Your health directly affects your level of inner peace. So, in my opinion, health does equal inner peace.
The question then becomes whether health comes first and leads to inner peace or does a feeling of inner peace make you want to take better care of your health. I'd welcome your thoughts on this.
To me they are based on mutual respect for who the real you is. If you love and respect yourself, most likely you have a good level of inner peace that comes from self-love. Self-love and self-care for many of us goes hand in hand.
I don't believe you can really say you love yourself and practice self-care if you aren't focused on being in excellent health.
Keys to living a healthy, ageless lifestyle after 50:
- Water Drink half your weight in ounces of water each day. that means if you weigh 100 pounds you will drink 50 ounces of water a day. One thing I learned recently is that it's important for heart health to drink water at night as well. I take a glass of water to bed with me and sip. Don't just drink down a whole glass of water or you'll be waking up to use the bathroom!
- Sleep Sleep is really super important. There are a very small number of people that can really be at 100% with just a few hours of sleep. Don't bother trying to convince yourself that you're one of them. As a rule of thumb, get at least 6 hours of deep sleep a night. If you can get 8 your body will thank you. You'll find that you're happier and more productive besides being healthier.
- Exercise If you don't do any type of exercise, start walking. Walk as much as you can and build daily until you can walk for 20-30 minutes. then speed up your walking to the point you can feel your heart pumping a little. Then try walking up and down hills or stairs a little and build up your level of fitness.
- Food Shop only on the outside perimeter of the grocery store. All the bad stuff is in the packaged, processed food in the middle. Eat only things that are natural. If this is foreign to you, start by adding a salad a week and a fruit a day, or a vegetable that doesn't come out of a can. Keep adding good stuff gradually and getting rid of the bad stuff.
- Eliminate You can immediately increase your health by eliminating artificial sweeteners, which for many years have been linked to increased risk of cancer, Gulf War Syndrome and many other illnesses. Next on my list would be to switch from white flour to a whole wheat flour as a small step, or the big step of an oat, almond, or other grain free flour.
- Sugar Find a natural type of sweetener if you can't get rid of sugar all together. You will be surprised how fast you can get used to drinking black coffee or tea without sweeteners. Again, cut back slowly to make it easy. Stevia is a natural sweetener, but you must read the package. There are many stevia pretenders out there. For baking you can use maple syrup if you're thinking of going vegan. Raw local honey (available at farmers markets and health food stores) if you're not. Again, stay out of the middle aisles of the grocery store and don't get regular honey. All the good stuff has been processed out of it.
That's plenty to get you started. Doing it step by step, the easy way is the best plan for permanent success. Plus it's easy 😉 I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have.
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