Happy Healthy Days

Last week, while paying careful attention to a Service Center Costing webinar, I started jotting down some of my thoughts about what being healthy means to me. From those basic thoughts, I wanted to seek some additional guidance to make sure I was making the right healthy decisions. I think that everyone has their own specific idea of what 'being healthy' means and not everyone would agree with my decisions, but that's okay! Here's how I'm going to try to be healthier.

I'm not sure how well you can make out my hand-written list, but I'll discuss the relevant points below.

The CDC says that I should eat about 2 cups of fruit and 2.5 cups of vegetables every day.  I'm probably lucky if I get one serving of each on a normal day. 

Exercise-related guidance was a little more confusing. The CDC offers several different options for getting the right amount of physical activity. I decided to keep it simple with their first suggestion for important health benefits, which indicates that adults need at least 2 hours and 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity every week and muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups.  This is in line with what I usually do. I generally work out for a half-hour in the morning before work, and it's usually a mix of cardio and strength training.  

So, where do cookies and french fries fit in to this plan? I know foods such as these regularly factor into my weekends...I find that I can do okay eating fairly healthy during the week, but Friday often kicks off a weekend of poor eating. So, forget about a cheat day, we're talking like 2.5 'cheat' days every week on a normal basis for me.  A cheat meal seems to be more of an accepted practice, maybe allowing for one or two splurges in a given week. 

I've read some conflicting things about whether vitamins and supplements are necessary or if they can be more harmful than good for you.  Given that I'm a vegetarian, I think I'm going to continue to take them to make sure I'm not missing out on any essential nutrients. 

As for some of my other notes, processed food, stress, and alcohol are all obviously bad, so I will try to avoid those as much as possible.