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We all know that eating right can help you maintain a healthy weight and avoid certain health problems, but your diet can also have a profound effect on your mood and sense of wellbeing. Studies have linked eating a typical Western diet—filled with processed meats, packaged meals, takeout food, and sugary snacks—with higher rates of depression, stress, bipolar disorder, and anxiety. Eating an unhealthy diet may even play a role in the development of mental health disorders such as ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, and schizophrenia, or in the increased risk of suicide in young people.

Eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, cooking meals at home, and reducing your intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates, on the other hand, may help to improve mood and lower your risk for mental health problems. If you have already been diagnosed with a mental health problem, eating well can even help to manage your symptoms and regain control of your life.

While some specific foods or nutrients have been shown to have a beneficial effect on mood, it’s your overall dietary pattern that is most important. That means switching to a healthy diet doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition. You don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to completely eliminate foods you enjoy to have a healthy diet and make a difference to the way you think and feel.

If you walk regularly, your athletic shoes are bound to show signs of wear. And even if they still feel comfortable, they might not be providing enough support or shock absorption. Pay attention to the condition of your shoes. If the outsole is worn through, it’s time for a new pair.

Rearchers reveal that meeting public health guidelines for physical activity alone may not be enough to fend off the adverse effects associated with a sedentary lifestyle for seniors. Instead, new research suggests that fitness, not physical activity alone, plays a protective role in guarding the body against risk factors for heart disease and other conditions.

Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) aimed to determine whether meeting physical activity guidelines or having high age-specific cardiorespiratory fitness would reduce the adverse effect of prolonged sitting on cardiovascular risk factors for seniors.

Cardiorespiratory fitness is the ability of the heart and lungs to provide the working muscles with oxygenated blood for a prolonged period and determine the level of fitness, which goes downhill with age. Cardiorespiratory fitness is an important health indicator that can predict cardiovascular disease mortality and can be improved by increasing both the intensity and amount of exercise.

While the average American adult sits for between 9-11 hours a day, the NTNU research found that the participants who were in the least sedentary third of the study still spent between 12-13 hours per day in sedentary behavior. The most sedentary of all participants were sedentary for up to 15 hours a day.

One of the most common questions we have received in our email inbox is “how much should I weigh?” In this article, we will explain 4 common methods to help you work this out.

To determine how much you should weigh (your ideal body weight) several factors should be considered, including age, muscle-fat ratio, height, sex, and bone density.

Some health professionals suggest that calculating your Body Mass Index (BMI) is the best way to decide whether your body weight is ideal. Others say that BMI is inaccurate as it does not account for muscle mass, and that waist-hip ratio is a better method.

It’s worth remembering that one person’s ideal body weight may be completely different to another’s. If you compare yourself to family and friends you risk either aiming too high (if you are surrounded by obese or overweight people), or too low (if everyone around you works as a fashion model). Even comparing yourself with people outside your immediate surroundings may not work.

The levels of overweight and obesity in countries as the USA or UK, are much higher than in countries such as The Netherlands. So a Dutch person may aim for a lower ideal weight than an American if all he did was to compare himself to other people.