It’s actually as simple as following the most common pieces of advice found in such articles as the requirements to be physically fit and the cost of physical inactivity, but here are the most important rules that you need to know:
1. MAINTAIN NORMAL BODY WEIGHT
What this basically means is that you shouldn’t carry around too much excess body weight that your body can’t handle for too long. There are actually plenty of user-friendly ideal body weight calculators online that you can use like this one. Just keep in mind that these are never exact, and should be used as only a sort of estimate for you to create a target weight for. For example, if you are a heavily muscled bodybuilder, you might way over 50 pounds heavier than what these calculators say, but have very little body fat.
The best way to determine your current body fat percentage would be to go to a gym and have a professional check your fat percentage manually with a body fat caliper. Try to aim for below 20% at first, then try to lower it more and more until you’re satisfied. Just remember that body fat percentages below 5% are very dangerous for most people. Too much body fat should definitely be avoided, but you should also be wary of having too little.
2. EAT BREAKFAST
Eating breakfast truly does help one maintain one’s weight. This is because, when you fuel yourself up with the right sort of foods the first thing in the morning, your body will be immediately energized for the day, and you’ll be more mentally adjusted for the next meal. Fueling up your body properly this way will help keep it strong, and at the same time lessen or even flat out remove any cravings for bad foods that you may have throughout the day, allowing you to keep to a healthy diet plan. This is actually a very crucial step to achieving rule #1.
3. SLEEP NO MORE THAN 7-8 HOURS EACH NIGHT
It’s also not a good idea to sleep in every day. Every once in a while is fine, if, for example, you stayed up really late to finish an important project for work or school, then made up for it with a 12 hour sleeping period. Doing this every day, however, will just make your body more and more sedentary, and will continuously weaken it over time. Unless you’ve got some legitimate medical problem you can attribute this to, your body shouldn’t need more than 8 hours of sleep each night.
If you do feel that it should, perhaps you’re subjecting yourself from some sort of stress every day, whether physical or mental. The best advice would be to lessen or totally eliminate the source of the stress to save yourself in the long run. No amount of sleep can reduce your stress if you just experience more and more of it every day. Stressing yourself out too much definitely will not lead yourself to a longer, fuller, and healthier life.
4. DO NOT SMOKE
And any illegal or non-medical drugs for that matter. I really don’t think I need to explain this one. Just don’t do it, and if you’re already smoking, please quit right now. It’s for your own good, I promise.
5. EXERCISE
The human body is meant to move and be active. This is why it’s built the way it is, with two arms and legs, a plethora of muscles, the capacity to be trained to perform amazing feats of strength, speed, power, endurance, flexibility, and so on. In order to achieve a long and healthy life, you need to train and strengthen your body constantly. You shouldn’t allow it to grow too sedentary and weak over time. This is basically the equivalent of just letting your car sit in your garage forever and allow it to accumulate more and more rust each day. Your body is the same, and if you take care of it and keep it strong, it will make you feel better than ever.
Now, I don’t mean that you should suddenly become a super athlete or look like Sylvester Stallone (but it would be nice if you shot your goals this high). I just mean that you should do yourself and do your body a favor by exercising regularly and engaging in all sorts of physical activities. If you don’t have a sport or physical activity that you currently perform, then I’d suggest weight training. You can start out with the simple, but effective home workout, or the dumbbell version, then work yourself up to more difficult programs after you feel you’ve progressed enough.
There, now that wasn’t so bad now, was it? The hard part is actually keeping this up literally every day of your life. What about junk food, alcohol, or any of that party stuff? Notice that I didn’t really touch on those things very much in the five magic rules. This is because, yes, you can indulge in those every once in a while if there’s a party of sorts. Eating at a buffet or drinking beer with your buddies once a month or even once a week shouldn’t hurt you if you followed all of the above rules the rest of the time. Your body fat percentage, for example, won’t suddenly balloon to 10% more after just once beer or one deluxe hamburger. Just don’t indulge in these things every day and you’ll be fine.
These rules to longevity aren’t actually secrets, but they’re things that I find most people forget easily because they take them for granted. Hopefully, I managed to help you keep these things more in check and possibly grant you ten more years in life. For an expanded explanation on the topic that focuses on the diet rules, please check out my earlier article, how to live longer.
