Adopting simple daily habits is how to stay healthy! Make your well-being a priority by committing to a few manageable practices. When you listen to what your body has to say and love yourself enough to set boundaries that respect your need to rest and care for your mind, body, and spirit, your life will transform!
Recently, I wrote about ancestral healing and how the energy of the past may affect your life. The habits we adopt, usually stem from our upbringing. For me, this means that any recipe that calls for two cloves of garlic gets a minimum of five, and it takes Bruce Lee discipline to have one piece of cake instead of three. (Unfortunately, the garlic does not cancel out the cake.) If you want to know how to stay healthy, start with an honest look at your habits and decide what you want to change.
Many preventative methods focus on finding illness and disease. When you seek imperfection, you find it. You’ve heard the cliche, “It’s easy to spot a yellow car if you are always thinking of one.” So what if, with every good habit you adopt, you seek evidence of its benefit? Imagine every time you drank a glass of water, you thought about how happy and healthy your organs were. Maybe you spend five minutes meditating and think, “My brain is getting sharper!” I suspect when you flip the script you are the force that supports your good health.
The other day, a woman attending one of my classes asked what I was working on for my next blog. I told her I’d just started it, but something like 30 simple habits for how to stay healthy. She said, “Thirty!! How about three or five!” Okay, so thirty is too many. Eighteen is the least I can do. Pick and choose an area, set small achievable goals, and know that even noticing your habits facilitates change. Baby steps!
1. Food as Medicine
Healthy, balanced eating is essential to maintaining good health. The foods you eat may be protective, healing or nourishing your cells, or feeding cellular discord. Including superfoods in your daily diet is a nutritional approach that offers a solid base for your wellness objectives and a key component for how to stay healthy. These nutrient-dense foods have high levels of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Examples include Dark leafy greens, legumes, berries, tomatoes, and neuroprotective cruciferous vegetables.
Many major diseases that plague us—including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, depression, and Alzheimer’s—have been linked to chronic inflammation.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/foods-that-fight-inflammation
Additionally, consider including foods daily that decrease inflammation while also avoiding those that contribute to it. Steer clear of sugary foods, processed meats, refined grains, and processed snacks. Managing your inflammatory responses has the potential to prevent many chronic diseases. Fresh ginger is an anti-inflammatory and medicinal treatment for many health ailments. Garlic, another powerful anti-inflammatory, may be used for developing a more robust immune system. Including more fresh chopped garlic in your diet is an excellent preventative.
2. Stay Hydrated
There are many notable benefits of proper hydration. In particular it aids your digestion, and flushes impurities from your system.
Drinking enough water each day is crucial for many reasons: to regulate body temperature, keep joints lubricated, prevent infections, deliver nutrients to cells, and keep organs functioning properly. Being well-hydrated also improves sleep quality, cognition, and mood.
Harvard Edu
Water is your best means to maintain proper hydration. However, if you don’t enjoy drinking water without additives, consider fruit-infused water and unsweetened teas. There are a host of health benefits associated with certain types of teas and fruit-infused water has the potential to offer a daily allowance of vitamins. Citrus-infused water offers a good source of vitamin C and fresh ginger tea is anti-inflammatory and detoxifying.
3. Prioritize Sleep!
Quality sleep is critical to keep your hormones in check. Patterns of disruptive sleep cause imbalances in the hormones that are key to quality sleep. Additionally, the stress hormone cortisol released in response to stress, when chronically heightened, disrupts other hormones connected to sleep. The interconnection between stress, hormones, and sleep is cyclic. Good sleep hygiene is vitally important to achieve quality sleep, and quality sleep is necessary to maintain a healthy hormonal balance.
Adequate rest is critical to reduce stress hormones that impair memory and cognition, lead to abdominal fat, and tax your nervous system. Maintaining a healthy sleep schedule averts the negative effects from falling into a sleep debt.
