Good Health Check List I

You may already know exactly what you want to achieve for good health, such as establishing sensible eating or drinking or quitting smoking. On the other hand, you may not be too sure what your goals should be. While there can't be many people left who have not heard of the health-damaging effects of smoking, fewer people are accurately informed about the safe levels of drinking alcohol or caffeine. A surprising number of people are malnourished even though they over-eat. Most of us have suffered an off-putting introduction to exercise, which partly accounts for why so few of us do it regularly. If you are not sure what goals for good health you should set, try this short check-list.

It is true that the well-established risks to your health from smoking tobacco increase as your smoking rate increases, but it is also true that the only safe level of smoking is zero. This applies as much to pipes and cigars as it does to cigarettes. You will lessen the damage to your health if you cut back and keep your smoking at a lower rate, but the fact is most people find that difficult they tend to slip back gradually to their original smoking rate and you are only lowering the risk to your health, not eliminating it.

Although our suggestions for quitting smoking focus on smoking tobacco, you should know that smoking other substances carries many of the same risks as smoking tobacco as well as some extra risks of their own, despite what it might be trendy to say. We are not wowsers and we have no axe to grind. We are just passing on the research findings as we read them. So, if you smoke anything at all, we suggest a good health goal for you would be to quit.

Do you eat three balanced, nutritionally-sound and enjoyable meals a day?

If you are skipping meals because you hope this will help you lose weight, you are misinformed about weight loss. If you are not sure whether your meals are balanced and nutritionally sound, put the question to yourself this way: Do you eat about the right amounts of each of the major food groups each day to meet your nutritional needs and to maintain a healthy and attractive weight? If you honestly don't know what the right amounts should be for you or what the major food groups are, you are not well-informed about nutrition.

Do you regularly take a vitamin supplement because you believe you need to, or because you believe it will make up for skipped meals or a stressful lifestyle? A 'Yes' suggests you are again misinformed about nutrition and probably both wasting your money and risking your health.

If you believe you are eating wisely but you are really not enjoying it, then you have probably been conned into the latest fad diet. A genuinely sensible eating plan is nutritionally sound, practical, affordable and, above all, enjoyable. Otherwise we ordinary people won't stick to it.

Another possibility is that you are eating wisely, enjoying it and losing weight, but paying through the neck for it because you have joined one of the commercial 'weight loss read food sales' program. If you can really afford to have someone else prepare your food for the rest of your life, good luck to you and when are you going to invite us over? If, like most of us, you will eventually have to take responsibility for preparing your own sensible food.

The best way of answering this question is to look at yourself in a mirror. The chances are, if you look fat you are fat. If you want a more precise answer, look up a table of recommended weights for the ideal healthy and attractive weight range for someone of your height, body frame and sex.

Rather than tackling an obstacle to good health, is your aim a generally healthy lifestyle, with a view to being more able to enjoy life and to keep doing so for longer. These includes healthy and balance diet, stress free, regular exercise, detoxification and spiritually healthy.