A Healthy Perspective

Did you know that caffeine offers a number of health benefits – but only if you limit the amount you consume to between 160-400 mg a day? Once you exceed that number your body reacts by releasing a stress hormone called cortisol. So often we get caught up in the go, go, go of everyday life and forget the balance that our bodies require.

We live in an all or nothing society, and it can be very dangerous to think in terms of absolutes. Rather, it is better to think in terms of balance. Applying the concept of balance to healthy living can be very productive.

Fitness provides us with an excellent example of why balance must be achieved for healthy living. When you perform strength exercises, your muscles tear, when they heal you gain muscle mass. This is why a professional fitness trainer might designate particular days for strength training different muscle groups. It is through the healing process that occurs on your rest day that your body repairs those tears and you build muscles.

Achieving your ideal fitness level isn’t possible without a combination of both hard work and rest. Without rest, you greatly increase the risk of injury through overtraining. In addition, a fitness plan would be incomplete if it did not include both cardio and strength training.

From a nutritional viewpoint, many experts agree that aiming for a balance of eating foods that benefit your health 80 percent  of the time. This means 20 percent of the time, you would be consuming foods that are considered treats. By doing this, you can avoid feelings of deprivation and reduce the likelihood of a binge. When you apply this method of eating to daily caloric intake it looks like this: if an individual eats 2,000 calories per day, 1,600 of those calories come from healthy sources and 400 of his or her calorie allowance could be used for treats.

Another, often forgotten, aspect of health is sleep. If we applied balance to our sleep habits than we would avoid extremes. How frequently do we ask our bodies to play catch up on the weekends because we can’t find enough time to sleep during the week? When we deprive our bodies of sleep, our bodies are unable to produce sufficient amounts of human growth hormone.

This hormone stimulates cell reproduction and regeneration, which helps our bodies heal more efficiently and reduces signs of aging. Ideally, you should try to sleep at least eight hours a night to gain the maximum amount of benefits.