4. Spend Time Outdoors and Close to Nature
Spending time outdoors benefits your body, mind, and spirit! For your body, time outdoors will increase vitamin D levels, improve sleep, and potentially strengthen your immune system. Mental health is often quickly improved by even short bouts of time outdoors and in nature. Some suggest that extra oxygenation alone increases serotonin levels. Slow down, get outside, breathe deeply, and let the sun shine upon your face. This simple act will bring you back to yourself and allow for body awareness and a mindful grounding apart from your thoughts.
When I think of how to stay healthy, getting outside and in nature covers many bases. There are few better ways to reset your energy, promote mental clarity, and remind you of your connection to the greater world. People generally spend so much time in artificial environments, living inside their heads, that they can lose sight of what is valuable. Pausing in this way allows for a realignment of sorts to bring you back to a place of remembering forgotten truths.
5. Water Rituals ~ Spiritual Hygiene
I use this term to refer to any water-related activity that may “clear your energy” and is cathartic, grounding, or healing. Water rituals are an essential tool for how to stay healthy energetically! They are my daily go-to for energetic clearing and spiritual hygiene. Bathing, showering, soaking, and swimming do more than physically clean your body and have the potential to remove vibrational energy accumulated throughout your day from people and places, thoughts, and emotions.
Practice water rituals intentionally for maximal benefit. When I bathe or shower, I intend to clear myself of anything that is not a match with my highest self. These practices fine-tune your awareness of your energy so that you are better able to know the energetic impact of outside influences. Once you regularly practice clearing your energy in this way, you’ll not want to skip a day!
6. Practice Gratitude
It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
Germany Kent
Shift to an ABUNDANCE MINDSET by recognizing and appreciating all you already have. It’s a challenging shift to make while having experienced a lack of health, connection, or financial prosperity. Being goal or future-focused takes us away from the gifts of a given moment. A great way to start and end each day is to reflect on gratitude. Begin small, remembering that having hot running water and a bed to sleep are comforts many people across the globe never experience.
Practicing gratitude is a great stress reliever and puts perspective on many of the worries and fears we entertain. As you appreciate all that works for you, it will feed new beliefs that confirm all that you have for health, prosperity, and inner wealth. Read more: “Practice Gratitude For Wellness 7 Solid Tips”
7. Stretch and Move Your Body With Presence
So why not say exercise?! We all know exercise is good for your major organs. It strengthens your bones and muscles, including your brain, and can help reduce the risk of disease. Exercise has become outcome-oriented and marketed for profit in a way that steers people away from accepting and appreciating their bodies. Deciding to include movement and stretching daily as a means for how to stay healthy, opens up possibilities that honor the natural flow of your energy and promote mindfulness.
If you love the focused workout you get at the gym, then go there. But if you don’t, know that the more you mindfully DO the stuff of living: raking the leaves, hauling laundry, moving furniture, or carrying the groceries, the more you’ll come to appreciate how well your body shows up for you. Mindfully moving your body has the potential to promote better body mechanics and let you know what areas may need specific attention.
8. Use Energy Tools For Centering, Grounding, and Vibrational Clearing
Listen to Binaural Beats, and Use Prayer, Meditation, or Breathwork
Adopting spiritual hygiene habits helps you heal at a vibrational level. When you use what I call energy tools, you become more centered, grounded, and clear the energetic debris that clouds your connection to your higher vibrational source energy.
What you want is already here, in the unified field of pure potential. Everything you need to fulfill your greatest desire is already part of your being. But it can’t come out until you align with it, let go of the obstructions to it, and raise your vibration to the level at which it already exists.
Derek Rydall
While the scientific evidence claims that binaural beats have only “… a modest, positive effect on memory, attention, pain perception, and relaxation.” I have personally benefited in all those areas and listen to them throughout the day. Listening to them is particularly helpful in improving focus, realigning towards positivity and calmness, as well as, sleep. My once anxious and shy cat will lie on my phone if a soundtrack is playing. He benefits as well! Binaural beats may be listened to on Pandora or Apple Music.
