It's Your Life!
Make it a Happy, Healthy One

“Once you commit to something, life moves in ways you could never have imagined.”      Goethe

Choosing a healthy and therefore happy lifestyle begins with a commitment. Although the United States has the most modern healthcare system, we still have some of the sickest, most obese and malnourished people on the earth.

Forty-two million Americans suffer from high blood pressure, 15 million are chronic alcoholics, 16 million suffer from ulcers, and more than 40 million will spend some time in the hospital each year. According to the National Institute of Health, 66 percent of all diseases are a direct result of our lifestyle, which includes choices on what we eat and drink, how we cope with stress (and we all know that won’t go away), and our level of physical activity, which does not include walking to and from the refrigerator!

Here are just a few pointers to get you started on the path to better health and longevity.

1. Laughing Matters. Laughing 100 times during a 24-hour period has the same cardiovascular benefit as rowing a rowing machine for 10 minutes. This does not mean that instead of going to the gym or taking your daily walk, you just simply laugh, but that we do need to “lighten up.” Even a fake laugh provides the same health benefits, but spontaneous laughter would seem to be more fun.

2. Color Counts. Eating colorful and texture-rich meals will boost your immune system, and the high fiber will “keep things moving.” The majority of Americans are getting only one-fifth of the dietary fiber they need which is 30 to 50 grams per day. Fiber also keeps blood sugar normal and removes toxins.

3. Mind and Moods. What you eat does affect your moods and how you feel. When you choose certain foods, you are choosing to be happy or depressed. Foods high in protein supply the brain with significant amounts of the amino acid, tyrosin, which converts to the chemical known to enhance alertness. When carbohydrates are eaten alone, tryptophan is introduced to the brain, and serotonin, the calming brain chemical, causes a state of relaxation. Perhaps that is why so many of our “comfort foods” are high in simple carbohydrates.

4. Don’t Keep It Simple. If the majority of carbohydrates you consume come from highly processed sources such as white flour and/or white sugar, you will become nutritionally bankrupt. Because you need certain vitamins and minerals to assimilate carbohydrates in general, and refined carbs usually provide less than optimal nutrition, you’ll be drawing from your own body’s stores of nutrients to metabolize the simple sugar, creating a nutritional debt.

5. Take It Easy. While women tend to eat more under stress, men tend to eat less. Nine out of 10 Americans say they experience some form of stress one to two times per week, and one in four estimates stress happens everyday. Seventy-five percent of all doctor visits are related to stress. Learning to relax will give you more energy and reduce self-destructive tendencies such as drug and alcohol abuse, smoking, and compulsive eating.

6. Reduced Calories Can Save Your Life. Studies find that reducing calories can extend your life and significantly boost longevity even if started late in life. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, test animals of a relatively advanced age were fed a restricted diet and lived 42 percent longer than animals of the same age fed a standard diet. One of the most important lifestyle changes you can make is to maintain a well-balanced diet and adhere to a moderate exercise program, preferably walking.

7. Change Your Mind – Change Your Life. All of the information, facts, figures and statistics mentioned would not give you the health, energy, and vitality you desire unless you choose to change. To assist and give a boost to your desired goals, I highly recommend hypnosis to help in the behavioral change process. What we eat determines who we are and the mind-empowering strategies and visualization create a mind-body connection that magnifies our efforts for our change in lifestyle. Habits, such as not exercising or eating the wrong foods, are lodged in the subconscious mind. To bring about a change, we must connect with the source to remove undesirable choices and addictions and replace them with new, positive suggestions for how we live.