It’s time to start again, turn over a new leaf and set new goals.
But where should we start?
Social media reaches 5 billion people. It’s full of conflicting and confusing messages about health and diet: superfoods, fasting, eliminating carbs, protein requirements per meal, juice cleanses, and so on. Everyone has an opinion, each containing snippets of information, often out of context, yet packaged to entice us. There is so much information that it’s hard to discern what is important amongst the sea of static.
It’s time to turn away from ‘sparkly ball’ marketing to seek advice from a professional, dietitian Julie Albrecht, about the key principles we should concentrate on to live a healthier life.
Firstly, Julie says, we need to understand that good health is not just the absence of disease, but a state of physical, mental and social well-being.
“Aging is a multi-dimensional biological process driven by a combination of genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. Aging includes the accumulation of cellular and molecular damage, loss of tissue homeostasis, and the impairment of regenerative capacity, which together contribute to the increased risk of age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, and metabolic syndromes,” Julie says.
“Good health is about slowing down and reversing the aging process by supporting how our body functions. We are most likely motivated to change our health habits because of our external appearance; however good health is more fundamental than that. It has to do with how our lifestyles and environments influence our ‘epigenome’, or what’s happening to us internally in our cell structure, which represents 80% of our health outcomes. The other 20% is hereditary.”
“It is all about changing our mindset to prioritise our health and taking action. In our lives, we are constantly juggling our commitments to work, family and social connections. Our life plates are often full to overflowing,” Julie tells me. “So, each of us needs to prioritise our own self-care by identifying the key components that support our health and wellbeing and placing these at the centre of our plate, developing strategies to sustain their central place.”
“Health care is self-care,” says Julie. “The human body is resilient. It has the capacity for renewal and recovery if we undertake practices that support it. We have the capacity to invest in ourselves, to optimise healthy practices so we are as well as we can be.”
Your journey will be different from everyone else’s, yet it follows the same principles that increase longevity:
- Eat a nutrient dense diet of whole, minimally processed food and drink, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, whole grains, and lean proteins. Seek an energy balance between your food intake and what is used by your body. (Michael Pollan’s mantra comes to mind: ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’)
- Move more each day. Try to make exercise a sustainable and enjoyable part of your routine. That may mean walking five minutes out and back from your house, taking the stairs instead of the lift, weeding the garden, or joining a dance class.
- Prioritise sleep so that your body can regenerate, restore energy, process information and function well.
- Maintain good lifestyle and mental health practices such as managing stress, limiting alcohol and drugs and avoiding smoking. Incorporate stress management techniques in your lifestyle, such as deep breathing, meditation, spending time outdoors, playing with the dog or walking on the beach.
- Stay connected to others and maintain a positive outlook. This will improve both mental and emotional health.
- Monitor your progress with health professionals. Seek support from family, friends and professionals to help you stay motivated.
In summary, eat less (but nutritionally better) food, move more and sleep well and you will slow down your aging process and have a better chance of longevity.
What steps should we take to do this?
Firstly, embrace an investment in yourself. Instead of accepting aging as inevitable, change your mind set to focus on the improvement of your present lifestyle choices and practices.
Then, decide which baseline lifestyle practices you can improve and focus on them. Pick out a couple of goals that you feel you can maintain and work on those. Making gradual changes to your routine as you work towards your long term goal: a longer, more healthy life. Clumping existing and new habits together will help you celebrate lasting success. You hold the key.
Julie Albrecht
B.Sc. Grad. Dip. Nut. Diet. Cert. Sports. Nut. A.P.D Julie’s career in private practice nutrition and dietetics spans more than 30 years. She is passionate about assisting individuals to embrace lifestyle-based strategies, underpinned by science, navigating their health challenges to slow the ticking clock on their journey to optimise their health and wellbeing, restoring energy and vitality.