9. Meal Planning and Supplements
There is no doubt that meal planning goes a long way to promote less stressful routines and healthier eating while also helping you manage your food dollar better. When I taught Family Lifeskills classes, participants learned to identify healthy, economical recipes they knew their family would eat. They then created a meal plan for the week that included lunches and breakfast. Once this was complete, they checked off the ingredients they needed from the store on their pre-printed shopping list organized by section. You will thank yourself for implementing any version of this!
If your eating habits don’t meet your nutritional needs for vitamin D and C or Zinc, consider taking a supplement. When you feel your immunity is particularly vulnerable, you may want to include immunity-boosting supplements like elderberry syrup and spirulina powder.
10. Set Healthy Boundaries
Creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and consideration for boundaries can lead you to the path of personal happiness.
Nancy B. Urbach
To set healthy boundaries, learn where and with whom your energy is recharged or drained. With this knowledge, you’ll have a better sense of when and where your boundaries need strengthening. Respect yourself enough to set the physical and energetic boundaries necessary to maintain good health. With practice healthy boundary setting comes easily and creates more authentic connections. Disconnect or at least dramatically limit time with dysfunctional family members, those who are overly critical or consistently take energy without reciprocation. Stop accepting and excusing toxic behaviors, overcommitting your time, and arguing with people.
11. Self-Discovery
Make being yourself and knowing yourself a lifelong practice. If you are a chronic people pleaser or struggle with setting reasonable boundaries then you are likely disconnected from your needs and wants. Discover what is true (for you) based on values, natural energy flows, likes, and dislikes. You are a forever evolving being, so be sure to upgrade your self-knowledge so it is compatible with your growth and decision-making. Doing this will help you align with your inner compass.
“At the center of your being
Lao Tzu
you have the answer;
you know who you are
and you know what you want.”
Learn to know what is true for you based on your inner sensations. Your inner compass is always giving you “information”. If you stay out of your head and ground, it will help you to amp up your intuition based on how you feel. Responding from here will come from this self-knowledge and not reactivity.
12. Dismantle Beliefs
You can intellectually know what you want and have a plan for achieving certain ends; however, the underlying energy of your beliefs is what ultimately aligns you with what you experience. When you find yourself thinking or saying words like ‘always’ or ‘never’ drop into yourself to uncover the limiting belief. Here is where you’ll come to discover the energy that is holding you back. Practice shifting the stories that stem from limiting beliefs so they are in alignment with what you desire.
Be sure to extend self-forgiveness when old wiring prevents you from flipping the script! The universe IS kind and patient, and if you want to know how to stay healthy, you’ll need to believe it to be so.
Break out of the cage of your own limiting beliefs. Recognize that many of your beliefs, are ancestrally inherited, outdated and from a different time. A time when few were questioning ‘the rules’. Start by making small upgrades to your beliefs. When you allow beliefs that make you feel bad fall away, you makes space for higher truths. You are enough. You are worthy. You are whole. You are loved. You are capable. Let no person, situation, or perceived error convince you otherwise.
13. Prioritize Authentic Connections
Authentic connection is soul-satisfying. The desire for it may be felt, as an intangible unmet need just under the surface of your awareness. Paradoxically, the greater the unmet need, the more self-protection is put in place that prevents it. Authentic connection with others feels like being seen, heard, and accepted. To achieve this, you must remove the protective mask.
Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable.
Be honest and transparent anyway.
Mother Theresa
To prioritize this kind of connection, you’ll need to set boundaries with those people and situations that are ‘inauthentic’. Too much time in unhealed environments or around people who project their woundedness doesn’t promote healthy authentic connection. It can keep you stuck and make you lose sight of those higher truths about who and what you are. For more on that read: Live Authentically and Develop Inner Wealth. On the flip side of this, authentic connection is a life-enriching gift we can give each other.
These authentic connections begin within ourselves. The more loving and accepting you are of yourself, the more you attract others who will energetically connect to you in this way. If you struggle with this, simplify. Connect with the natural world, “see” familiar strangers, commune with your higher self and divine helpers, and snuggle your cat.
