Every New Year we celebrate with a sincere commitment to be healthier and lead a better lifestyle. Unfortunately, many of the resolutions we make have fallen by the wayside or are less affecting our health than we think.
With all of the information available about healthy living, it’s easy to feel confused and overwhelmed when trying to prioritize lifestyle changes. We made it easy by compiling the top five ways to get healthier now.
Some of them will apply to you and some of them may be things you are already doing. If so, let go of them and focus on the things that you need to do.
These are in no particular order and are more important to some of you than others, depending on your lifestyle, medical history, and current health.
Quit Smoking
Very few people need to be told that smoking will kill them, but did you know that quitting smoking has an almost immediate effect?
In a few days your lungs will begin to clear and the morning cough will stop. In a couple of weeks most of the hundreds of narcotics will have been flushed out of your system and brought about the greatest cravings.
In five years, their lungs (and life expectancy) will be like they never smoked. As a bonus, you won’t fall into a coughing fit when you try the next item on our list.
Get Moderate Cardio 3 Times a Week
If you say cardio sounds too strenuous, finding the remote when you are overweight and out of shape is a hassle.
Moderate cardio such as walking, dancing, swimming, cycling, or whatever you enjoy and is good for your health.
How moderate is moderate?
Walk faster than if you were killing time, but slower than if zombies were chasing you.
Really; Set a steady pace that will get your heart rate up and let you talk, but not be as interested in it.
If you hate standard cardio, join your kids for a game of kickball, go rollerblading with friends, or try the hip-hop dance DVD that came with you for Christmas. Just move.
You will burn calories, lose weight, and improve the health of your heart and lungs.
Drink more water
It’s boring but true. Most people are much more dehydrated than they think. And most of us need at least 64 fluid ounces of water a day.
This is even more true if you are in a hot or cold climate, exercise regularly, live at high altitude, or have high blood pressure.
You need enough water to digest food, remove toxins from your body, lose weight, think clear, and keep your drinking week going – at least at your minimum, you’ll notice a more stable mood, less gas, more mental focus, and younger looking skin.
Ditch Processed Foods
Highly processed foods like fast foods and prepackaged snacks are loaded with trans fat, salt, sugar, and empty calories that clog your arteries, add volume to your bum, promote fatigue, and are really addicting.
A healthy lunch, potato chips for healthy nuts or vegetables, and chocolate bars for fruit or a healthy smoothie.
Get Lots of Vitamin C
Most people think vitamin C is only good for preventing colds, but vitamin C is the micronutrient superstar.
Yes, it strengthens your immune system, but it does a lot more than that. The building blocks of every cell in your body, and as your body is constantly making new cells, it needs a large amount.
When trying to lose weight, you need to be careful: Vitamin C is your best friend when it comes to reversing or eliminating belly fat.
Vitamin C reduces the stress that your brain perceives. This will also reduce the amount of cortisol that is released into the bloodstream. Cortisol is a stress hormone whose sole purpose is to store belly fat. Less cortisol means less new belly fat stored and more is burned as energy.
Vitamin C is also one of the main components of a friendly little compound called L-carnitine. You can think of L-carnitine as a taxi driver for stored fat. Your body decides that it doesn’t need this fat but has to move it to the liver, where it can be converted back to glucose and burned for energy.
The problem is that vitamin C is a soluble vitamin; Our bodies store only a small amount, and the first few doses are used for cell renewal and the immune system. So you need to have healthy supplies every day.
Get enough and your brain will release less cortisol and signal your body to lose fat. Then the little energetic L-carnitine goes by and takes you with it.
Do this today and reap the benefits as soon as tomorrow.
These five ways to be healthier may seem unrelated, but they all address the most dangerous and pressing health problems we face today: obesity, high blood sugar, smoking, high cholesterol, dehydration, and weakened immune system leading to heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, cancer, and high blood pressure; All of these are among the top ten causes of death in this country.
The good news is that these changes will start having a positive effect on your health tomorrow. You really can’t ask for better results any faster.