It’s not difficult adopting a healthy and active lifestyle. You just need to make a few changes, here and there, in your regular lifestyle. That simple!For most Americans who maintain a healthy weight, eating the right foods and not smoking is a great healthy lifestyle. It may seem so, but is it enough? Oh, yes! We do eat all those ‘good’ foods. Haven’t we all heard of those fantastic low-carb and low-fat diets? Haven’t we heard of those great diets popularized by those Hollywood stars we so idolize?We need to ask ourselves: Are these diets going to help?Change Your LifestyleYou have been eating a balanced diet all this time: proteins – the vegetable and animal kind, carbohydrates and fat. That’s good! But have you been eating in the right way? This is the change you need to bring to your lifestyle, to improve yourself. It’s not very difficult.Eat chicken and fish as part of your animal proteins diet. Avoid eating beef, pork and their byproducts. For vegetable proteins, go for soy and soy products, such as soybean hot dogs, hamburgers, and sausages. Eat fruits and vegetables as part of your carbohydrates intake. Avoid breads and pasta. Be choosy about which fruits and vegetables you eat. Go for the low-starch variety, such as black beans, broccoli (raw) and mushrooms (boiled). Avoid bananas, prunes and grapes. They have high sugar content. For fats, include almond, macadamia nuts, and olive oil in your diet. Avoid using vegetable shortenings and butter.That takes care of your healthy lifestyle. Now how about making a self improving change towards a more active lifestyle?A More Active LifestyleOf course, you are not aiming to participate in the Olympics, nor are you aiming to be the next Schwarzenegger. But, you need to be a bit more active. Our very lifestyles lead us to a life that is not active. We lead very sedentary lives. This is what adopting a slightly more active lifestyle will do for you:o Reduce heart attack and stroke risks
o Maintain flexibility vis-à-vis your age
o Improve your joint movements and normal movement range
o Prevent osteoporosis
o Improve memory in older persons
o Reduce stress, and depression and anxiety symptomsIn addition, the best thing an improved lifestyle will do is boost your self esteem.These are some of the things you need to do to be slightly more active:o Stop using that remote control. Get up to change channels on your TV.
o Do not use the remote to open your garage door. Get out of your car and manually raise that door.
o Don’t use that leaf blower; use the rake itself.
o Take the dog out for a walk every day instead of just letting him out.
o Going up three flights? Use the stairs, not the elevator.
o Walk around when talking on the call. Don’t keep sitting or reclining.Adopting a healthy and active lifestyle . . . it’s that simple!
Tag Archives: Lifestyle
Why Use Consumer Lifestyle Surveys?
I’m sure just about everybody has received what he or she considers to be junk mail. Most of the time it goes straight into the bin as even the biggest consumer can at times get fed up with the world of sales, where even your organs are game. On the odd occasion just as I am about to ditch the junk mail something catches my eye: a discount for a holiday, free DVD, or coupon for a facial. But in a world where nothing comes free it’s hard to trust and besides in the three minutes it will take to fill out the claim form I could be flicking through the TV channel instead…
Now if I only I received direct marketing for things that actually interested me, were somehow useful or informative, then I would be much less inclined to chuck the lot away. I mean who can be bothered to sift the chiff from the chaff when Eastenders is about to begin?
On the other hand if the phone call I received, or leaflet in the post, or coupon from the supermarket was something that was purposeful, then I am sure I would give it commercial time at least and so I got to thinking…
It’s all about the target.
Maybe it was time for me to hit a home run in my own business by hitting the target. The world of ceramics isn’t going to excite the average man. Somebody living in a wooden hut, a carpeted home or in a cold country isn’t likely to be my biggest customer but what about the man with a house in Spain, Bail, Greece or Turkey? Here the demand is huge. Having nailed the countries what next? There is no point in sending out leaflets to seventeen year olds, who are mostly interested in cars, clubs and the opposite sex; or seventy year olds, who quite frankly like their current flooring. With so many variables to consider it became very clear to me that you have to find your pool of punters and they might not be in your local. So how do you go about this?
Consumer lifestyle surveys are the way forward as their sole functions are to provide consumer data to the direct marketing industry. Companies that carry out consumer lifestyle surveys have the resources to find out who you should target and who your potential customers are for the long haul. It’s well known that quality and not quantity is what sticks. The first sale is easy but to get the people to come back again and again, quality is what matters. In that case it makes far better sense to send out smaller amounts of marketing material to the right people.
Consumer lifestyle surveys allow for more efficiency and accuracy. Naturally this is much more cost effective. As well as that when you know your pool of consumers well, you know exactly what to offer to get them interested. Then it’s down to mechanics of creativity to pull them in. Personally I like to dabble in the creativity department myself but for those that want to outsource there are plenty of direct marketing companies that will do the job for you.
One of my favourite campaigns is a wonderful example of how Consumer Lifestyle Surveys benefited an alcoholic beverage company for a whiskey brand XXX.
Christmas was approaching and the companies marketing department had the challenge of coming up with an innovative campaign to increase sales. They wisely got in contact with a consumer lifestyle surveys company to find their pool through categories ranging from geography, personal information, shopping habits, interests, travel and leisure, gender and so forth.
As well as looking at competitors database and their current database of customers they came up with their hit list of potential customers – more than half the work was done. Now how to hook them in? Through their research it became clear that the majority of whiskey drinkers were men over 40. Knowing their target group and then using a cultural consumer Christmas tradition, they came up with an exciting campaign to send socks to the potential consumers with a note saying, ‘If you don’t ask for XXX Whiskey at Christmas, you’ll get the same old boring socks.’
As a result 40 percent of the consumers sent back the questionnaire accompanying the sock. An astounding amount! So not only did the brand advertise their product that resulted in the increase of sales but they also got their hit list of potential customers for direct marketing purposes.
Quite a genius approach! It is clear to me as a consumer and a small business owner that consumer lifestyle surveys are the way forward. If all companies used them then the average man would no longer consider direct marketing as junk mail and something untrustworthy, but more like an introduction to a good deal, something that they might actually want to invest in or buy…here everyone gets a piece of the pie.