6 Benefits To A Healthier Lifestyle

In the previous piece we talked about the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical components of every aspect of our lives and some really basic steps to start to feel better—physically. I want to incorporate that physical feeling good with a little bit of mental feeling good. The minute you start to feel better physically there is a corresponding lift in mental attitude, but it takes commitment.

Your body tells your brain it is feeling better and your brain responds by producing positive neurotransmitters indicating that it feels good. Those endorphins then reinforce how the body feels, which reinforces the brain and so on. It really is a perpetual motion machine until some other stimulus changes the mechanics.

One of my favorite quotes, "When you're through changing, you're through."– Bruce Barton

There is no faster pathway to developing an overall feeling of well being than to raise that physical vibration. And back to my message, self-care=self-love. If you cannot have a caring, loving, sexy relationship with you and your body, how will you show up and attract the partner that you seek?

1. Start with a serious toxicity cleanse. No, I don't mean a colon cleanse or one of those fad juice cleanses. I mean a real cellular cleanse to remove the toxins stored in the tissues of your body. See my website for more on that.
2. Next is to make a commitment to providing your body with nutritionally dense food with less bulk. What I mean here is let's get away from processed foods; the farther away you get—the healthier you will be. Focus on whole organic food. Organic food must be GMO free, but if an organic choice is not available to you, then be sure to seek out non-GMO.
3. Limit your portion of animal protein to no more than 4-6oz and be absolutely be sure it is hormone and antibiotic-free meat and poultry raised on a natural diet or wild caught seafood. There are any number of resources out there to help you with these choices and if you email me I will be thrilled to point you in the right direction.
4. Stay hydrated. Think about this. There is absolutely nothing that happens in the human body that is not catalyzed by water. Remove the water from any moist thing—living or inanimate—and what you get is dried up and wrinkled. Some of us might even be reminded of "very old people". Drink no less than one half your body weight in ounces of water every single day—up to one gallon.
5. Stop starving yourself all day long only to sit down at dinner to a meal that would feed three. Get in the habit of carrying healthy snacks with you and be sure to have a modest snack every hour and a half to two hours. This will keep your blood sugar balanced and eliminate the evening gorging.
6. Science suggests that dinner should be the smallest meal of the day. Lunch should be the second and your largest meal should be breakfast. And there is plenty of science out there indicating that we should flood our bodies and our brains with foods rich in vitamins, minerals, proteins and healthy fats.

Personally, I drink the most nutritionally dense shake on the market today every morning. I add kale, berries, bananas, cacao, spinach, broccoli and whatever might be available in the kitchen. Most days the limits to what I put in there are determined by trying not to overload the blender. That shake combined with some modest exercise truly gets the endorphins flowing and my mind-body connection keeps it going.

Hydrating, regular snacking and mindful eating the rest of the day all contribute to feeling physically better—AND—mentally happy. Taking care of the body pays huge dividends in my overall positive feeling.

I welcome your questions and comments and look forward to continuing our conversation.