Health and Fitness Tips for Men

Staying healthy and fit has many advantages. Apart from looking good, you will feel good too. Benefits are plenty, such as reducing the risk diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cancer.

Men’s health and fitness can be achieved through three things; healthy diet, regular exercise and routine medical checkups.

Health and Fitness Tips for Men

1.) Diet

A good, healthy diet will bring positive results. Essentially the point to remember here is everything in moderation. Certainly plenty of fruit and vegetables are good but remember that too much of anything, even fresh fruit can itself be detrimental.

The food pyramid is a well known guide to the types of food you need more of and the types you should have less of:

Essentially you need more fruit, vegetables, fibre and complex carbohydrates and less protein rich food like meat and dairy and less simple carbohydrates like sugar.

This is difficult to maintain in a busy schedule as convenience food tends to be laden with lots of oil and sugar, which is tasty but very unhealthy. Of course home-cooked food is ideal because you can determine portion size and you can see what you are putting in directly. Cutting down or substituting oil, fats and salt where necessary.

Carbohydrate acts as the main energy supply for the body. Protein is a building block. Fats and oils have a role in cell function. Fibre is important for bowel health.

As well as type of food, portion size is very important because too large a portion size is also not good for a healthy weight and lifestyle. On average one portion is the size of your fist. This may seem small at first but is plenty for your daily needs. See the pyramid above for how many portions you should have a day (portion = serving).

Fruits are important food source. Not only can they make great snacks when you are hungry instead eating chocolate or crisps but they have antioxidants and vitamins that are beneficial to for normal bodily health. Supplements can be taken when you are not getting a sufficient amount of nutrients such as vitamins and minerals but these are often not necessary if your diet is well portioned and well balanced.

Remember that men need approximately 2500 calories a day.

Nutrient Quantity Requirements Per Day:

Protein 50 grams

Fat 70 grams

Carbohydrates 310 grams

Sugars 90 grams

Sodium (salt) 2.3 grams

Dietary Fibre 30 grams

Saturated Fatty Acids 24 grams

2.) Regular Exercise

Cardiovascular exercise is important to develop a healthy metabolism (great for burning calories) as well as increasing heart and blood vessel health. Have you sprinted a short distance only to be completely out of breath? This is because your heart and blood vessels cannot pump enough oxygen to all parts of your body. As you do cardio exercises this will improve. Strength and muscle training is important for physique, cardio alone won’t build up your strength muscles. By supplementing your cardio workout with strength training (weights) you can improve both aspects of your body.

Regular exercise is considered at least 30 mins of moderate to high intensity exercise 3-4 times a week. Longer may be needed for more appreciable gains. Brisk walking can be useful should you not be able to do high intensity workouts but this will also need increase regularity and duration to show benefit.

3.) Regular Medical Checkup

A thorough medical checkup should be done annually. By doing this, you can detect potentially reversible health problems at an earlier stage before they develop into more serious issues. Regular checks also allow us to monitor you health over many years, identifying any slowly developing potential issues as well.