Authentic connection is a life-enriching gift we can give ourselves and each other.
14. Environmental Clearing and Intending
Cleaning, reorganizing, purging items, and deliberately setting up your primary environments with love and attention will be a catalyst for positive change! The physical environments in which we live and work directly affect our overall well-being. Neglected and cluttered non-intentional environments are burdensome physically, mentally, and spiritually. The thing is, our inner world is always having a direct effect on the outer and vice versa.
You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are full of yesterday’s clutter.
Louise Smith
Creating a space intentionally aligns us energetically with those intentions. If you’re interested in supportive services to assist you with creating a living environment that supports intentional living, please visit me here: Estelle Bonaceto. For further reading, check out: 10 Tips For How to Declutter Your Home When You Are Overwhelmed.
15. Promote Brain Health / Engage Your Creative Mind
Neuroplasticity is our brain’s ability to change and adapt. Many of the things we do are already mapped out, neurologically, and therefore, the muscle of the brain gets lax. Sometimes cell death occurs from trauma (physically, emotionally, or chemically induced or from natural aging). Learn new things to create neural connections and give your brain a workout! Spend time each day engaging your creative mind to promote brain health.
Consider including one or more of these healthy brain activities daily:
- Learn a language
- Read poetry
- Revisit or begin a hobby or craft. Focus more on the process and less on the outcome
- Write, journal, or keep a dream diary
- Learn an instrument
- Create! Let yourself get inspired. Cook, build, arrange, or bake! Using your creative energy is how to stay healthy in a purposeful way. Engage your creative mind.
16. Take Care of Your Teeth!
Without a doubt, dental health is connected to your overall health. Some time ago, the ADA “recommended” the 2/2 rule. Essentially, this means brushing your teeth for two minutes, twice daily. An electric toothbrush does the job efficiently. If you aren’t using one, try it and, you’ll notice a difference in how clean your teeth feel. What I discovered is you can’t buy one anymore without the timer. I suspect you can clean your teeth for an adequate amount of time without the audio prompts, but the dental police want to make sure you follow the rule 😉
Other things to consider:
- Flossing.Overachievers floss before each brush, some floss in the shower, and some people hate to floss and won’t until their teeth or gums hurt. Many people fall in the middle, flossing after eating certain foods like meat, think they have bad breath, or when they find the floss. If you make flossing a regular practice, you won’t need extra dental visits.
- Oil pulling is an effective natural way to promote good oral health. My oral health is always better when I do it and I use coconut oil. For more on this visit: What is Oil Pulling?
- Baking Soda may be used to whiten your teeth, combat bacteria, and reduce plaque. It’s how I remove coffee stains from my teeth. For more on this visit: Can Baking Soda Improve Your Oral Health?
- If you can’t brush your teeth, wipe them off and rinse with water. A little cleaning is better than none, especially after sugary foods and sugary beverages (including alcohol) and definitely before you sleep.
- By drinking water throughout the day and eating calcium-rich foods, you can remineralize enamel weakened teeth. Be sure to brush after drinking acidic drinks, including healthy ones like lemon water.
17. Manage Your Time and Be Mindful of Your Focus
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
Michael Altshuler
Create a short list of daily activities/tasks you wish to commit to that serve your overall health, goals, and well-being.
To do this well, consider the following:
- Prioritize activities and tasks that are most aligned with your values. This means you need to know what you honestly value. If eating healthy meals is something you value, make a plan for it!
- Recognize when hyper-focusing prevents you from balancing other life areas. Set time limits on activities you are likely to ‘overdo’.
- Make your energetic investments intentional! Catch yourself whenever you give energetic attention to anything unwanted. Shift your attention to desired actions and outcomes. Allow time to daydream, but be sure those energetic investments work for you and not against you.
- Healthy distraction can be exactly what you need to get back on track. Watching a short comedy, or doing a little puttering reduces stress and can sharpen your mind or ignite creative energy by giving your brain a break.
