Avoid New Year Resolution Failure, Make a Lifestyle Resolution!

When you commit to a lifestyle, it’s no longer about meeting a particular goal, like losing 10 pounds. It’s about making (usually small) alterations in how you live and go about your daily life that build upon each other as time goes on.

Here are some healthy lifestyle strategies to get you started!

# 1: Drink Pure Water   

Making clean, pure water your primary beverage is among the most positive lifestyle changes you can make. This means steering clear of all sweetened and/or flavored beverages. Also, limit your alcohol consumption.

Agricultural drug use has become a major health concern for animals and humans alike, courtesy of factory farming methods in so-called “confined animal feeding operations” (CAFOs), where efficiency and low cost is the primary objective. It’s important to understand that you’re essentially getting a concoction of drugs, including hormones and antibiotics, in every piece of CAFO-raised meat you eat. Opt for meats raised by a local farmer without added hormones and antibiotics. These can be usually be found at your local farmer’s market – even during the winter!

Mounting scientific evidence supports saturated fat as a necessary part of a heart healthy diet, and firmly debunks the myth that saturated fat promotes heart disease. The science is equally clear when it comes to omega-3 fats, found in abundance in fish. Omega-3 deficiency can contribute to serious health problems, both mental and physical, and is thought to be an underlying factor of up to 96,000 premature deaths each year.

Exercise affects your entire body-from head to toe-in beneficial ways. This includes changes in your muscles, lungs, heart, joints, bones, and brain. In fact, researchers recently suggested that exercise is “the best preventive drug” for many common ailments, from psychiatric disorders to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.  Ideally, you want a comprehensive fitness regimen that includes stretching, high intensity interval training, core strengthening exercises, and strength training.

The connections between stress and physical health are being explored at greater frequency these days. For example, recent news items have reported the links between emotional distress and physical pain  and chronic inflammation. Because inflammation plays a role in most diseases, including cardiovascular disease, asthma, and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well. According to one study, happy people are also known to live longer-by 35 percent!

Sleep is another often ignored lifestyle factor that has a tremendous impact on your health-physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s actually crucial to get enough light during daytime hours in order to sleep well. In the evening, you want to dim environmental lights and avoid the blue light wavelength. Use blue-blocking light bulbs, dimming your lights with dimmer switches, and turn off unneeded lights, and if using a computer in the evening, consider installing blue light-blocking software like f.lux.10 When it’s time to go to sleep, make sure your bedroom is very dark.

Getting sun exposure is equally important for optimizing your vitamin D levels. (UV exposure also has additional health benefits beyond vitamin D production and maintaining the timing of your master clock…) A robust and growing body of research clearly shows that vitamin D is absolutely critical for your health. (More than 33,800 scientific studies have been published on vitamin D so far.)

As with vitamin D, it’s become crystal clear that beneficial bacteria plays an enormous role in your physical and mental health. Probiotics are in fact so crucial to your health that researchers have compared them to “a newly recognized organ,” suggesting we really should consider ourselves a type of “meta-organism” — in acknowledgment of the fact that we cannot be whole and healthy without the participation of a vast array of friendly bacterial species and strains.

Growing your own food has many rewards, from providing you with fresher, uncontaminated produce and cutting your grocery bill, to increasing your sense of well being and slashing your risk of depression. One of the simplest and most inexpensive alternatives is to grow sprouts.