Taking Things Back to Basics

Just the basics is a great blog as Megha goes on to talk about how to improve your health and wellness in the most basic and fundamental ways. And this to me is the best way, Hitting the root cause improving things like - diet, posture and introducing stress management are all the really basic things to do, to improve your awareness and make yourself healthier and happier!

So in this post I am going to take a few basics of wellness and write something basic but helpful we can do to improve in these areas.

Diet and Nutrition Basics

Nutrition is hugely important but all too often we can forget the basics, things that can improve our diet with little or no effort. There are two steps I take with people when starting out with diet improvements and dialling into the real basics. The first is cutting out the majority of liquid calories. People everywhere are still drinking soft drinks and fruit juices like water, these drinks should be a treat and enjoyed seldomly. Once calorie containing beverages are dropped from the diet (with the exception of fresh smoothies with the pulp or raw milk) most people will lose weight and feel more healthy, avoiding slumps in energy after the sugar high these drinks provide.

Store a jug filled with water in your fridge. Fill it with fresh mint or sliced cucumber and drink it throughout the day. This is a great way to detoxify and makes water more appealing. Another alternative is to dilute water cranberry juice with water at about a 1:6 ratio. This will work especially well for kids who you want to wean off of sugary drinks.

The second is eating more live food. Get more fruit, vegetables and salads into your diet in their unadulterated raw form, I am not encouraging raw foodism just the introduction of more fresh unprocessed food. Next time you are hungry grab and Apple or a Banana along with a handful of almonds....

Vitality Basics

 

 

This is a really cool basic tip I learnt from a Naturopath. It is a method of flushing or draining the lymphatic system which is hugely important to improving immune function and allowing us to absorb fat and protein from our diets. The lymphatic system runs right through your body with nodes everywhere, they are especially concentrated around the chest.

The lymphatic system and the lymph capillaries helps in getting oxygen and nutrients to the cells by removing dead cells, poisons, toxins, and excess water from the tissue spaces around the cells. All of our body tissue cells are bathed in this fluid or water derived from our bloodstream. Blood is about 92 percent water. In 24 hours 42 pints of the fluid passes from the bloodstream through the capillaries into the body tissues.

This is pretty amazing and shows just how important the Lymphatic System really is. Sure we can get it going through movement like running and lifting weights but sometimes we need to give it some kind of a kickstart.

• Rinse yourself under the shower for 30 seconds with water as hot as you can tolerate.
• Immiedietly rinse yourself with water as cold as you can tolerate for 10 seconds.
• Repeat Three times ending on a cold rinse.
• The three to one ratio is very important for this to work effectively and the water must hit the whole body.

This causes the lymphatic system to contract and gives its pumps a boost that will help it do what it does best. The flush is especially good for older people who cannot move as much as they would like or those recovering from illness. Try it for yourself, you will feel a great boost of vitality....

So this stuff is nothing new but sometimes it is the basic and handy tips which are most helpful when it comes to improving our lives. I loved Megha's post on eating recently where she said:

As long as I am enjoying thoroughly the food that's going into my mouth, and eating when I am hungry (and hence have my digestive juices ready!) I don't think every single detail matters all that much.

This is a great relationship to have with food and another basic state of mind that can be extremely helpful.

Chris is the author of A Simple Guide to Eating Well and writes about staying fit while living life at Zen to Fitness.