7 Habits Of Healthy Living

Do you want to supercharge your health, well-being, and level of success? As you go about the process of optimizing your health and fitness level, it’s important not to forget to look at the big picture. What else could you be doing to take this process one step further?  In order to reach your full potential as a human being, you need to be constantly seeking growth. Now, for those of you out there who are very motivated and determined to be all that you can be, you are likely searching for methods to manage this growth.  When possible, it’s important to do so in a manner that is backed by science and has been proven amongst some of the most successful people in the world. After all, if it’s worked for them, it should work for you. Today I want to share with you seven healthy living habits of successful people. These are 7 healthy living habits they all have in common and do on a regular basis in effort to become self-actualized and achieve the pinnacle of health and well-being. My goal with this is to prepare you so that no matter what life throws your way, you know exactly what you need to do. When you begin integrating these seven healthy living habits into your own life, you’ll quickly note changes taking place. This is the power of habit. You’ll feel more in control. You’ll feel calm and more collected with your thoughts. You’ll start to feel like you are discovering your real purpose for being on this earth. And, most importantly, you’ll reach a level of happiness that you may not have known before.  It’s remarkable what a few key habits can do for you life, so please don’t take these lightly. I like to call these good health habits my pyramid of AWESOME.  As you are about to see, each habit starts with the letter that forms the word awesome, making it easy to remember exactly what you need to do. Let's dive into the 7 habits of healthy living : [caption id="attachment_150302212328" align="aligncenter" width="790"] In order live you need to breathe. And to breathe, need air. Take a minute out of your day to breathe in some fresh air[/caption]  

Healthy Habit #1: Air

When you stop and think about what you truly need to sustain life, air comes out on top.  Much of the focus of health is placed upon the foods you are eating on a daily basis as well as what you’re drinking. And, that’s great. Make no mistake about it, you do need to optimize both of these in order to achieve optimal functioning.  But, what comes before food and water? You can go weeks without food. If you were forced into a famine right now and didn’t receive any food at all, your body would have more than enough body fat for you to continue living for three or more weeks depending on your overall body fat level right now. With hydration, you won’t last quite as long.  Without water, you might live for up to one week, depending on the environmental conditions you were facing.  If in a heated environment, you’ll be faced with far less time. You do need a regular intake of water to stay alive. But air? Air is needed on a minute by minute basis.  Most people wouldn’t last more than a few minutes without a steady supply of oxygen, so in terms of our hierarchy of needs, air is at the very top. Most people are not getting adequate oxygen into their body on a day to day basis. They’re sitting hunched over.  Their breathing is unregulated, and they may be putting themselves in environments that don’t contain a proper level of oxygen to carbon dioxide ratio. The result of this? Fatigue.  Dizziness. Mental sluggishness.  Overall, you simply don’t feel all that well.  And this happens on an everyday basis. Until you take control over your breathing patterns, making sure to regulate how you are taking in oxygen, you’ll never truly realize what ‘good health’ actually is. This is why performing regular breathing exercises such as my 10-10-10 protocol that I shared with you in another lesson is so critical. The right breathing exercises can energize the body, improve your mental focus and concentration, while also helping to eliminate toxins from your body. Breathing can be that powerful. Do not underestimate the power of a good breath. Implement it today! Want to get started?  Stop and focus on your breathing right now. Is it shallow? How many counts are you breathing in?  Breathing out? Start regulating that. Breathe in to a count of five, feeling the oxygen flood your lungs.  Hold each breath for a count of 5, and now, breathe out as forcefully as possible over a 3-4 count. Repeat this process 5 times and watch how much better you feel. [caption id="attachment_150302212330" align="aligncenter" width="790"] When it comes to maintaining proper hydration levels, most of us fall short. Up to 95% of our population is currently in a state of chronic dehydration.[/caption]  

Healthy Habit #2: Water

Water is another life driving factor.  We cannot live very long without a regular supply of fresh water. When it comes to maintaining proper hydration levels, most of us fall short. Up to 95% of our population is currently in a state of chronic dehydration.  When you stop and think about what the average person drinks in a day, you’ll come to find it looks something like this:

•      A few cups of coffee upon waking
•      A soda (or diet soda) at lunch
•      A beer or glass of wine at dinner

There might be one or two cups of water added in between, but that about sums up the average person’s day. Not only is this not enough fluid coming into your body but these are all dehydrating substances. Meaning, they actually put you into a worse situation than when you started. What are the impacts of dehydration?

