You don’t have to rely on any (broken promises) quick fix pills or miracle shakes to help you feel slim and healthy. Instead, get into a healthy routine and adopt these daily health habits to help you feel and look your best:
Get moving
There’s nothing that boosts your energy and helps you feel better like a little bit of exercise. Not only should you get up regularly and walk around the office or do a few flights of stairs, but going for a walk on your lunch break, or even taking a fitness class or yoga class at your local studio is a great way to get moving. Exercise promotes better blood flow, improving blood flow to your brain and all your bodily systems, which improves energy levels and improves your ability to concentrate and perform cognitively demanding tasks.
Drink lemon water
Start your day with a glass of warm water and lemon. The warm water option is a great way to gently awaken your digestive system and gear it up for another day of hard work, while the lemon has natural alkalinizing properties, which help to ensure you, start the day in an alkaline state. Furthermore, lemon water is detoxifying for the body and helps remove any residual toxins from the cleansing and detoxifying that your body performs overnight while you are asleep. Also, try detox water!
Use activated charcoal
Throughout the day, in the process of drinking your 2-3 liters of water, add activated charcoal to your hydrating beverage. It might turn your glass black, but it has excellent detoxifying properties and binds to the toxins in your digestive system to help remove them and send them along to be eliminated. Sometimes, the build up of toxins from digestion and from overall body stress can lead us to feel heavy and bloated and helping to move these along encourages feelings of slimness. Not to mention activated charcoal is good at getting things . . . er . . . moving!
Go Green
After you have your lemon water, opt for an alkalinizing green vegetable juice. Pack in lots of greens, cucumber, celery and lemon and keep the fruit content to only 2-3 pieces of apple or orange. This beverage is a great way to start up your digestive system for the day, gives you an amazing boost of energy inducing nutrients, and like the lemon water, ensures that you start your day in an alkaline state, which promotes better digestion and reduces lethargy and fatigue all day long.
Downsize your lunch
If you’re used to feeling fatigued, lethargic and in need of a nap mid afternoon, maybe you should experiment with reducing your portion size at lunchtime. Digestion is an energetically demanding task on the body, meaning that when we eat a lot and need to digest a lot, it may make us feel tired and sluggish. Having a smaller portion size however, makes it much easier for the digestive system to do its work and reduces the amount of energy expended, thereby reducing our fatigue. If necessary, have a smaller lunch and then a small mid afternoon snack to keep you from getting too hungry.
Opt for matcha
Instead of relying on coffee for your energy boost (morning or mid day!), choose matcha instead. Matcha is a natural stimulant, which boosts energy, reduces fatigue and encourages improved brain function. Matcha is ground up green tea leaves, meaning it contains all the powerful antioxidant benefits of green tea, but by ingesting the whole leaf, you get a stronger boost of energy and a higher nutrient profile. Not to mention, it is a beautiful green colour which you get to drink, and has a much lower acidity than coffee.
By: Laura Peill – (Check out her blog Viand Nutrition & Facebook)
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