10 Simple Tips to Achieve Your Health New Year’s Resolutions – Part I

Day five in the New Year and you are on your way to achieving your resolutions – or are you?  Forty-five percent of Americans usually make New Year’s Resolutions.  However, of those who make New Year’s Resolutions a whopping 88% fail to achieve their resolution.  For those with math challenges that means only 12% of those who make New Year’s Resolutions are successful in achieving their resolution.

Year after year this same group of Americans make the same few standard resolutions like resolving to lose weight, get fit and stay healthy.  Unfortunately, within 7 weeks 40% of those pledging to lose weight and exercise have quit their program and within 12 weeks 70% of those pledging to lose weight and exercise have quit their programs.  If you want to be among the 12% that achieve your weight and exercise goals, follow the first five of my ten tips:

1.  Get A Physical/Checkup From a Healthy Doctor

This year make it a resolution to discontinue your association with any doctor who doesn’t practice good health.  Too be blunt, taking advice from an overweight, non-exercising doctor is an absolute no-no.

When we take advice from those unhealthy physicians it is like having an illiterate high school dropout teach your child how to read, like having a porn star teach your child sex education class and/or having an alcoholic with a suspended driver’s license serve as your child’s driver’s education instructor.  You wouldn’t subject your child to these poor examples as someone qualified to give them advice or teach them in the aforementioned areas so why would you put your health in the hands of a doctor who doesn’t appear to value their own.

2.  Make an Appointment With a Nutritionist

While most believe making an appointment with your family doctor is key to achieving your weight loss and exercise resolution, the most important factor might be learning more about what you put in your mouth.  It would seem to make good sense that your doctor would be the first person to ask about the connection of your diet to your overall health, sadly this is not true.

Asking your family practitioner about nutrition would likely only be a waste of time as approximately just 6 percent of the graduating physicians in the United States have any training in nutrition.[1]  Yes, you read that correctly, only 6 in every 100 doctors have any training in nutrition.

Despite professing to be scholars of well-being and health professionals who have pledged the oath of Hippocrates, the Father of Western Medicine, only a miniscule number of the medical profession understand the importance Hippocrates himself placed on nutrition.  Hippocrates said “Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.”

In other words, Hippocrates believed good health begins with your diet and not pharmaceuticals or surgery.  Ninety-four out of 100 doctors believe otherwise.  You need someone to prescribe some fruits and vegetables for you instead of believing all roads to health begin with another pill or surgical procedure.

3.  Start your day with 32 ounces of water with juice from 1/2 lemon

Do yourself a favor.  Before you reach for that cup of coffee, latte, energy drink or glass of orange juice, start your morning by drinking 32 ounces of warm or room temperature water with freshly squeezed juice from a half lemon.  The benefits are numerous and range from boosting your immune system, balancing your pH (acidic) levels, fighting hunger cravings, aiding digestion by stimulating the digestive tract, flushing out toxins, serving as a natural diuretic, to improving skin – decreasing wrinkles and blemishes.[2]

And you thought only an apple a day can keep the doctor away.

4.  Drink 1/2 your body weight in water

Simple plain old water is all you need.  You don’t need diet soda, coffee, tea, Gatorade, or energy drinks.  Your body just needs water.  The importance of water cannot be understated and should not be underappreciated.

The human body is more than 60 percent water.  Blood is 92 percent water, the brain and muscles are 75 percent water and bones are about 22 percent water.[3]  Now that you know how much of you is composed of water, I hope it resonates for you why it is so important to drink water.  Now let’s consider how much water you should consume.

To determine how much water you should drink, multiply your body weight by 50%.[4]  If you are a 100 pound woman, you would need to drink 50 ounces of water daily.  If you are a 200 pound man, you would need to drink 100 ounces of water daily.  The age-old recommendation of 8 glasses or sixty-four ounces a day is just wrong.

Sixty four ounces would be fourteen more ounces than what the 100 pound woman needs and 36 fewer ounces than what the 200 pound man needs.  If you live in a warm climate and are physically active you might need more water but the average sedentary person would be well served to drink half of their body weight in ounces each and every day.

Consider this: a human can survive for a lifetime without food devoid of nutrition (fast food, sodas and the like), a month or more without eating whole or nutrient rich food (fresh fruits and vegetables), but only a week or so without drinking water.  Drink some water, please!

5.  Eat 13 servings of fruit and vegetables before consuming anything else

Everything we read about health and nutrition tells us that eating adequate amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables is the key.  Given this reality, why not increase your chances of reaching your health goal by eating your daily requirement of fruit and vegetables first.  That’s right, make your diet and exercise planning as simple as possible.  Don’t try to count calories, carbohydrates, fat grams or protein.  Don’t try to weigh food, measure proportions, or count points.  Eat all the fresh fruit and vegetables that you can and KISS your diet good-bye.

Not only will eating your full complement of fruits and vegetables first make it easier to reach your health goal but you will aid in the prevention of other long-term health problems.  There is compelling evidence that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can lower the risk of heart disease and stroke.[5]  Also, numerous studies show a solid connection between eating fruits and vegetables and protection against cancer.[6]  White meat, red meat, cookies, cakes or sodas can’t do what fresh fruits and vegetables can do so for goodness sake eat your fruits and vegetables already.

Ready to know what the next 5 tips are to help you achieve your health New Year’s resolutions? Click here.