How to Eat and Exercise With Lupus

Eating healthy, well-proportioned meals will strengthen your immune system and decrease your lupus symptoms. Your body will get essential nutrition from eating fresh and healthy. In the same respect, exercise increases your strength, keeps your joints from getting stiff, improves your immune system and reduces stress.

Instructions

• 1

  Pay attention to what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat and the quality of the food you're eating. Stay away from fast food and junk food.

• 2

  Focus on a wide variety of foods that provide you with minerals, vitamins and fatty acids. If you increase your food combinations, your system will benefit.

• 3

  Remove additives, artificial ingredients and chemicals as much as possible. You shouldn't drink or eat caffeine or sugar when you have lupus.

• 4

  Eat every three hours or so throughout the day. It's best to eat several small meals. This will keep your blood sugar from dipping too low or spiking too high. Bring nutritious snacks with you everywhere, such as whole grain bread crackers, fruit, vegetables, dried fruit and unsalted nuts.

• 5

  Maintain balance in your meals. Instead of eating a baked potato, team it up with protein and a vegetable. Aim for a mix of lean protein, good fat, complex carbohydrates and essential fatty acids.

• 6

  Incorporate more organic ingredients in your diet. Avoid vegetables, fruits and meats that are artificially produced with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers and steroids. The chemicals applied to the plants often destroy essential soil microbes in an already deplete soil environment, resulting in plants that have a drastically reduced nutritional value.

• 7

  Think aerobic conditioning, such as swimming or walking. Find time to exercise, even if it's 10 minutes a day at first.

• 8

  Chart your progress so you can see how much you've accomplished as you exercise. To keep it from getting boring, go walking or biking with a friend and switch up your routine often.