3 Ways to Start Being Healthy

Are there 3 easy steps to improve your health?

I want to talk about three key things that are most important when you’re either regaining or retaining your good health.

These are not things you’ve never heard of before, for sure.

You have heard of them, but the question is, do you DO them?

How do you KEEP doing them when life gets busy?

Lastly, how do you make them EASY to do so you won’t give up?

Drink Water

The first one is drinking nice clean water. Is your response, “Oh, I hate water?.” Okay, let’s find a way that you don’t hate it.

Maybe your response was: “I forget”, or “I’m not thirsty.” I have solutions.

Tips and tricks for flavor

Let’s first address the taste, or shall I say the lack of taste, of water. Try adding some healthy things to jazz it up:

Maybe you squeeze some lemon or lime in it.

Try adding some cucumber slices or berries or orange slices.

A few drops of liquid Stevia can provide a little sweet. Sweetleaf stevia comes in about 5 different flavors; try some.

Maybe you like carbonated instead of plain water. If you really enjoy carbonated better and you know you’ll drink it, consider investing in a soda stream. My kids got me one for Christmas and I’m impressed how well it works. The carbonation really holds all day.

How to handle a lack of thirst

Like any good habit you’re developing, at first, it seems unnatural. Drinking water is the same way. But stick with it and I guarantee it will get easier.

The goal is to try to drink eight glasses every single day – 64 oz, or about 2 liters. Don’t consume more than 1 glass per hour. You want to spread the water consumption throughout the day to garner its optimal health benefits. If you’re worried about having to use the restroom at night, it’s fine to stop your water consumption an hour or two before bed.

I guarantee you that if you increase your water consumption for just a couple of weeks, you’ll start to miss it and crave it. This is exactly the goal we’re trying to achieve; you with a good water habit.

Benefits?

What does all that water do for you?

Most Americans are dehydrated and that’s unhealthy. It’s estimated that we need those 8 glasses of water to simply replace what we lose each day.

• Water helps to transport and convert nutrients into a usable form in your cells.
• Water also helps remove toxins from your body.
• Getting enough water in your diet will help with weight loss
• Hydration increases your energy level.

Make a one-month commitment

So the 3 points I’m talking about here require a 1 month from you. If you do great today, but tomorrow you have a bad day, the following day you’re right back at it. Don’t let one bad day ruin the whole thing. Promise yourself that you won’t give up – it’s so worth it.

So number one is water consumption, what’s number two?

Eat vegetables and fruit

Nine servings of fruits and vegetables.  Shoot for a minimum of seven, but try to go for nine.

What’s a serving? If it’s cut fruit or solid vegetables that are not leafy, a serving is half a cup. e.g. half a cup of broccoli, half a cup of cantaloupe, this is a serving.

If you’re talking about leafy vegetables like kale, or spinach, or lettuce, then a full cup is a serving.

It’s pretty easy to know what a serving is but you can also look it up online to get an idea.

Tricks to get your fruit and vegetable servings each day

Starting your morning with a smoothie is a great way to easily get about 4 servings.  I have a lot of recipes on this site, RootCauseMedical.com to give you some inspiration.

A really healthy morning smoothie gives you a nice jump on your daily goal of nine servings. If you get zero servings of fruits and vegetables in the morning, it makes it a lot more difficult to achieve the nine.

So think about a smoothie in the morning or a smoothie as a snack, mid-afternoon. That’s another option as well.

When dividing up the 9 servings, try to make it a little heavier on the veggies, five or six servings, and then three to four servings of fruit.

Benefits?

The known benefits of fruits and vegetables are almost endless:

• filled with healthy fiber
• packed with antioxidants
• loaded with vitamins, minerals, good protein, fat and complex carbohydrates
• adequate servings of vegetables and fruits are protective against degenerative disease

All right, so what’s the third one?

Exercise

If you like to exercise, this is an easy one; you already enjoy it making it easy to maintain.

If you hate to exercise, this is harder. What type of exercise should you do? Anything you’ll actually do works great. If you’ll do it, that’s your answer.

Perhaps it’s a class a couple of days a week, walking on most other days and a tennis game with a friend on the weekend.

How much?

We’re shooting for about 45 minutes per day. You could break that up in a 20 and 25 minute time frames if you were taking a walk or something like that.

And the good news is that it doesn’t have to be high-intensity. As a matter of fact, high-intensity has some negatives associated with it. We want you huffing and puffing a little bit, the definition of moderate exercise but you don’t need to be in a full run for 45 minutes.

How often?

Consistency is the key to achieve exercise’s benefits. Exercising as many days of the week as possible is very important according to the most recent research.

You can take one day off but try not to make it two because two might turn into three or four. The goal is to exercise as many days of the week as you can.

Benefits?

There’s been a lot of studies that have come out about exercise recently, particularly on its benefit to your brain, but it’s well known that exercise has tremendous benefits to your overall health and well-being.

Specifically, exercise is known to:

• Raise your mood
• Assist weight loss
• Build strong muscles and bone
• Increase your energy levels
• Lessen your risk of chronic degenerative diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer
• Boosts brain health and memory

Summary

What are our 3 things to regain and retain good health?

1.Eight glasses of water,

2.Nine servings of fruits and vegetables, and

3.Exercising 45 minutes every day or as many days of the week as you possibly can,

Let me know how you do!

Are you ready to commit to this for one month? That’s excellent.

Let me know how you feel after the month.

How’s your health?

• Are you concerned about your health?
• Do you want to get healthier but feel overwhelmed?

We can help.

Contact us for a Free Consultation – Call (408) 733-0400.

If you are not local to us you can still receive help; our Destination Clinic treats patients from across the country and internationally.

We help the world’s busiest people regain, retain, and reclaim their health, energy, and resilience.

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