If you kept yourself fit this summer, but worried with Fall approaching and you want to keep off the pounds, it’s doable – but there are a few sneaky things that contribute to weight gain to stay on the lookout for:

If you focus on whatever calories come in need to get burned off, it won’t matter if you’re not eating the right types of food. A lot of processed foods will cause blood sugar levels to spike, and you may end up feeling hungry all the time.

When you do snack, choose the right ones – donuts and potato chips are delicious, but opt for healthier snacks like nuts instead.

Eating vegetables is great, but too many starchy vegetables like potatoes and peas cause inadvertent weight gain – choose broccoli, Brussel sprouts, carrots, and mushrooms.

And if you sit around all day at your desk, but that’s not good for our bodies – we need breaks – the American Heart Association recommends at least two and half hours of exercise per week – so try a 30-minute brisk walk each weekday, and you’ll have the weekend to relax!

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If you’d like to live longer, there’s now an easy way to do it. Just embrace your inner artist.

Neurologists at Johns Hopkins University and Google teamed up and discovered you can live 10 years longer if you spend 45 minutes a day doing some kind of art that you enjoy.

And art isn’t simply limited to something like painting – it can be anything from coloring to singing and dancing, or even knitting and writing poetry. It all counts!

When you really get into your own artworks, good or bad, the stress chemicals in your body drop quickly, which leads directly to longer and healthier life.

Just make sure you don’t necessarily immediately put it for sale on Etsy.

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Sometimes our lives are so busy, and we get so overwhelmed with activities and events, even beyond our normal work and home routines, that a vacation just won’t do the trick.

To avoid getting overtired and burnt out, there’s a new trend online to combat just that – it’s called “slow living.”

You’ll find it all over Instagram if you follow the hashtag The Art of Slow Living – there’s more than 3 and a half million posts already! And people are posting items on self-care, me time, and simply saying “no” to invites.

Fans of the trend say that life is better when you can appreciate things as they happen, rather than constantly keeping up with a to-do list.

This might be a benefit of the pandemic, as we all did less running around and we all cut back on events – but whether this trend is here to stay remains to be seen – and if you feel bogged down and too busy, you might want to try some slow living.

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Now that we’ve got a stretch of a little less humid weather, take advantage! Taking daily walks helps you in numerous ways – burning calories, helping with heart health, improving your physical fitness and mobility. But there’s a lot of other ways you probably didn’t even realize a brisk walk can help you mentally:

You’ll gain a greater sense of self-efficacy – basically, it’s a confidence booster. And if you walk with a confident posture, it’ll help even more.

Walking improves your circulation, which also increases blood flow to the brain, and you’ll be able to reduce stress, anxiety, mental fatigue, and you’ll dwell less on negative thoughts.

If you have trouble sleeping, walking can help – but it’s actually better in that case to walk first thing in the morning and reset your biological clock.

Some of your best ideas come to you while walking – being mindful of ourselves and our surroundings while walking can be just as useful for our minds as close-eyed meditation – so you might even feel more creative afterwards!

So when you’re looking for a mood booster after a tough day at work, take a walk!

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You wake up and have coffee, you take a break in the middle of the day to go get coffee, you might even have some after a fancy dinner – and all of it could be adding YEARS to your life!

A new study shows that two to three cups of coffee a day lowers the risk of heart disease and dangerous heart rhythms.

The study shows it’s safe for people with cardiovascular disease because it has a positive or neutral effect. Any more than three cups isn’t bad for you either, but it won’t provide additional benefits. There’ smore than 100 nutritious plant chemicals in coffee beans, and they can help improve insulin sensitivity and metabolism.

However, this just goes for regular coffee – the moment you add sugar, flavors, and sweeteners, you’ll be negating the positive effects.

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