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Happiness, 4.12 (V) Week 4 Video 11 - Do's and Don'ts of a Healthier Lifestyle

4.12 (V) Week 4 Video 11 - Do's and Don'ts of a Healthier Lifestyle

[MUSIC] Buna Ziua, my Romanian and other friends, I hope I got that right. As we saw in the last video, not leading a healthy lifestyle, specifically not eating right, not moving enough, and not sleeping well can have a bunch of negative effects on our health and our happiness. As a result, unhealthy lifestyle can increase the feeling of inner frenzy and the sense of impatience and distractiveness and restlessness. All symptoms associated with what the author of the paper that you're currently seeing on your screen calls attention deficit trait, or ADT. ADT, according to this author, is the feeling that your life is out of control and your plate is too full. And you can't handle the challenges and the obligations that you've taken on. As the author of the paper notes, and I quote, sleep, a good diet, and exercise are critical for staving off ADT. In this video, we are going to follow that advice, and I'm going to highlight some simple tips for doing all three things. That is eating right, moving more, and sleeping better really well. Once again, I should mention that much of the material that I'm gonna commit to you are from Tom Rath's excellent book Eat, Move, Sleep. So if you wanna learn more about this topic, I would highly recommend Tom's book. And there are also a bunch of resources right at the end of this weeks' bibliography that you can also take advantage of. So here it goes. Let me first make a general point first. You're likely to lead a healthier lifestyle if you make it easier on yourself to make good decisions. Now this might seem like an obvious point to make but I still think its worth making it. Since we often think that good intentions and knowledge about what's the right thing to do and what's the wrong thing to do are enough to make good decisions, but actually they are not. Often we have good intentions and we have terrific knowledge on what's right and what's wrong, but we get tripped up, because it isn't easy to make the right decision. We haven't put ourself in a place where it's easy to make a right decision. Here's an example. You may be really motivated to eat healthy and you may have a great ability to discern what's healthy and what's not. And yet, if you don't plan ahead and you find yourself surrounded by fast food joints when you're in a rush to get to a meeting, you're almost certain to make some unhealthy choices. In this example, you've made it harder on yourself to make a healthy decision by not carrying some healthy snacks with you. As you will see, all of these suggestions that I'm gonna give you, share this common underlying theme of making it easier for you to make healthy decisions. Let me start by some simple things you can do to make healthy food choices first. First, keep healthy snacks in easy to reach places in your house. That is, don't leave carrots and celery hidden somewhere deep inside a fridge. Put them out in the front where everybody can easily see it. And the unhealthy stuff like potato chips and ice cream you should keep those things hidden and difficult to reach as much as possible. Studies show that this small change can make a big difference to how healthy your diet is. Second, eat from smaller plates and bowls if you can. The reason for this step is that findings show that you consume less food when you eat from smaller plates. Brian Wansink, a fellow marketing professor and has done a lot of work on this topic, about which you can read from his really neat book Mindless Eating, is all about these kinds of tips. If you're wondering about what size plate is small enough, it turns out that a nine inch diameter plate is large enough for most families. By the way, a nine inch plate is only about half the size as a plate that's just three inches larger or twelve inches in diameter. Third, eat from plates that aren't white in color. Why? Because with a white plate you won't clearly see how much rice or pasta you're eating. And it turns out, that those types of simple carbs are among the least healthy foods for you. So if you're currently eating out of white plates or bowls, see if you can replace some of them at least with something that's darker in color. Fourth, if you find that you often have to eat out, carry some healthy snacks with you all the time. For example, carry a small zip lock bag with nuts or carry an apple or a banana and eat them to tide you over in case you find yourself in a situation in which you are not able to find some healthy options around you. Along similar lines, try never to get super hungry. It turns out that we tend to crave fried and carb heavy, generally unhealthy food when we get very hungry. Fifth, start your meals with healthy items. For example, start your meals with a fruit or a salad, without of course, that heavy ranch dressing. The reason for this is that findings show that you eat more, as much as 50 percent more of the item with which you start your meal. And finally, have a hearty and healthy breakfast. By that I mean try to have something that's rich in proteins like egg whites or salmon. You should definitely not skip breakfast. It turns out that skipping breakfast is one of the worst things you can do. People who eat a hearty and healthy breakfast, findings show, turn out to be