety to choose from.
Fruit and vegetables are also usually low in fat and calories (provided you do not fry them or roast them in lots of oil). That’s why eating them can help you maintain a healthy weight and keep your heart healthy.
To get the most out of your 5 A Day, your 5 portions should include a variety of fruit and vegetables. This is because different fruits and vegetables contain different combinations of fibre, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.
Almost all fruit and vegetables count towards your 5 A Day. They can be fresh, frozen, canned, dried or juiced. Potatoes, yams and cassava do not count because they mainly contribute starch to the diet.
Find out more at – www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/5-a-day/why-5-a-day/
Drink
If you want to double check your hydration status, a simple way is to look at the colour of your urine. Light yellow means you’re hydrated, but if it turns dark yellow you are dehydrated.
We can go for 50 days without food, but only two to three without water. Water is essential to the human body and we need about 2.5 litres of water a day.1 Most of this will come from fluids but some from solid or liquid food. The total of 2.5 litres per day is a rough estimate and depends on several factors:
Age
Sex
Weight
Height
Level of physical activity
Temperature & climate
Exercise
There are plenty of benefits from getting into running. For starters, it’s an easy way of improving your physical health. Running regularly will improve the health of your heart and lungs. It can also help you lose weight, especially if combined with a healthy diet.
There are also mental benefits of running. Taking on the challenge of Couch to 5K can help boost your confidence and self-belief, as you prove to yourself that you can set yourself a target and achieve a goal.
Couch to 5k is a free to access running programme that has been designed to help absolute beginners achieve their first 5k run after just nine weeks of training. It was first developed by runner Josh Clark in 1996 who wanted to help his mum get off the couch and start running, too.
Click on the link below to find out more information.
Sleep
Sleep is vital to children and young people’s health, wellbeing, learning and development. It is important to make sure children and young people have the right amount of sleep so they have enough energy for the next day’s activities.
The circadian rhythm or internal ‘body clock’ tells us when to sleep and when to wake up, regulating our sleep pattern. Moving in a 24 hour daily cycle the circadian rhythm responds mainly to daylight.
We all go through sleep cycles. We move through light sleep, deep sleep, dream sleep, waking and then going back to sleep. Each of these cycles lasts for approximately 90 minutes. Brief waking after each cycle is part of a normal sleep pattern.
If you have trouble sleeping you can find out more information at –
