Nine Small Lifestyle Tweaks to Boost Your Well-Being All Year Long
By Dr. Adam Olson, MD, ThedaCare Physicians-Darboy
A Biggest Loser-type workout plan, a personal chef, or major surgery to reshape your body are completely unnecessary if you want to restyle your health in 2017. When my patients complain about the state of their bodies, their battles with fatigue, or their inability to kick-start a healthier lifestyle, I suggest these small tweaks for making a big difference:
- Get creative. The energizing act of baking and decorating a cake, arranging artwork on a wall, or building a birdhouse unleashes feelings of contentment and accomplishment. When you become fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus and enjoyment as you create, you’ve achieved flow. Flow is the ultimate experience of harnessing your emotions in the service of creativity and learning. You feel good about yourself and what you can create. Start here.
- Plan your sleep. Don’t leave it to chance. Sleep is a time when our body rests, rejuvenates, and regulates hormone levels that affect many important systems. Set a consistent bedtime, bedtime routine, and waking time. Catching up on sleep on the weekend can actually hurt your efforts, so stick to the schedule every day of the week.
- Practice mindfulness. While dedicated meditation time is a formal mindfulness practice, you can start to practice informal mindfulness, too. Take a shower and be attentive to the rivulets of water on your skin instead of multitasking and making a mental grocery list. Your goal is to learn to live in the present moment, which helps eliminate anxieties over the past or future. It’s good for your mental health.
- Eat Breakfast. No one starts a 5K by staggering over the starting line, so why would you want to start a new day with a half-hearted attempt at nourishing your body and mood? “Breaking the fast” after a long night of sleep alerts your brain and reawakens your body’s systems. Healthy breakfast eaters have a jump start on meeting their daily nutrient needs because breakfast foods often contain micronutrients that are typically lacking in U.S. diets, such as calcium, dietary fiber, iron, folate and vitamin B-12.
- Drink more water. Our bodies are over two-thirds water, and even our bones are composed of more than 20 percent water. Water is needed to transport all nutrients, hormones and even wastes through our bodies, so it’s important to avoid dehydration, an often overlooked aspect of disease. A good rule of thumb is to take your body weight (in pounds) and divide it by two. This is the number of ounces of fluids that you should be drinking each day. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, you need 75 ounces of water or other fluids per day.
- Get immunized. Immunizations teach your body how to produce the right antibodies as soon as a particular virus starts reproducing. New vaccines must be produced constantly because viruses mutate over time and your body needs new instructions for fighting them. An annual flu shot is an excellent idea. Ask your doctor about pneumonia shots and other smart updates to your vaccination record.
- Move a Little More. Weight control, improved health, and a boost in energy all come from exercising. Many people experience less anxiety and depression once they start exercising, they are much less likely to develop diabetes and heart disease, and evidence shows they will actually live longer than those who do not exercise at all. There are very few health conditions that make it unsafe to exercise. Start out with five or 10-minute stints of physical activity and work your way up to 30-minute walks or workouts. The feel-good endorphins you feel after a workout will help you get hooked.
- Plan your plate. Take time to plan healthy and energizing meals and snacks, and you will benefit from more consistent energy levels, better moods, and fewer empty calories that can pack on extra pounds. Protein and whole grains will help your body release energy slowly. Sweets and unhealthy snacks (generally, carbohydrates and fats) tend to sharply raise your blood sugar, only to be followed shortly thereafter by a crash that leaves you hungry and irritable.
- Live a clean life. I tell my patients to think about their pretty face, but don’t keep touching it! Office workers touch their hands to their faces an average of 18 times an hour, or once every three and a half minutes. Bacteria and viruses couldn’t ask for a better pathway from your keyboard, desktop or phone right to into our respiratory and digestive systems. Wipe down your phone and computer mouse at least once a week. Thoroughly wash your hands with soap and warm water. (Be mindful as you do it, then drink a glass of water. Three tips in one!)
If you’re honest, very few of these tips require drastic changes in your lifestyle. But add them together, and you will start to feel a boost to your well-being.
Are you looking for a doctor to help you take small steps to significantly better health? Dr. Adam Olson of ThedaCare Physicians-Darboy is accepting new patients. Call his office directly at 920.358.1900 to schedule an appointment or call ThedaCare On Call at 920. 830.6877 or go to www.thedacare.org and click on “Find a Doctor.”