smarter and skinnier. Now, turning to the second aspect, which is moving more. There are a bunch of similar things you can do to make it easier to be more active. Before I tell you about them, let me first reiterate something that I mentioned in the last video. Moving more doesn't mean exercising more vigorously for one hour each day. Although exercise is important and it can help. It means moving more throughout the day on a regular basis. With that in mind here are some tips to make it easier to get moving more regularly. First, get a pedometer. Or install a pedometer app on your smart phone. It turns out that merely having a device that measures how much you move, actually makes you move more. Second, put in reminders to move more regularly at work. For example, you can program your task manager or your email program to remind you to take a bathroom break or break every half an hour or so. Findings show that it's important to take a break about every 20 or 30 minutes at most. If you sit for hours on end, that's really bad. Findings show that your blood sugar levels and your insulin levels spike up to really dangerous levels. But what's really great is even a short 2 minute break every 20 minutes or so is enough to counteract this. Third, get a treadmill, or an elliptical machine, or some other exercise machine for your home. One study of more than 6,000 participants found that almost all participants who maintained a healthy weight, as high a number as 92%, exercised at home. Fourth, try to get a quick exercise session completed in the morning itself, soon after you wake up. That way, you get it out of the way. Another big advantage of exercising in the mornings is that it leads to a significant mood boosting effect that lasts throughout the day. One study found that even 20 minutes of exercising and moderate exercising in the morning had a positive impact on mood as many as 12 hours later in the day. [SOUND] And fifth, if you find the idea of exercising daunting, do whatever you find to be pleasurable. Maybe it's taking a slow walk around the neighborhood with your dog or a friend. Or maybe it's playing a game of ping pong. It doesn't really matter. Even if you get to exercise only for five minutes, what will happen is that, that will spur you on to continue to exercise. That's what findings show. Then once you're on the routine of exercising see if you can walk a mile a day. Findings show that walking a mile a day for at least six days a week reduces the risk of dying early by 20% and also keeps your brain from shrinking. Of course, if you like to exercise then it's a good thing to try and work up a good sweat on a daily basis. Findings show that short bursts of intense activity, significantly improves your heart health. This brings me to our final leg of the healthy lifestyle stool, which is, getting good sleep. Now before I mention some of the steps to make it easier to get a good night sleep, let me reiterate that almost all of us need at least seven hours of good quality sleep a night to feel fresh. And that's seven hours of sleep mind you. Not seven hours lying in bed. So in other words you may need to spend some more time in bed. Maybe eight hours or more in order to get the seven hours of good quality sleep. That said, here are five simple things that you can do to increase your chances of sleeping better. First, minimize the artificial sources of light in your bedroom. So try and see if you can remove the television from your bedroom. Also, see if you can make your bedroom a no electronics zone. It turns out that the type of blue light that electronic gadgets like an iPad or a laptop emit lower your melatonin levels. And this in turn disturbs sleep quality. Along similar lines, get dark and thick blinds or curtains for your bedroom so that the light from the outside doesn't get in. Second, get a white noise machine for your bedroom. It turns out that we sleep better when there's a regular and constant noise in the background. Third, keep your bedroom cool, about two to four degrees cooler than the temperature at which you're otherwise comfortable. Findings show that we sleep better in cooler environments. Fourth, try to keep a regular routine. Try to go to sleep and wake up the same time every day. Findings show that our body doesn't like it when our routine is disturbed. This is why heart attacks are more prevalent the day after the time change happens for daylight savings. And finally, prevent stress from ruining your sleep. So have a rule that you will never check email after dinner. Resist the temptation to check your email by telling yourself that you're likely to be in a much better shape to solve what ever problems, that an issue arise at work after you've had a good night sleep than before. Studies show, in fact, that you'll be much sharper, and therefore more capable of making better decisions when we have had a good sleep than not. So, to summarize, there are seven simple things you can do to make it easier to make healthy decisions. Hopefully, as a result of making some of these changes, you'll start regaining a sense of control over your life. And, as a result, you'll be less overly control seeking. To further help you with adopting a healthier lifestyle I'm gonna have you do something else. This something else is the fourth exercise in this course. An exercise that we call the schedule partner exercise. Ill tell you all about this exercise in the next video. [FOREIGN] my friends, and see you in the next video. [MUSIC]


