Look your best on Valentine's Day (Lead correcting para 2)

With Valentine's Day approaching on February 14, you can look your best following simple tips like eliminating stress from your daily routine, exercising and drinking water, says an expert.

Farah Arfeen, metabolic balance coach and nutritionist at AktivOrtho, which is a rehab centre for ortho and physiotherapy, has listed a few tips:

* Good nutrition: It is important to include good quality protein in our daily dietary intake. You should have high biological value protein such as milk, yogurt, eggs, meat, chicken, fish and beans in each meal, to accomplish the protein needs of our body.

* Exercise: Exercise produces endorphins (the hormones that make you feel good) and subsequently, helps reduce your stress levels. Stress reduction and endorphins help decrease cortisol and other skin problems, hormones that occur naturally when you are under stress.

Exercise like plank is one of the best exercises for core conditioning. It benefits you by adding in regular routine like toned belly, reduce back pain, give flexibility, improves balance and posture.

Side crunches remove belly fat and give you a new shaped body in two weeks. You will definitely feel a change in your belly fat and feel more muscular and energetic in your body. This is a good exercise which can help you lose fat as well as get into good shape.

Running or jogging helps prevent hypertension or heart diseases, strengthens the immune system, stabilises the blood sugar level, improving mental fitness.

* Eliminate stress: Stress is a key contributor to poor health as it could be a reason for blood pressure, tension headache, upset stomach and poor posture.

Try to release it by spending time in exercise and meditation or breathing exercise. Exercising helps to release the love hormone oxytocin and serotonin both, you need it for your Valentine's Day. .

* Water has multiple benefits of transferring the nutrients, removing toxins, helping conditions to be alkaline. Keep the skin hydrated and it will appear more plump and less wrinkled it is the most essential component of nutrition.

* Good sleep is important as it relaxes the system, also when having sound sleep body releases serotonin. It decreases mood swing, depression, anxiety and increases feeling of bliss and happiness. If you are healthy and happy from inside it will show on your skin.

* Fats: A diet which is rich in essential fatty acids which is also known as healthy fats, is important as our body needs them and can't produce them on their own. You can get them only from the source of food.

Include them in your daily routine diet. Take one serving of oily fish (like salmon, mackerel, tuna, oyster) in your meal twice a week. Flaxseed walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds are packed with omega 3 fatty acids sprinkle them on your salads or munch them as it is.

--IANS

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