1. Make Health a priority this year! This is your year to start living life to the healthiest. Your mind and body will thank you!
2. Realize that a healthy lifestyle includes: a healthy diet that is sustainable (no crash diets), physical activity, a healthy sleep pattern, and stress management techniques.
3. Understand that when it comes to weight loss and optimal health, Nutrition is number one! We truly are what we eat – your body uses the food you consume to build cells. The better your nutrition, the better your body functions from head to toe.
4. Don’t fall for quick fixes: lasers, wraps and weight loss potions are good at one thing: making money, the results will fade as quickly as they appear. And when you stop wasting your money, you’ll be back to square one. Learning about a Healthy Lifestyle lasts a lifetime!
5. Watch out for Fad Diets: People love to hear good things about their bad habits, and authors know this strategy sells books. Most of these diets are not backed by evidence, many of them are dangerous for your health! In response to the recent high-fat fad diets, the American Heart Association released a statement on the subject. See this article: Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association for more information.
6. Look for licensed health care professionals with credentials that align with their services. Licensure in health care is necessary to ensure that professionals have a degree of competency to ensure public health and safety are protected.
7. Ask for the evidence. Good reviews and customer testimonials are nice, but scientific evidence is what you should require when it comes to your health. Look for services and practices that take insurance. If insurance won’t pay for the service, chances are it is not evidence-based health care. Some practices just choose not to accept insurance as a business decision.
8. Replace unhealthy habits with healthy ones. Take a moment to identify your unhealthy habits and think of a healthy replacement, or ask for advice with this from a professional.
9. Find support: Unless you are super-self-motivated, to succeed, you may require a professional to lean on. Supervised diets are more successful and sustained.
10. Recognize cravings for what they are, and let them go. Seek out healthy replacements, there are endless healthier versions of junk food in natural food stores.
If you or a loved one is considering Lifestyle Change this year, we would love to help! We specialize in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention through Lifestyle Medicine. The first step is a quick, convenient Health Risk Assessment which gives us a view of your health inside and out. Contact us today!