How can I lead a healthier lifestyle?

Often, people in the West think of health as being related to numbers. They're healthy if they eat a certain number of calories throughout the day. They're healthy if they have a certain body mass index. They're healthy if they consume the right quantities of water. What these numbers are doing, though, is assigning a universal value of invented guidelines to each person without taking their own personal story into account. What if the person leads an incredibly active lifestyle, and simply needs more food than the average person?  What if they have particularly high muscle mass, and their BMI classifies them as being overweight?  What if they are particularly active one day, and require more water to quench their thirst?

More traditional systems like Ayurveda and Yoga teach us that we must simply take care of our body so as to avoid discomfort and pain as well as feel more open and light. If you're thirsty, you drink. If you're particularly hungry as a result of increased activity levels, eat more. Though many of us have attempted to live a healthier lifestyle by living through numbers that someone else has assigned to us, the simplest and most ideal way to be healthy is to do one thing: Tune in to what your body needs, and satisfy those needs.