4.12 (V) Week 4 Video 11 - Do's and Don'ts of a Healthier Lifestyle

[MUSIC] Buna Ziua, my Romanian and other friends, I hope I got that right. As we saw in the last video, not leading a healthy lifestyle, specifically not eating right, not moving enough, and not sleeping well can have a bunch of negative effects on our health and our happiness. As a result, unhealthy lifestyle can increase the feeling of inner frenzy and the sense of impatience and distractiveness and restlessness. All symptoms associated with what the author of the paper that you're currently seeing on your screen calls attention deficit trait, or ADT. ADT, according to this author, is the feeling that your life is out of control and your plate is too full. And you can't handle the challenges and the obligations that you've taken on. As the author of the paper notes, and I quote, sleep, a good diet, and exercise are critical for staving off ADT. In this video, we are going to follow that advice, and I'm going to highlight some simple tips for doing all three things. That is eating right, moving more, and sleeping better really well. Once again, I should mention that much of the material that I'm gonna commit to you are from Tom Rath's excellent book Eat, Move, Sleep. So if you wanna learn more about this topic, I would highly recommend Tom's book. And there are also a bunch of resources right at the end of this weeks' bibliography that you can also take advantage of. So here it goes. Let me first make a general point first. You're likely to lead a healthier lifestyle if you make it easier on yourself to make good decisions. Now this might seem like an obvious point to make but I still think its worth making it. Since we often think that good intentions and knowledge about what's the right thing to do and what's the wrong thing to do are enough to make good decisions, but actually they are not. Often we have good intentions and we have terrific knowledge on what's right and what's wrong, but we get tripped up, because it isn't easy to make the right decision. We haven't put ourself in a place where it's easy to make a right decision. Here's an example. You may be really motivated to eat healthy and you may have a great ability to discern what's healthy and what's not. And yet, if you don't plan ahead and you find yourself surrounded by fast food joints when you're in a rush to get to a meeting, you're almost certain to make some unhealthy choices. In this example, you've made it harder on yourself to make a healthy decision by not carrying some healthy snacks with you. As you will see, all of these suggestions that I'm gonna give you, share this common underlying theme of making it easier for you to make healthy decisions. Let me start by some simple things you can do to make healthy food choices first. First, keep healthy snacks in easy to reach places in your house. That is, don't leave carrots and celery hidden somewhere deep inside a fridge. Put them out in the front where everybody can easily see it. And the unhealthy stuff like potato chips and ice cream you should keep those things hidden and difficult to reach as much as possible. Studies show that this small change can make a big difference to how healthy your diet is. Second, eat from smaller plates and bowls if you can. The reason for this step is that findings show that you consume less food when you eat from smaller plates. Brian Wansink, a fellow marketing professor and has done a lot of work on this topic, about which you can read from his really neat book Mindless Eating, is all about these kinds of tips. If you're wondering about what size plate is small enough, it turns out that a nine inch diameter plate is large enough for most families. By the way, a nine inch plate is only about half the size as a plate that's just three inches larger or twelve inches in diameter. Third, eat from plates that aren't white in color. Why? Because with a white plate you won't clearly see how much rice or pasta you're eating. And it turns out, that those types of simple carbs are among the least healthy foods for you. So if you're currently eating out of white plates or bowls, see if you can replace some of them at least with something that's darker in color. Fourth, if you find that you often have to eat out, carry some healthy snacks with you all the time. For example, carry a small zip lock bag with nuts or carry an apple or a banana and eat them to tide you over in case you find yourself in a situation in which you are not able to find some healthy options around you. Along similar lines, try never to get super hungry. It turns out that we tend to crave fried and carb heavy, generally unhealthy food when we get very hungry. Fifth, start your meals with healthy items. For example, start your meals with a fruit or a salad, without of course, that heavy ranch dressing. The reason for this is that findings show that you eat more, as much as 50 percent more of the item with which you start your meal. And finally, have a hearty and healthy breakfast. By that I mean try to have something that's rich in proteins like egg whites or salmon. You should definitely not skip breakfast. It turns out that skipping breakfast is one of the worst things you can do. People who eat a hearty and healthy breakfast, findings show, turn out to be smarter and skinnier. Now, turning to the second aspect, which is