We wake up everyday and are catapulted into a challenge of almost Herculean scope: climbing the corporate or educational ladder, maintaining friends and a social life, being a productive member of society and family. All the while, we’re trying to make our lives and bodies healthy, happy, and beautiful.
In our daily adventures we are often presented with two types of wellness approaches: the radical sweeping changes, and the “get-well-quick” infomercial type solutions. I know that the day-to-day juggling of a career, life, and a family often competes directly with your desire to be healthy. When we have a minute to ourselves, we always express our desires to lose weight, to stop procrastinating, to quit smoking, talk to our boss, and so on.
Everyone knows steps they could take to start feeling and looking better today. The issue has never been ignorance, but rather comfort. People rarely change until the discomfort of doing the same things outweighs the challenge of trying to improve.
What I offer you today are five small activities and exercises to help you make gradual strides towards wellness, both of body and mind. These are suggestions that will help you to have more energy, help you lose weight, bring positivity into your life, and increase that feeling of overall wellness. You can do all these things without radical change or discomfort, making these marvelous transitional steps.
1. Eat organic produce and meat whenever possible.
The benefits continue to add up, from increased nutrition to long-term health benefits, environmental impacts to better taste. Eating organically farmed foods is an easy step that, while adding an incremental bit of price to the meal, also adds tremendous nutritional value and removes dozens of harmful chemicals from your family table.
Conventionally farmed produce is often covered in pesticides. These pesticides are chemicals classified as organophosphates, originally used in chemical warfare, and now used on our food to destroy insects. The major issue here is that these chemicals never get removed from our food prior to our consumption. “A typical diet features between 60-70 hits daily of toxic chemicals such as DDT, dieldrin and dioxin,” according to the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Some of these chemicals have been banned in the U.S. for decades, but due to differing laws internationally, they are still found entrenched in our food supply.
One of the most dangerous facts about these chemicals is the inability for our body to recognize and eliminate small quantities. Repeated exposure and ingestion leads to a build up in our fatty tissues, potentially causing serious health complications in the future. For example, the journal Pediatrics published a study that concludes, “exposure to organophosphate pesticides at levels common among America’s children are more likely to develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” This danger, as well as others, has led the San Francisco-based Pesticide Action Network to name the chemicals found on several of our foods “among the most insidiously dangerous compounds ever produced.”
Be sure to learn more about organic vs. conventional foods here.
2. Don’t drink your calories
This tip is so simple and yet so profound. If you are interested in losing weight easily and effectively, there is no simpler way than watching what you drink. The proliferation of “health” beverages, and calorie and sugar laden sports and juice drinks in our culture have made it difficult to avoid consuming in excess.
Don’t buy the hype: the sugar and calories found in beverages are often more hazardous to your health than any anti-oxidants or vitamin content could warrant as valuable. For example, a single serving of juice often contains over 150 calories and over 25 grams of sugar. Not so bad? Well, considering that even in the home people often consume at least 50-100% more quantity than the serving size per glass (12-16oz vs. 8oz), they will often drink multiple glasses, exponentially expanding their calories, sugars, and waistlines. The same effect happens outside when we buy beverages by the bottle, which often contain 2.5 servings, all of which are usually consumed in one sitting.
The motivation for our over consumption is that liquids are not filling. Our digestive system, our brains, and everything in between is designed to recognize and respond to solid food for sustenenance. Consuming the calories we do in liquid form is ineffective and dangerous to our health. Learn more about the risks here.
If you really want an easy way to lose weight, reduce your risk for diabetes, and make your body look and feel its best, cut the calories from your drinks. Drink water, tea, and coffee/espresso, avoid juice, soda, and anything with artificial sweetener to change your body in no time at all. Don’t drink your calories and watch the pounds melt off.
3. Shift your focus
There are times when we get stuck in a rut. Often times we feel this way when a combination of events, both within and beyond our control, collide and leave us feeling helpless, drained, or depressed. When we feel that way, there is little that external involvement can do to help us rise above. Therein lies the beauty and magnificence of the human spirit, as Viktor Frankl noted: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
If you are feeling stressed or in an unproductive mood now, here’s a 30 second technique to help you beat that stress.
For those with a bit more time, let’s look at some great tools to help you stay productive and focused on the positive aspects of our lives. One great tip is to work with a Holistic Health Coach to help you gain perspective into the intricacies of total wellness. Diet and lifestyle are major contributors to how we perceive our world. Even depression has been linked to diet.
Another great tip is to use positive psychology. Learn about it in greater depth here. In short, positive psychology seeks to use the science of psychology not to cure mental illnesses, but to promote mental wellness and growth. It’s a wonderful school of thought, and there are some great focus building tools available at www.authentichappiness.com.
So, when life and the world try to get you down, take a minute and remember, the choice on how to respond is yours. Use it wisely, and remember Frankl’s words: “when we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”
4. Drink water and eat breakfast in the morning
One of the most delicious and beneficial things you can do in your day is to start it off with a glass of water and a healthy, filling breakfast.
Having that glass of water helps to rehydrate your body after hours of sleep, and acts like a turbo shot to your metabolism and energy production. Imagine if drinking a glass of water upon waking was all you needed to do to increase your energy throughout the entire day. Well, that’s entirely true. That kickstart to your daily hydration routine is the easiest and most productive thing you can do to help your energy level and weight loss.
The next best thing you can do for yourself in the morning is to eat breakfast. Taking the time to enjoy something nutritious and delicious is a great habit to get into. Firstly, you can treat it as an act of self-love. By taking the time to feed your body, and give it the fuel it needs to propel you through your day, you are respecting and loving yourself in a very positive way. Supplement that with healthy and filling food and you are showing yourself double the love.
Also, by eating in the morning you will stave off the voracious hunger, and the compelling sleepiness that can find you at your desk. Eating a wholesome breakfast will help to keep you from both snacking, and from overeating at lunch. Both of these points will help your energy, and your blood sugar stay constant through the day, preventing those midday crashes.
So keep a bottle or glass next to your alarm clock, and greet the day with a nice long drink and great breakfast to keep your energy up and your weight down!
5. Say thank you
A great way to invite positivity into your life is to send some out. The practice of expressing gratitude has been demonstrated to have a lasting and positive effect on your personal happiness. For some great examples of how gratitude can bring about positive change in your life, read this article.
Two great and easy ways to focus your energies that surround gratitude are a gratitude list and concious expression. The list is simply a daily enumeration of a few things you are thankful for. You can find mine on Twitter @AGratitudeList. Also, the concious effort of espousing thanks to those worthy throughout the day will help the mood of the recipient as well as the provider.
Take these five tips with you on your journey through the weeks, and apply them with an open mind and heart. The small steps listed here are designed to help you meet and overcome your challenges with stress, weight, and energy without too much effort. Take some time to experiment with each one and see how you respond. Also, take some time for a 50-minute Health History (a $100 value, yours free through this article) to learn about your challenges and how you can help yourself without added stress.
*BONUS TIP*
6. Put your fork down
To ensure slow, mindful eating put your fork down between bites. This small trick will allow your body to pace itself and you to fully enjoy your meal, as well as feel full and eat less. Feeling full earlier and eating less is a great way to lose weight. Try it today and see how well it works for you.
– John Garda
John Garda is a Holistic Health Coach working out of NY and Miami. He has been able to help his clients overcome their challenges, and now has a practice that focuses on helping busy individuals lower their stress, lose weight, achieve wellness, and love who they see in the mirror.
Visit John’s website.