3 Tips to help improve your health with upcountry lifestyle
People who live in the countryside or have to travel long distance to work in the urban area often dedicate their lives to the work and lead a simple life to save up for their future. However, with such dedication, they may forget to look after themselves and pay little attention to their health. We would like to get you to look after yourselves by adopting 3Es tips into your simple lifestyle.
Living Healthier Upcountry Life
1. E- Eating healthy food to help prevent illness: Reduce health risk and promote healthy eating behaviors by reducing consumption of food that is bad for your health.
- Avoid pickled and fermented food, focus more on fresh fruits and vegetables: Living far away from marketplace or a department store may make it necessary for you to stock up large amount of food, and you may then end up buying fermented and picked food or canned food with longer shelf life such as pickled bamboo shoots, pickled fruits, sausages, canned fruits, and canned fish. But these kinds of food often go through a process that destroys their nutritional value. Minerals and vitamins are partially washed out. Frequently, they are fermented or pickled with high amount of salt or sugar to preserve the contents within. Overconsumption of these food will drive your heart and kidney to work harder, increasing the risk of developing heart diseases and high blood pressure. Just make a little change by making meal plan to see what and how much ingredients you will need to cook your own food. Not only will this help you save more money on food, but it also improves quality of your meal with the healthy ingredients. Focus on protein from fresh meat and vitamins and mineral from fresh fruits and vegetables, and season your food properly to limit sugar, salt, and fat intake.
- Lightly season your food to taste real flavor: Most of the local foods like papaya salad, Tom yum, and chili paste are heavily seasoned to bring the sour, salty, and spicy taste to the dish. Even fresh fruits are dipped in salt & chili dipping or Nam Pla Wan dipping (sweet & salty fish sauce dipping). These kinds of eating behavior are not good for your health. Try getting the natural flavor of the food by lightly seasoning your food with the 6:1:1 ratio which is the proper daily amount of seasoning where sugar limit is 6 teaspoons: fat limit is 6 teaspoons: salt or sodium limit is 1 teaspoon to help reduce the risk of developing noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). The smart way is to look for Healthier Choice nutritional logo which reassures you that such products contain proper amount of sodium, sugar, and fat.
- Refresh yourself with water: When you have to work outdoor or in a hot environment, your body will lose a lot of water from sweating. So, you should drink water to make up for the lost fluids to maintain normal functions of the body. You should drink at least 1.5 liters of water or 8-10 glasses of water every day. Drinking enough water can also help support functions of excretory system, and help freshen you up without having to buy any dietary supplements or energy drink. But if you need extra refreshment, you may choose the energy boosting drink from natural sources like fresh coconut water, fresh juice, and low-calorie or low-sugar coffee.
2. E-Exercise to burn excess fat: Hard working cannot replace an exercise. Let’s see some simple workout ideas that fit upcountry lifestyle.
- Cost-saving exercise, no gym needed: Invite your colleagues to play team sports such as Sepak takraw and football in front of your home or in a public park nearby so everyone can get healthier because when you exercise regularly for at least 3 times a week, it will improve functions of your heart and lung, enhance body durability, and build strength for your body so you do not get tired easily. In addition, they help prevent diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, bone and joint diseases, and cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases. With these exercises, you can promote a good health without having to pay for gym membership or renting a sports field.
- Body stretching to relax your muscles: Some kinds of work may cause repeated contraction of certain muscles, resulting in shoulder and neck pain or pain from muscle compression. Let’s improve body fitness with the exercises focusing on cardio training like running, power walking, aerobic dancing, yoga, cycling, and swimming to raise your heartrate, help burn body fat, and improve your stamina.
3. Maintain healthy E-Emotion with upcountry lifestyle:Besides physical health, now it is time to take care of your mental health because living far away in the countryside or hard working can be boring which may affect quality of sleep. Try making some behavioral adjustment to maintain healthy E-emotion with following tips:
- 90-minute sleep cycle: Having inadequate sleep negatively affects your emotion and cause tiredness. You should sleep for 6-8 hours a day. But if you cannot allocate long sleeping hours, try sleep cycle where each cycle of your sleep should take at least 1.5 hours or 3 hours.
- Relaxing hours: Allocate 1 hour a day to spend time with your family, for example, playing with your kids after dinner, watching tv and series, updating your daily lives, and discussing life with your loved one to help maintain healthy emotion.
- Less lonely time with a phone call: When you live far away from your family in a place where there is no entertainment venue, a simple phone call to your family members or friends 2-3 times a week or online applications like Facebook, Line, and Facetime can help keep you connected with your loved ones to make you feel less lonely and let yourself know that there’s always someone who will be there for you.
The phrase “Money can’t buy you good health” is no exaggeration. Even though you are living in the countryside, working hard, or living in the area where it does not accommodate selfcare routine, you can still look after yourself with little to no cost with 3Es – Eating, Exercise, and Emotion to improve your physical and mental health to get ready for the next day. Whatever your lifestyle is, you can do 3Es in your own way.
#NestléActiveThailand #3EMeStyle
