How to be Happier and Healthier

Happier and Healthier

Written by Baz Gale

Copyright Baz Gale

2020

Updated March 2021

This book is dedicated to the reader

May you find Happiness

https://www.facebook.com/BazGaleAuthor

http://www.bazgale.com

Front and back cover design. Baz Gale

Photos: Baz Gale

Front photo: RGBSTOCK. Photographer LUSI

Back photo: Baz Gale

ISBN: 978-0-6450603-0-0 

No part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the author.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Please note: No reader should make any health decision without first consulting with his or her own personal physician.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: What is Happiness

Chapter 2: Staying Young and Healthy

Stress

Why are Humans so Emotional

A Healthy Diet

Exercise Regularly, outdoors where possible

Chapter 3: Steps to Happiness

Chapter 4: Increasing Happiness

Feeling Sad

Acceptance

Attitude

Optimistic

Focus on what you Love

Start the day with a Smile

Kindness

Time Flies

Life is about Balance

Chapter 5: Diet and Nutrition

What is Nutrition

Eat Fresh Fruit and Vegetables

How to Lose Weight

What happens when we change to a healthy diet

Resist taking supplements

Eating fat is Healthy

Fiber

Healthy Foods

Unhealthy Foods

Why is Sugar so Bad

Chapter 6: Staying Active

Exercising

Exercises for improving health and physical ability

Stand up for better health

Sleep

Chapter 7: Happier and Healthier

Awareness

Don't run away from challenges, run over them

Self Confidence

Everything is Temporary

Enjoy the Moment

Life is how we choose to live it

Forgiveness

Conclusion

The final word

About the Author

Books by Baz Gale

Each day is a gift

Open it

Celebrate it

Enjoy it

Introduction

Look up and smile because life is beautiful

A happier and healthier life is something everyone can achieve.

The mind and body are linked, an emotional mind creating constant stress will eventually cause the body to become sick, and feeding the body constantly with processed foods and high sugar not only causes the body to break down, it also causes the mind to become more anxious and depressed. Depression is now linked to high sugar consumption.

This book teaches how we can become happier and healthier.

Eating nutritious foods and doing some daily exercise will create a healthy body, plus a happier mind. There are chapters dedicated to achieving this by showing the benefits of different exercises, and what foods will give us optimum health. Also chapters on how we can become happier, and how to let go of stress.

A healthy and active lifestyle will give more energy, reduced stress, an increase in overall happiness, giving a healthy mind and body into old age. Most illness and also old age symptoms are a result of lifestyle.

Exercise does not mean having to join a gym, unless you want to. Just going for a brisk walk is beneficial and helps to reduce weight, the heart and lungs grow more efficient, reducing blood pressure and resting heart rate. Plus walking reduces stress, anxiety and depression. Aerobic exercise is even better but if having a busy schedule and limited time, walking is still a good way to increase health.

Also eating healthy doesn't mean eating boring food, there are many delicious healthy foods available.

There is a great deal of research showing how a healthy mind is just as important for good heath as a healthy body. The mind and body are basically one, so releasing stress, stopping the worry and over thinking, letting go of anger, and finding productive ways to cope with the difficulties of life, is just as important to our health as nutrition and exercise.

Stress, anxiety, and so on, will over time effect our general health, and if we suffer from constant stress or easily upset over small things, there is a potential for some serious health issues in the future.

This book is teaching ways to improve happiness, becoming more positive, learning to let go of stress and worry, and as we become more positive we also allow more to enter our life. When we focus on problems all we have are problems, but being positive allows us to find solutions, to move forward.

When we are happy and show our beautiful smile to the world, we look better, sexier, and more youthful, and we will create beautiful memories for tomorrow.

Yes, life can be beautiful

It all starts with the mind

Our thoughts become our emotions

This becomes our behaviour

What we think we become

Chapter 1

What is Happiness

Don't search for Happiness, create Happiness

Happiness, that feeling inside us, from contentment to pure joy.