moving more. There are a bunch of similar things you can do to make it easier to be more active. Before I tell you about them, let me first reiterate something that I mentioned in the last video. Moving more doesn't mean exercising more vigorously for one hour each day. Although exercise is important and it can help. It means moving more throughout the day on a regular basis. With that in mind here are some tips to make it easier to get moving more regularly. First, get a pedometer. Or install a pedometer app on your smart phone. It turns out that merely having a device that measures how much you move, actually makes you move more. Second, put in reminders to move more regularly at work. For example, you can program your task manager or your email program to remind you to take a bathroom break or break every half an hour or so. Findings show that it's important to take a break about every 20 or 30 minutes at most. If you sit for hours on end, that's really bad. Findings show that your blood sugar levels and your insulin levels spike up to really dangerous levels. But what's really great is even a short 2 minute break every 20 minutes or so is enough to counteract this. Third, get a treadmill, or an elliptical machine, or some other exercise machine for your home. One study of more than 6,000 participants found that almost all participants who maintained a healthy weight, as high a number as 92%, exercised at home. Fourth, try to get a quick exercise session completed in the morning itself, soon after you wake up. That way, you get it out of the way. Another big advantage of exercising in the mornings is that it leads to a significant mood boosting effect that lasts throughout the day. One study found that even 20 minutes of exercising and moderate exercising in the morning had a positive impact on mood as many as 12 hours later in the day. [SOUND] And fifth, if you find the idea of exercising daunting, do whatever you find to be pleasurable. Maybe it's taking a slow walk around the neighborhood with your dog or a friend. Or maybe it's playing a game of ping pong. It doesn't really matter. Even if you get to exercise only for five minutes, what will happen is that, that will spur you on to continue to exercise. That's what findings show. Then once you're on the routine of exercising see if you can walk a mile a day. Findings show that walking a mile a day for at least six days a week reduces the risk of dying early by 20% and also keeps your brain from shrinking. Of course, if you like to exercise then it's a good thing to try and work up a good sweat on a daily basis. Findings show that short bursts of intense activity, significantly improves your heart health. This brings me to our final leg of the healthy lifestyle stool, which is, getting good sleep. Now before I mention some of the steps to make it easier to get a good night sleep, let me reiterate that almost all of us need at least seven hours of good quality sleep a night to feel fresh. And that's seven hours of sleep mind you. Not seven hours lying in bed. So in other words you may need to spend some more time in bed. Maybe eight hours or more in order to get the seven hours of good quality sleep. That said, here are five simple things that you can do to increase your chances of sleeping better. First, minimize the artificial sources of light in your bedroom. So try and see if you can remove the television from your bedroom. Also, see if you can make your bedroom a no electronics zone. It turns out that the type of blue light that electronic gadgets like an iPad or a laptop emit lower your melatonin levels. And this in turn disturbs sleep quality. Along similar lines, get dark and thick blinds or curtains for your bedroom so that the light from the outside doesn't get in. Second, get a white noise machine for your bedroom. It turns out that we sleep better when there's a regular and constant noise in the background. Third, keep your bedroom cool, about two to four degrees cooler than the temperature at which you're otherwise comfortable. Findings show that we sleep better in cooler environments. Fourth, try to keep a regular routine. Try to go to sleep and wake up the same time every day. Findings show that our body doesn't like it when our routine is disturbed. This is why heart attacks are more prevalent the day after the time change happens for daylight savings. And finally, prevent stress from ruining your sleep. So have a rule that you will never check email after dinner. Resist the temptation to check your email by telling yourself that you're likely to be in a much better shape to solve what ever problems, that an issue arise at work after you've had a good night sleep than before. Studies show, in fact, that you'll be much sharper, and therefore more capable of making better decisions when we have had a good sleep than not. So, to summarize, there are seven simple things you can do to make it easier to make healthy decisions. Hopefully, as a result of making some of these changes, you'll start regaining a sense of control over your life. And, as a result, you'll be less overly control seeking. To further help you with adopting a healthier lifestyle I'm gonna have you do something else. This something else is the fourth exercise in this course. An exercise that we call the schedule partner exercise. Ill tell you all about this exercise in the next video. [FOREIGN] my friends, and see you in the next video. [MUSIC]