Top 6 New Year’s resolutions that can help you feel better in 2020:
More shut-eye
Many of us certainly don’t get near the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. Sleep deprivation over the long term can raise risks for health problems including obesity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and depression. Here’s how to get a better night’s sleep: Get on a regular sleep schedule and your body will adjust, turn off all electronics & screens leaving them out of the bedroom, reading a non-digital book or listening to soothing music or whitenoise will increase your chances of gaining more deep sleep each night. Go to bed and wake up around the same time each day.
10,000 steps
Walking 10,000 steps a day, or about 5 miles, is a low-impact way to improve your health. Here are tips to get you moving: Use a free app such as Pacer and Stepz to help you keep track of steps. Take the stairs, not the elevator. Park in the back of the lot when you’re going to the supermarket. To keep it interesting, find new places to walk each week and take photos along the way.
Journaling
Journaling has several benefits for your overall health, and particularly your emotional health. It’s relaxing and helps you better understand your thoughts. Sometimes it feels like our minds are going a mile a minute, especially during periods of high stress. Putting those thoughts and emotions down on paper makes them more manageable.
Your personal journal is a permanent record of your thoughts and the events in your life. When you keep a journal, you can look back on important life events to read about how you felt at the time. You may be able to learn from these past experiences, but it’s also just nice to have a record of your past. Our memories become less clear and vivid as they fade farther into the past. Recording our lives helps us better remember them.
Flossing
So many New Year’s resolutions are centered on diet and exercise but we fail to remember dental health. Flossing is an important tool in preventing gum disease and decay. But only four out of 10 people floss at least once a day, and 30 percent say they never floss. Develop a morning and evening flossing routine, and watch your dental health soar!
Limit Screen Time
Many of us are guilty of letting phones run our lives. Make a decision to turn off or put your phone into “do not disturb mode” an hour before bed this year and completely remove it from the bedroom altogether. Read or listen to quiet music to allow your brain to turn off and promote relaxation. Remove the TV set from the bedroom as well, it is incredibly destructive to REM sleep especially for those that leave it on all night. Get a white noise machine instead if you need to have filler noise.
Clean eating
Many vow to eat healthier and lose weight every year. We have a habit of setting the bar too high with unrealistic goals and ultimately give up. One way to improve our diets is to eat “clean.” Shift your diet to focusing on whole foods such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains and healthy proteins and fats. Clean eating also means avoiding processed foods, refined sugar, preservatives and artificial additives. One of the best strategies for cleaner eating is trying to stick with eating a rainbow each day in the fruits & veggies category paying attention to their colors.