Feeling happy, positive, grateful for life, makes each day a joy to be alive. Happiness also brings joy to those we meet; a happy smiling person will often make another person smile.

Happy people are fun to be with, and for many it seems their life is blessed.

But what is happiness?

Happiness is a feeling deep inside, and is a result of the choices we make in life.

Anything can trigger happiness, and happiness is really a collection of happy moments.

Sometimes an inspirational word is all it takes, a beautiful sunset, a friendly smile, listening to a favourite song, enjoying time with family, laughing with friends, the list is endless.

Happiness is not about getting what we always want, it is about being grateful for everything we have. If we are always wanting and needing something, then we are creating stress and sadness.

Happiness is a result of our actions, our behaviour, how we think, and the choices we make.

When we focus on problems we will always have more problems, by changing our thoughts to positive, to new possibilities, we will have more opportunities. Positive people look for solutions to problems rather than spending time with worry.

Having a mostly happy and positive life leads to a more productive life, better health, happier relationships, and longer life.

Happy people tend to be kinder, and kindness also gives more happiness.

Happy people smile more, and this also improves health.

Happy people are grateful for what they have rather than being jealous of others, and they are more creative and optimistic.

Happy people also tend to be more active, exercise more often, and eat healthier food.

There are a lot of positives in happiness, and we must also remember no one is immune to suffering, everyone has good and bad days, suffers loss, has illness, we are never alone here. It is how we handle each situation that defines our life and happiness. We can worry, creating stress, or we can accept, learn and improve.

Remember; there is nothing in this world that can trouble you more than your own thoughts.

It all begins in the mind, what you think you create

What does the research on Happiness say?

Happiness has been shown to improve people’s creativity and ability to solve problems.

Having a positive mood also improves verbal reasoning skills, and studies have shown when people are in a good mood their social skills improve, they become more trusting of others and are able to deal with criticism more constructively.

Studies have also shown we learn from being positive, the brain is learning each time and building on this, developing a more lasting positive state of mind. It is like compounding, the more you can be positive and happy, the easier and longer will be the experience. Even being positive and happy to people you do not feel close to, even just a smile or a ‘hi, how are you’ will increase your own positive emotions, building and compounding your own happiness, giving over time more lasting changes to the brain. Instead of reacting in a negative manner when confronted with difficult or unpleasant situations, your brain has amplified and built on past positive emotions leading to a more positive response rather than a negative response to the situation.

Inspire and create

Smile and appreciate

Life is beautiful

Baz Gale

Chapter 2

Staying Young and Healthy

Today is the oldest you have ever been, and the youngest you will ever be again

Aging is a natural process; life is short and each day we grow a day older. But age is only a number, and if we think young, gain new experiences keeping our mind sharp and alert, combined with doing daily activity and eating a healthy diet, it shouldn't matter if we are 20 or 80, life will be exciting and enjoyable.

Most old age problems are from lifestyle, and there are communities around the world where the people live over 100 years with no illness or old age symptoms. When scientists investigate it is always the same conclusion. The people eat a basic diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and mostly fish instead of red meat. Plus everyone is active each day, plus the community is sociable creating a happy mind and a positive outlook.

To live a long, happy, and healthy life, is a combination of mind and body, and here are some things we need to be aware of.

Stress

What we stress about today, will not matter in a year

Experiencing stress is part of being alive, and a small amount of stress, such as meeting a deadline, exams, a challenge, can be helpful, it can motivate us to do our best. It increases alertness, energy, and productivity.

Unfortunately, our body cannot tell the difference between physical or emotional stress. When we excessively worry about something that may or may not happen, when we hold onto negative things that happened in the past, our body reacts in the same way, releasing stress hormones, and this can lead to serious health problems.

Stress will shorten our life and make us look older.

Stress can come in many forms, such as holding onto the past with regret, anger, blame, holding a grudge, all these will create stress and unhappiness. Also worrying about the future, always wanting, needing, over thinking, quick to anger, emotionally up and down, all produce stress and rob us of our youth and vitality.