- Break down larger ‘tasks’, keep a list that includes smaller achievable goals.
- If you’re forcing an activity that is a mismatch for your energy, stop and do something else.
- Be flexible. If work runs late and your energy wanes, be kind enough to yourself to alter your plan.
When you make the best use of your natural energy rhythms you’ll be more productive. This requires that you do the self-discovery necessary to know what those are. If you’ve been forcing activity then you may not know when your creative energy flows, when you naturally need to rest, and recharge, or when to make the best use of your sharper, creative energies.
18. Shift Away From Harmful “Consumption”
The key to staying healthy lies not only in what you do but in what you don’t do.
By consumption, I’m not just talking about what you eat and drink but also about your exposure to substances, activities, and environments that are detrimental to your health. The less harmful consumption you engage in, the less tolerant you are of people and environments that are energetically polluting. Places with politically charged news streams or gossip can feel as poisoning as a room filled with diesel exhaust.
Some consumption falls into the “guilty pleasures” category, such as using social media, shopping, or playing video games. Many of these activities provide temporary relaxation, a brain break, and in moderation, are a healthy distraction. Moderation, not overconsumption, is the difference between distraction as healthy versus avoidant, addictive, and toxic. Even a good thing overdone can be harmful. When distraction becomes the main event, it’s a sure sign that habits and health are out of balance. Reflecting on patterns helps you to become more aware of the situations, people, and feelings that you wish to escape. Knowing this may prompt shifts to a more balanced lifestyle.
Some consumption is flat-out toxic. You benefit tremendously from avoiding these things entirely. Much of this harmful consumption happens under our awareness. Microplastics and forever chemicals are in our drinking water, food packaging, cosmetics, and even our toilet paper. For more insights, see: “A Review of Human Exposure to Microplastics…” and “What are PFAS chemicals?”
Minimizing or eliminating harmful habits is as necessary for how to stay healthy as the positive habits you adopt. The more you moderate and eliminate harmful consumption, the greater your overall wellness will be. Read more: “My Secret Sugar Addiction”.
Consider adopting some of these habits for how to stay healthy to experience greater balance.
There’s a lot here, I know. Hey, I kept it to 18 and not 30! That was probably more than you need to know about oral care 🙂 Please visit my Coaching Services page for more information or contact me to book an appointment for support with developing a healthy lifestyle and exploring alternatives for empowered wellness.
Shift away from illness care and treat yourself better! Remember, YOU are the expert and authority around your wellness choices.
Wow! Another great installment on health and wellness.
Eighteen seems like a lot, but you don’t have to do them all at once. I can personally vouch for for some of these. For me, adopting better habits required small steps. Tiny changes can sometimes have a rippling effect. Two of these habits that I’ve found to have the greatest impact for me are sleep and diet.
I’m not a health nut. Candy is my favorite! I’m not going to quit pie or cake, either. However, I discovered that making very small changes in consumption had a profound effect on my physical and mental health. Removing half and half from my coffee, alone reduced my total cholesterol enough to get from elevated to normal. Abstaining, from diet drinks and sugary drinks, like soda, had an impact on my nervous system that caused me to be better able to cope with anxiety and concentration. These were small things that had a greater impact on my overall health that I might have imagined. Better food for fuel soon followed. I’m still not a health nut. I just chose to make reasonable changes that were right for me.
I don’t know if I can recommend loudly enough to change whatever it takes to get better sleep. Sometimes it’s diet or environment, but sometimes it’s habit. Personally, I failed to recognize that a chaotic childhood caused me to develop faulty sleeping habits. These are developmental habits that can be unlearned. Getting good rest can make all the difference in the world.
I’d like to tank the author again, for taking the time to put these solutions together. I’m on track to make other small changes to see where they lead.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my blog. You offered great examples of how small changes can significantly improve wellness. I’m happy to hear that improvements to your diet has made noticeable positive differences and put you on track for adopting additional healthy habits. Nice job!