Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful, magical, relaxing, fun-filled Christmas and New Year Holiday. Isn’t that what we most of us want from our holidays? That they are lots of fun, and yet relaxing at the same time?
If you indulged greatly, you may be wishing that you had spent more time at the gym instead of sipping eggnog, but who has time during this season? And studies show that the amount of calories available to us between Thanksgiving and Christmas can’t be offset by workouts. You still have to choose wisely what you put on your plate.[i]
Like 75% of Americans, I gained a few pounds over Christmas. But this blog isn’t about weight-it is about health. Just like your butt and biceps get flabby when you don’t work out, your health gets “flabby” when you don’t exercise it.
You know how you feel when you have neglected your health. Over-fed, bloated, tired, crabby, stiff, wooden, depressed, foggy, with difficulty sleeping, mood-swings, and a range symptoms of allergies or illness.
You don’t have to have a buff body to flex your health muscle. And, just like with exercise, you can’t get strong over-night. It takes consistency and dedication to build any kind of muscle. Building health will take some sacrifice. Everything worth pursuing takes sacrifice. Achieving goals always means traveling along a narrow channel and avoiding the distractions on either side.
So, here is my “prescription” for 2015. Embrace health. There has never been more to gain, or more to lose. We now know that mental and emotional health is very influenced by our physical health. You can be sharper, happier, less stressed as well as symptom-free.
It is true that many people from the Baby Boomers and Generation X are going to be living into their 90’s. One of my friends just lost his 94-year old mother. She passed at home, in her sleep. She was on no medication and raised her son on healthy food and supplements.
Television is full of commercials about saving for your retirement years, because the money may run out before your heart gives out. But all the money in the world won’t buy back your health, if your body can’t function. And there are no medications that repair the body at a cellular level. Only organic living food, healthy life-style choices, and personal spirituality can give you a body tough enough to make middle and old age bearable, or even enjoyable.
Life is an Olympic event. Embrace health. Don’t make it a negative- make it a positive. Being your best and feeling your best means demanding for yourself.
Pick just one or two changes at a time, if you have a long road back to health. Drink more water, cook organic food at home more, walk and stretch more, smile more, hug more, breathe more, eat greens more, detox more, eat more healthy fat, sleep more. Health is life. All around us people are selling little bits of non-life in the form of chemicals, toxins and adulterated products that tease the senses, but make them dull over time. And those bits of tasty chemicals will erode our health, leaving us starved of the vitality that keeps a body strong and energetic.
Fresh, real, and alive food is the best medicine you can give yourself, and leads to the best quality of life. Choose a way to flex your health muscle every day. And let 2015 be the year that, despite being a year older, you became healthier and happier. That is my fondest wish for you.
[i] http://greatist.com/health/holiday-weight-gain-study-120513