Stress suppresses the immune system, and we become more susceptible to infections, and our ability to fight off illness such as viruses and bacteria is reduced.

Stress makes our muscles tense up, and can cause aches and pains in our body, as well as tension headaches and migraines. The heart rate and blood pressure increase, and over time increases the risk of a heart attack or stroke.

Stress effects how we feel, we may feel tired, have mood swings, feel more irritable, and this can lead to difficulty falling or staying asleep. We are becoming more anxious and agitated, moody, feeling unhappy, complaining more, becoming more negative, and our patience becomes less and less.

How to Reduce stress

The way we look at life and the challenges that confront us, makes a huge difference in our ability to handle stress. Someone with a positive outlook is generally more hopeful and optimistic, making them less at risk to long term stress. It is looking for the positive instead of seeing the negative, and looking honestly life is more positive than negative.

Feeling stressed, over thinking, the best way to stop this is to start breathing.

Count from 1 to 7 for the in breath, 8 to 13 for the out breath, or any number that you feel comfortable with. Over time you will be able to just concentrate on the breathing to stop thinking, without having to count. The more you do this the easier it will become.

Counting the breath stops the thinking, we are concentrating on breathing instead of thinking.

As you learn to control your thoughts your happiness will increase, you will become more positive, make better decisions, leading to a better and more rewarding life.

Going for a walk is a good way to lower stress and improve the mood. Yoga and Tai Chi are very beneficial for mind and body, as is meditation. Pilates, playing sport, going to gym, any activity is good because being active not only reduces stress, it also gives more energy, making us feel happier, improving our health, and helps to reduce weight.

We should also make time to do things we enjoy, and this will also counter any stress we are feeling.

Also feeling blessed and grateful for life, rather than holding onto the past, or worried about what might happen in the future, creates a happier disposition, and this in turn changes the way we look at things. Our attitude becomes more positive, and when negativity strikes we bounce back quicker rather than holding onto the emotion.

Showing kindness to others helps to reduce stress and leads to a happier and more rewarding life. But if we show little regard for others, and always think about ourselves, then we shall never be happy, because we shall always be wanting and needing something. And the people in our life should be a source of reducing stress, not causing stress. Our friends should make us feel secure and happy.

A positive outlook on life makes life better, more exciting, and we live longer and have less illness.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

How does stress begin

Stress begins with just one negative thought, and this is quickly followed by more and more negative thoughts, and suddenly we have put ourselves into stress. The cause was negative thinking, the effect is stress, and it all began with just one negative thought. But we can change this, by one small positive thought, followed by another. By focusing on the positive instead of the negative, on what is good in our life instead of what we dislike, on solutions instead of endless worry, our life can change from one of stress to one of happiness.

Stress only creates unhappiness and eventual illness, and is a waste of time

Why are humans so emotional

To understand ourselves and how emotions can control us, we need to look at how they evolved.

To do this we need to go to an earlier time in human evolution, to a time when we lived in caves and hunted food with a spear. Back then the emotions of fear and anger were needed for short term survival in the wild; if an animal is about to eat us then fear taught us to run away from danger, or we might fight the animal for survival, or to protect our children, and anger gave us this ability. Our body will have a surge of adrenaline and other stress hormones, the rational mind will close, and we are focused on fear and survival, all other emotions are blocked.

Once the danger had passed the negative emotion was released, life was simple, and survival was about finding food without become a meal ourselves. We then had the positive emotions of creativity expressed in art, dancing, inventing, or just relaxing and being at peace.

Life was simple, negative emotions were needed for short term survival, while positive emotions gave us long term solutions and allowed our brain to create, to evolve, and this eventually led us to where we are today.

Positive emotions change the way our brain works and expands our experience, allowing us to take in more information and see the big picture. The human brain is responsible for everything we now take for granted, for example we now shop in air conditioned shopping malls instead of hunting food with a spear, and this has come about using the brain in a positive way to create, to invent, to solve, and to make possible the impossible.