•      Decreased physical performance
•      Lower mental focus
•      Decreased blood pressure/dizziness
•      Headaches
•      Dry mouth
•      Feeling tired

Dehydration will impact how you feel every second of the day.  And when it comes to your physical performance, the effects are pronounced. Research published in the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology noted that even at modest levels of dehydration at 2%, test subjects noted decreased exercise performance and endurance levels. If you want to perform and feel your best, water is key. To help ensure you stay hydrated, keep a bottle of water with you all day long. Aim to drink 3-6 liters of water each and every day.  If you want to make this easy, purchase 6, one liter bottles and label them one thru six. Now, be sure that you get to the end of that sixth bottle by the time you got to bed at night. And remember, this is plain H2O we are talking about here.  Not some fancy sports drink or flavor infused water.  You want the natural stuff that your body is made up of. [caption id="attachment_150302212335" align="aligncenter" width="790"] Try and find at least 15 minutes a day to get some exercise, even if it's something as simple as walking[/caption]  

Healthy Habit #3: Exercise

When I say the word ‘exercise’ what comes to mind?  Do you immediately get a sense of angst? Do you start to groan thinking of what you’ll have to do? Exercise is something that most people associate with pain and discomfort – and something they wish they could avoid. It’s time to change that. First, realize that exercise does not have to be done at an incredibly intense pace or cause you any sort of discomfort. While sure, there are great benefits from doing high intensity exercise and if you want to really take control over fat burning, I would strongly recommend you experiment with various forms of this sort of exercise, it doesn’t have to be this way. Exercise can be as simple as walking to your local mail box to get the mail.  Or, it could be going for a bike ride with your son or daughter. Exercise is essentially movement against gravity.  Anything that accomplishes this can be referred to as exercise. To put into perspective how extremely important this is, think about what happens if you find yourself ill in a hospital bed or if you break a leg and have to be put into a cast for a period of time. What happens? Your muscles slowly begin to waste away.  You start losing body weight.  And, after an extended period of time, your organs will start shutting down. This is due to lack of exercise.  Movement helps signal to the cells in the body that they need to maintain themselves.  That they need to keep working and sustaining life. Exercise is movement. That’s the message you need to get into your mind.  Without movement, there is no life. What are the benefits to exercise?  Too many to list.  A few of the big ones include:

•      Improved heart health and cardiac output
•      Increased circulation
•      Enhanced lung strength
•      Improved bone density
•      Increased muscular strength
•      Lower stress levels
•      Improved mental focus
•      Increased flexibility
•      Improved immune system function
•      Enhanced insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control

….and this is really just the tip of the iceberg.  Exercise offers such a wide array of benefits that you simply cannot afford to not do it. So lace up those shoes and get moving. Implement it today! Don’t think that you need to dive into some fancy workout program to start seeing benefits. Think simple! Look at your daily agenda and try and find something you can do each day to move for at least 15 minutes. This could be cleaning your house, walking to the corner store, doing a quick circuit training, or taking a brisk jog before work. Do whatever gives you pleasure and try and vary it each day. This will keep exercise interesting and get you more excited about fitness.

Healthy Habit #4: Sunlight

Now, you might be wondering what sunlight has to do with your overall well-being.  How can the sun help you become an optimized person? Remember, we live in the solar system and every single thing that you see or touch right now is simply vibrational energy.  When you look at someone who is always down and depressed, you tend to see them as dark. In contrast, when looking at someone who is full of energy, happy, and upbeat, you tend to see them as bright – almost as if they radiate energy. By learning to harness the power of sunlight, you can bring more of that energy into your life. Sunlight is also important because it helps your body synthesize vitamin D, often called the ‘sunshine vitamin’. You won’t find this particular vitamin very often in the foods you eat on a day to day basis, so unless you supplement, sunshine is your only source. Getting enough vitamin D is also critical to your overall well-being. It can:

•      Improve your levels of muscular power
•      Lower your risk factor for injury
•      Improve natural testosterone levels in the body
•      Help combat infertility
•      Improve lean body composition
•      Strengthen your bones

