Everyone in the world would like to have a healthy lifestyle with no stress. Nevertheless, it takes more to attain this than meets the eye. In order to remain healthy and enjoy a quality life, there are various challenges that an individual has to go through. In the long run, it holds that the choice between healthy living and proper diets is all in the hands of the individual. Depending on one’s economic status, one can decide to live a healthy or a reckless life. In order to understand the difference between these two, the paragraphs below give the details of each.
Many people are well aware that a healthy diet involves taking the right amounts of food in the right quantities. This prevents the cases of malnutrition, which can either manifest as under-nutrition or over-nutrition (Page 225). Both of these have their negative impacts which an individual might not be too happy to deal with. But what exactly is the right and healthy diet? The CDC explains that a healthy diet is one that provides the body with all the required nutrients. These include the carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals and water. The government and other health institutions encourage the people to make sure that they take the right amounts of these foods as this can help to prevent the cases of malnutrition. The nutrition organ of the health sector goes ahead to provide a food scheme in what is called My-Pyramid. This helps the individuals to know the kinds and amounts of food that they should take in a day. The system further differentiates the amounts depending on the weight, age, gender, and health condition. Using the calculator, one can get the recommended dietary allowances (RDA) which helps to ‘calculate your caloric intake and expenditure” (Sharkey and Gaskill 235). Keeping with this scheme and observing the nutrient balance in the food is what is termed as healthy diets.
On the other hand, there are unhealthy diets. Gospel Light (118) indicates that too much fast foods, bad eating habits and poor food choices are the main forms of bad or unhealthy eating habits. These habits have brought along major problems. For instance, many people have become obese while others suffer from conditions such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, gout and other preventable conditions (Gospel Light 158; Sharkey and Gaskill 209; Page 9). This have come around due to the poor eating habits such as snacking on high caloric foods, missing meals, and taking of unbalanced diets. These habits lead to poor health since the body gets too much of a particular nutrient while totally loosing out on another. This is what defines an unhealthy eating habit; taking foods in the wrong quantities and qualities. Some of the bad food choices can include processed foods, fatty snacks, excessive use of tobacco and alcohol and other convenient foods.
A healthy diet is just part of what is termed as healthy living. Healthy living entails physical fitness and general health. More often than not, this entails taking a healthy diet and exercising regularly (Indian Express, para 1). Having looked at a healthy diet in the previous paragraphs, it is important to shed some light on the healthy living. First of all, this entails having an active lifestyle (Alters and Schiff 3). Having a regular exercise regime can make the difference between a long, happy life and a short desperate one. This is mainly because the physical exercises have immense benefits. First of all, they help in the burning of excess calories. As such, the individual has a lower risk of suffering from obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, as well as colon cancer. On another front, the exercises help the individual to have a healthy body which has healthy muscles, bones and joints. Bird, Smith and James suggest that some aspects of healthy living can involve having a regular exercise regime, taking a walk to the workplace rather than driving all the time, doing some work physically rather than using machines all the time, among other activities which make the body active (89).
An unhealthy lifestyle, on the other hand, is what is often termed as a sedentary lifestyle (Bird, Smith and James 5). This is the case where an individual literary does nothing physical. Everything is done either using machine or having the house help do it. There is no time for exercise as the individual always drives to work and has no time for even the shortest walk. Sooner or later, the individual starts gaining excessive weight and having other health complications which are brought about by a poor lifestyle.
Works Cited
Alters, Sandra & Schiff, Wendy. Essential Concepts for Healthy Living (6th ed). Barlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2012.
Bird, Stephen R.; Smith, Andy, & James, Kate. Exercise Benefits and Prescription. Cheltenham, UK: Nelson Thomes, 2002.
Gospel Light. Simple Ideas for Healthy Living. Ventura, CA: Zondervan Pubishing House, 2008.
Page, Linda. Diets for Healthy Living: Dr. Linda Page’s Natural Solution to America’s 10 Biggest Health Problems. New York, NY: Healthy Healing Inc., 2005.
Sharkey, Brian J., & Gaskill, Steven E. Fitness and Health. Hong Kong: Human Kinetics, 2007.