Positive emotions give us feelings of pleasure. When we are happy and in a safe environment, our cognitive capacities are improved, allowing us to build resources for the long term.

Having a mostly positive outlook on life allows us to ignore these primitive negative emotions, because being positive expands the brain, we can see the big picture. But having a negative outlook prevents this and we respond with fear causing emotions like jealously, anxiety, anger, rage, frustration, annoyance, stress, and so on.

No one has a perfect life, everyone has good and bad days, and we will all express negative emotions at times, but positive people recover quicker, they find solutions and move forward instead of focusing on the bad. Love will always attract love, and hate will always attract hate, it is this simple.

Our emotions define who we are and how people see us. To live a full happy life, we need to control our emotions rather than having our emotions control us

A healthy diet

Healthy food is needed for a healthy life, and the biggest contributor of our skin being wrinkled and sagging, is sugar. Eating too much sugar not only leads to high blood sugar that then leads to many diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, liver disease and so many more, it also damages the collagen in the skin making us age up to seven times quicker.

The hidden sugar in most fast and processed food is the main cause of eating too much sugar, for example, soda drinks contains 8 or more spoons of sugar, an energy drink contains 10 spoons of sugar. To check the sugar level of food, read the label and divide the total grams of sugar by four, this equals the number of spoons of sugar. If the yogurt we are buying contains 28 grams of sugar, this means it contains seven teaspoons of sugar. The World Health Organization recommends no more than 25 grams, about six teaspoons of sugar per day.

Our diet should consist of 70% fruit, vegetables, seeds and nuts each day. Fruits and veg can be eaten raw as in salads, cooked in soups and stews, added to smoothies, eaten as snacks. If feeling hungry between meals eating a banana is a good choice, it is high in B vitamins and potassium and magnesium.

Protein is important, the amino acids in protein help build and maintain immune cells. Nuts and seeds contain high quality protein, vitamin E and zinc, and seafood, lean meat, and poultry are also additional sources of protein and zinc. Vitamin C is also important for the immune system and all fruits, especially citrus fruits, are a good source of this vitamin.

Eating a healthy diet will not only give more energy and a stronger immune system giving less illness, it will help to slow the aging process.

Lowering our salt intake is good because the way our body removes excess salt is to release hormones that suppress the immune system as they eliminate the salt. Also excess salt creates inflammation that does the same damage as sugar to the body. The world health organization says no more than 5 grams of salt a day, just one teaspoon. We need to lower our consumption of processed foods; they not only contain sugar but also salt.

Adding herbs and spices to the diet such as garlic, ginger, turmeric, cloves, oregano, thyme and cinnamon are also beneficial.

The stomach and intestinal bacteria are important for good health, and eating high fiber foods feed the friendly bacteria that improve immune function, and reduce inflammation. Probiotic foods are also good as they contain live bacteria that improve health. Foods such as miso, sauerkraut, tempeh, natural yogurt with no sugar, are beneficial, as is eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Eating processed foods and sugar allows the bad bacteria to grow, lowering our immune system.

We should try to limit fried foods because they reduce the growth of healthy bacteria and enhance the growth of bad bacteria, leading to lowered immune response and chronic disease. Also the oil used when we fry food becomes toxic due to the high temperatures, even healthy olive oil, and over time can lead to diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

Avocados contain all the essential skin vitamins, all the essential minerals, and all the essential fatty acids for optimum skin nutrition. Avocado also contains a rare DNA component that stimulates the skin to regenerate its own collagen. Collagen is what gives skin its own elasticity. Eating avocado every day is not only good for health but helps to keep us looking younger. 

Avocado oil is also great for the skin, and research showed that avocado oil was more rapidly absorbed by the human skin than any known botanical oil. The human skin soaks up avocado oil, while heavier plant oils leave a sticky residue on the skin. This is because avocado contains a rich supply of antioxidants.

Eating avocado, plus adding avocado oil on the skin, helps to slow down the skins aging process, keeping the skin fresh and youthful

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