Vitamin D is not a ‘sexy’ supplement like some of the others on the market are, but make no mistake about it, without it, you will feel the negative consequences. Implement it today! Strive to get at least 15 minutes of natural sunlight per day, preferably in the morning when you wake up. Open up those blinds in your room and let the natural sunlight stream in.  This will help to naturally wake up the body, ensuring you feel your best as your day gets going. [embed]https://youtu.be/gVbKpaTZimE[/embed]

Healthy Habit #5:  Optimizers

Now we come to my favorite topic, optimizers. Optimizers are basically anything that is going to help ensure that the cells in your body are working in top working order. If you don’t have these optimizers, you’ll start experiencing low energy, fatigue, inability to concentrate, aches, pains, and eventually, disease and degeneration. Now, we can’t stop the hands of time, but if you are taking in the right quality and quantity of optimizers, you can certainly help slow down the aging process while lowering your risk of disease. These optimizers come in many shapes and sizes, which we will be going over in a future lesson. For now though, just remember that every cell in your body has unique needs and if those needs are not being addressed, you are going to feel the ramifications of it.

Healthy Habit #6: Beliefs and Attitudes

What’s one of the biggest factors dictating how you live your life? Your beliefs and attitudes. here are so many great books out there about beliefs and attitudes, one of my favorite being the Biology of Beliefs. No matter where you happen to be – if you feel as though this is your last hope and that your life just won’t go as you want it to, the good news is that you can change your future all by changing your beliefs. Many of us have unconscious or conscious beliefs – basically things that we think about ourselves that prevent us from becoming all that we want to be. These beliefs may come out in the form of negative self-talk.  Or, they may come out by actually limiting us, preventing us from taking action on the things that we want to do. Until you uncover these beliefs and start changing the way you view yourself and your life, things just aren’t going to change. Implement it today! Make an effort to start becoming more consciously aware of the beliefs you have about yourself on a day to day basis. Tune into your self talk. What self-statements are you making to yourself on a day to day basis? When something negative (or unwanted) happens in your life, what kind of language do you use? Are you beating yourself up over things that you have no control over? These are just a few of the questions to consider as you try and uncover some of these beliefs and attitudes you may have. Once you have uncovered them and know what they are, then you can begin to change them. Start reframing your beliefs and attitudes so they are most positive and more focused on overcoming obstacles and experiencing self-growth. Remember, every bad event that takes place in your life happens for a reason. While at times it can be very challenging to figure out that reason, it is there. And, if you learn from that situation and use it to grow and develop as a person, that bad event will now become something positive for you down the road. When you start adopting this belief – you look for the good in every situation and use it to help build yourself up, you’ll completely change your level of success.

Healthy Habit #7: Education, Testing and Coaching

Finally, we have the last habit, which is education, testing, and coaching.  I like to group these all together as they tend to naturally flow into each other when done right. Testing can be anything.  This could be simply noticing how far you can walk before you become tired and seeing if that distance changes over time. It could be taking your one rep max when squatting and then taking it again six weeks later and noting the progress you’ve made. Or, it could be something more serious like getting a live blood or hair analysis that will indicate a number of important health factors you should know about. At the end of the day, all this testing will help you with education, which is simply learning more about how your body works and how you can optimize it through everyday lifestyle choices. The more tests you perform, the more you begin to learn from within. Then after doing all these tests and starting your process of education, you can then benefit from coaching. A good high performance coach is going to help you use the information you gain from the testing phase to make the most optimized choices in your life to get your body functioning at its best. A high performance coach is one of the purest relationships on the planet because the goal of the relationship is to simply bring out the absolute best in a person.  This coach is going to help hold you accountable and provide continuous tips and advice on how to achieve greatness. The most successful individuals in the world have strong coaches. They have coaches for the various elements of their life. They may have coaches and nutritionists for their diet plan. They have coaches and trainers for their workouts. They have life coaches that help them with their attitudes and beliefs. And they may have financial coaches that help them ensure they are on track with their monetary resources. Coaches come in all shapes and sizes and having a good one on your team is going to only enhance your well-being and take you up to the next level. Implement it today! So start implementing this habit today, I want you to choose a few things that you will test yourself on. These could be fitness related tests, nutritional related tests, or other health tests such as having your blood pressure tested. Track these tests over time and start using them to learn more about your body. Then when you are ready, consider getting involved with high performance coaching. It will make all the difference in your life.