Small changes, little things done constantly…
We can’t built our immunity and health in a week. “Rome was not build in a day.” Developing a strong immune system and a good health, requires developing good and healthy habits. I am referring to habits related to nutrition, physical exercise and cooking techniques. Good quality fresh food is packed with valuable nutrients like vitamins and minerals which help our immune system. But do not expect that one orange will cure instantly your cold or one apple per week will act as medicines cause they don’t. Healthy habits are the ones that strengthen your immunity. Eating the right amount of fruits and vegetables every day for example is a habit that will improve your health. Eating the right amount of good fats every day will keep your cardiovascular system healthier or limiting your refined sugar intake will keep your blood sugar level lower and more constant. Daily physical exercise per day will improve considerable your health levels. Don’t think that you have to hit the gym every day to work with heavy weights or run a marathon every morning. We should choose an activity that we like (more or less - some of us don’t like any activity especially if we stopped making any sport for a long time), an activity that we can start at a beginner level like walking, light running, biking. Bodyweight exercises help us develop strength in relation with our body weight. This will influence our functional training capacity which translates in the fact that we will be able to accomplish our daily tasks much more easier. For example climbing some stairs will not necessary bring sweat on our forehead and our heart rate won’t go crazy when we transport a bigger luggage from the car in the house …
What we do wrong for years (in our nutrition) needs some time to repair. Our current physical shape and our current health and immunity levels are most of the time the result of our last years habits, especially our nutritional and fitness habits. Let’s say that Winter Holidays with all the food and cookies will add an extra 1 kg, the summer vacation with it’s good all inclusive buffet will add another 1 kg to our body and all other celebrations and parties together will add another 1 kg. This will be 3 kg per year and around 30 kg in 10 years. Many people experience this around the age of 30 years. Now the question is : can you get rid of these extra 30 kg in 1-2 months in a healthy manner ? Let’s look to another example. If you run two times a week a 5 km distance, in a year you will gain roughly 500 km. You will burn an average of 350 kcal per 5 km so in total you should burn 35000 kcal which is the equivalent of 8.5 kg of pure sugar or over 100 ice-creams. Or, if you eat just 15 ml olive oil per day, in a month you reach about 450 ml, and around 5400 ml of healthy fat per year. These examples show how little things that are done constantly every week will lead to impressing results over a full year. Many of us are living in circles when it comes to food and cooking choices. I mean we tend to limit the number of options when we think about what to eat or what to cook to what is comfortable for our brain or is tasty or it is easy to cook or buy. Getting out of our circles means passing over our comfort zone and sometimes giving up to our habits but even if the start seams hard and tough the result are satisfying.
