5 Frugal Ways to Live Healthier
I know with such a busy life, taking care of yourself can often slip by the wayside. Believe it or not, there are some easy ways to do little things that will help improve your overall health and not break your time or money budget!
So, let’s talk about simple and frugal ways to live healthier in your day-to-day life.
5 Frugal Ways to Live Healthier
1. Drink Water
Your brain is 80% water. If you don’t drink enough to stay hydrated, you can reduce the ability of neurons to perform properly. You can also become dehydrated, which causes things like dry mouth and headaches.
The general recommendation is to have at least eight, eight-ounce glasses of water every day.
We often drink lots of calories through sodas, coffee, alcohol, juices, tea, etc. And the cost of these drinks adds up too! Drinks with caffeine are diuretics – meaning they speed up the rate of urine production. Thus, these drinks actually take away from those 8 glasses of water/day requirement.
Furthermore, soda is unhealthy, causes weight gain, and is also an artificial stimulant. Drink water, save money, save calories!
2. Walk
Walking is one of the most terrific frugal ways to live healthier. Walking is free, and it also elevates your mood, challenges your heart, and can help reduce food cravings.
Wear a movement tracker such as a Fitbit and strive to take at least 10,000 steps a day, including one brisk 30-minute walk or three 10-minute walks.
3. Dry-Brush Your Teeth
Before squeezing toothpaste onto your brush, take 30 seconds to brush your teeth with a dry toothbrush. Doing so can cut tartar by up to 60%. It also reduces the risk of bleeding gums by half.
Use a dry soft-bristle brush to scrub the insides of your top and bottom teeth, then buff the outer surfaces. Rinse, then brush as you normally would with toothpaste.
4. Reduce Your Portion Sizes
Reducing your portion sizes not only helps you to reduce the number of calories you are taking in, but it also reduces the amount of food you need to buy. This is, then, one of those frugal ways to live healthier that puts money back into your pocket!
Here are a few suggestions:
- Slicing thinly will make your portions seem bigger and more satisfying. When you believe you’re eating a larger portion of food, you’ll trick yourself into feeling more satisfied with fewer calories.
- Replace a drink with a piece of fruit like an apple. Researchers say that chewing stimulates satiety hormones, and whole food takes longer for your intestines to process, helping you to feel fuller for longer and consume less.
- Scoop a hole in the middle of your hamburger before cooking, and fill it with peppers, mushrooms, or any vegetable you like. This makes the recommended three-ounce serving of beef look and feel like an enormous amount of burger, when it’s much less than that.
Read about eating Real Food on a Realistic Budget
5. Breathe Deeply
Oxygen is a vital source of life. You may know how to breathe, but are you breathing properly? Most of us take only shallow breaths and breathe to 1/3 of our lung capacity. A full breath is one where your lungs are completely filled, your abdomen expands, and there’s minimum movement in your shoulders.
Along with this, you should work on improving your posture. Good posture improves your breathing. A good posture means maintaining the two natural curves at your back – (1) the concave curve from the base of your head to your shoulders and (2) the concave curve from your upper back to the base of your spine. It’s like the shape of 2 C’s on your back.
How can you improve your posture?
- Pretend your body is held up by a string.
- Set a reminder to check your posture.
- Don’t sleep on your stomach.
- Sit up straight in a good-quality chair.
These are just 5 simple ways to live healthier and not hurt the pocketbook!
What are some simple things you do as frugal ways to live healthier?
Featured Photo by Fauxels
Drinking water when traveling takes planning ahead. If you don’t already have a good water bottle, you can buy a water at the grocery store for under a doller then keep refilling it with tap water. That kind of plastic is actually bpa free, too, but nobody mentions it because it’s not often reused. Just don’t stick it in the dishwasher or anything. If multiple family members buy the same brand, write names on them. It is so much cheaper than buying drinks at a convenience store when everyone gets hungry and thirsty. (While I was at the grocery store, I bought healthy snacks for the trip, too. Sneaky!)
Michelle, we always carry reusable water bottles with us! I keep them in the storage part of the doors in my vehicle, one in my purse, and I always try to remind the kids to grab their water bottles out of the refrigerator before we leave the house.
Those are great tips! I had never heard #3. I’ll have to try that. I keep a couple of metal water bottles in the fridge that I rotate throughout the day so I always have cold water and I start the day with exercise of some sort – usually either walking or running on the treadmill or running with a friend. Some other good, fun ways to get some exercise in include jumping rope, hula hooping, or playing active Wii games, such as Just Dance or Wii Fit. You can actually get the kids on board with those kinds of activities. 🙂
Kris, we love doing Dance Dance Revolution together on the Playstation!
I should also mention that #3 was new to me as well. Now that my 8 year old heard me talking about i while I was doing research for this post she dry brushes every night!