A healthy lifestyle from the beginning will decide how you will be in your middle age and beyond. However, it won’t happen unless you make the right decisions. Exercise, eat healthy, sleep well and you will be on the road to success. After 40, most people have reached biological adulthood, which is a nicer way of saying they’ve jumped on the slow train to their inevitable mortality. You will begin to notice the slow and gradual decline in your response to bodily activities and the resulting resistance to your bodily functions.

Eating unhealthy processed foods, an irregular sleep pattern, and inactivity create a low-level inflammatory response in your body. This inflammation gradually increases over time, directly contributing to the germination of all the major diseases plaguing humanity: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, just to name a few.

The first and most important thing to focus on is nutrition: what you eat. Add plenty of green leafy vegetables, whole grains, organic poultry, dairy, and fruits into your daily diet. Keep your body hydrated. Drink plenty of water and raw fruit juice, as fluids help keep your body temperature down and remove toxins through perspiration (sweat) and excretion (urine). Keep a balanced serving of carbohydrates, protein, good fats, and minerals. These small changes to your diet will contribute to your general well-being. Reduce unhealthy fats from your diet slowly and aim to stop consuming them completely. Unhealthy fats include: dark meat chicken, poultry skin, fatty cuts of pork, beef, and lamb, and high-fat dairy products include whole milk, butter, and cheese. Common ways to reduce unhealthy fats are listed below:

• Instead of frying the meat, bake it/so on the grill/on the grill. Don’t forget to remove the skin before cooking chicken or turkey.

• Instead of butter and cheese on bread, use low-fat spreads or tomato slices to enhance the flavor.

• Instead of scrambled eggs, eat boiled or soft-boiled eggs. Garnish with a pinch of salt and black pepper to taste.

• Instead of using sugar in cakes and desserts, use organic honey to satisfy your sweetness and stay healthy.

When it comes to a healthy lifestyle, the importance of sleep is worth discussing. Get plenty of sleep, because internal healing and tissue repair happens only when you sleep. Sleep deficiency contributes to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, brain damage, etc. Lack of sleep lowers your body’s metabolic rate, which is linked to weight gain. Studies show that sleep-deprived people have higher levels of ghrelin, the appetite-stimulating hormone, and lower levels of leptin, the appetite-suppressing hormone. Therefore, those who sleep well tend to eat fewer calories.

The last, but definitely not the least, is the importance of regular exercise when it comes to a healthy and active lifestyle. No matter what age group you are in, it is advisable and prudent to include a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise/physical activity such as running, brisk walking on most days of the week, if not all. As humans, we spend far too much time in our synthetic environment, cut off from the outside world. This disconnection poses a serious threat to our overall health and well-being. Think of your body as a complex machine, housing equally complex parts (bones) and subsystems (organs) inside. If you leave it idle, parts and subsystems will lose their ability to move and eventually rust. Here are some tips for incorporating exercise into your daily routine:

• Prioritize physical activity

• make it fun

• get a partner

• Keep track of results

• set milestones

All these factors together will bring a noticeable change in your lifestyle and well-being. Some changes will happen quickly, others will be gradual. But in general, you will feel the positive change in your health: mind, body and soul.

Cheers to a healthy lifestyle!