This last year, I’ve been pretty faithful each morning during breakfast to scour my health guru emails that arrive in my inbox everyday. A big thank you shout-out to Dr. Axe and The Food Babe and even WebMD! Another big shout-out to Men’s Fitness magazine and Pinterest for their info on exercise and healthy foods.
I won’t go into full details, just hit the highlights…my Top Ten Tips in David Lettermen style, in reverse!
10. Walking a mile or two with my E7 wireless headphones on (or not) — especially taking advantage of a good uphill climb /downhill descent along the way — is a more rigorous mind-and-body-stimulating workout than I sometimes expect it will be. Safe, super-healthy, and invigorating…gotta get my walk in almost every day!
9. Weightlifting remains a true fountain of youth for me:
a. my well-developed muscles burn my unwanted (and perhaps lethal) visceral body fat while I sleep;
b. my increased muscle mass helps stabilize my erratic blood sugar (I’m hyper-insulinistic);
c. developing shapely muscles makes me feel better about my appearance and pumps up my good-feelings endorphins.
Note: the atmosphere/people/equipment at LifeTime Fitness in my hometown are just dad-gum motivational! It’s worth the $75/month for a single, $125/couple.
8. Learning to swim when I was 6 is paying off better these days, now that I’m wearing eye goggles for my indoor swim laps and letting my hips alternate (“rotate”) in their rise and fall in the water with each stroke I make. I’m therefore moving through the water much better and staying aligned in my lane, which leads to enjoying my swimming more and gaining more aerobic fitness. (I need all the help I can get; right now, though I’m only 6’2″ tall, I weigh 285 pounds!)
7. Making homemade kombucha with a continuous brewer has proven an easier way for me to get a great probiotics drink I love than when I used individual gallon jars and always had to handle my SCOBY’s. My favorite flavor so far is created with small frozen strawberries and I love to drink my kombucha ice cold!
6. Making homemade goat milk kefir was a helpful way to get a powerful probiotic punch. But the dairy eventually clogged me up and gave me sinus drainage. Revert to drinking only kombucha for probiotics.
5. Drinking 2-3 glasses of cool or cold filtered water slowly, well before starting to consume a cup or two of hot black coffee in the morning with my breakfast, is just a smart thing to do. Drinking another 3-4 glasses of cool or cold filtered water during the rest of the day keeps me better hydrated. It also helps me eat less solid food loaded with unneeded calories. I’ve joined the FPC, the Frequent Pee-er Club. It’s all good.
4. Meditation on scriptural truth — reciting key phrases in slow repetition several times each — is a great way to start the day (usually after breakfast) and ease stress for the rest of my day, even when I’m going to be my busiest. Especially when I prayerfully bring to mind the love of God for me personally as I meditate (a love received completely apart from what I do for financial productivity or service to others later on), I find peace in whatever hassles or setbacks I need to deal with during the day.
3. Eating kimchi or cold fermented sauerkraut provides powerful probiotics and it doesn’t take but a few forkfuls to meet my daily need. Yeah, it makes me pucker my face…but I just remind myself of “the power of sour.” Does good stuff for your innards.
2. A Bi-PAP (Bi-Level Positive Airway Pressure) machine has done for me what a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) couldn’t. A Bi-Pap lets me exhale at a lower pressure level (level 13) than when I breathe in (level 17), while a CPAP keeps forcing air up my nose at the same high pressure level, making it hard to exhale. I sleep like a baby with a Bi-Pap. And better sleep means much better mental and physical health for me, period. They even say it’s hard to lose weight, maybe impossible, if you’re not sleeping well.
1. Golf is a much more physically demanding sport than I realized when I was young. It’s not just a good, but a very good, workout to walk those 2-3 miles for 9 holes or 4-5 miles for 18 holes. Even if I ride a cart (weak right ankle) I still get lots of walking done, uphill and downhill, because my cart can’t take me everywhere I need to go. And the game undoubtedly refreshes my heart and mind…the beautiful greens and fairways, the awesome physics/aesthetics of the game, the quiet out in nature….they all heal me and leave me feeling peaceful. Just so long as I don’t fret or freak over my score!
Final note: It only makes sense that if I follow these tips and enjoy better health, I’ll work better. If I work better, I’ll produce more dollar-worthy stuff. If I produce more dollar-worthy stuff, I’ll steadily feel better about my financial position in life and I’ll be better able to share with others in need from time to time.
Voila! A physical-financial-spiritual win for me AND others.
Grand Vitality 