61 Easy Ideas to Get Healthy

It’s no secret that getting and staying healthy can be a challenge. But it’s not impossible!

Are you ready to take control of your health and transform your life?

Then, it’s time to get fired up and make a change! Don’t let fear or doubts hold you back. You have the power within you to create the healthy, fit body and lifestyle you desire. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

Every small step toward your health goals brings you closer to the confident, unstoppable version of yourself.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. You are capable of greatness. It’s time to unleash your inner strength and take charge of your health. Let’s do this!

In this blog post, I will share 61 easy ideas to help you get and stay healthy.

ONLY 12% of Americans are considered metabolically healthy.

If you are here, you are looking for some insight into healthy ideas. Well, you have come to the right place! This list will provide beneficial ideas that are easy to do and don’t require much time or money.

Whether you are just starting your health journey, or have been working on it for a while, there is something here for everyone. I hope you find these tips helpful and help you live a healthier life at any age!

If you have read my story, you know my whole life has been centered around health and wellness, and I have experienced many setbacks. I’ve always perceived I was essentially healthy, but finding out I had Diabetes in 2008 forced me to be even more conscious of how I lived.

The feeling of being unhealthy and watching the long-term effects of being sick on patients entering the healthcare system can scare anyone to take action.

Being Healthy is NOT Being a Statistic

Heart disease, cancer, and stroke are the leading causes of death worldwide.

But what is even scarier is the Diabetic Epidemic that is plaguing the world. 50% DON’T KNOW THEY HAVE DIABETES. Unfortunately, I was one of them.

In the U.S., did you know that 1 in 3 American adults have diabetes? And 1/3rd of those that have diabetes, experience diabetes distress.

And 1 in 7 have undiagnosed diabetes. Diabetes is a severe disease that can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, and amputation. The good news is that type 2 diabetes, the most common form, is preventable and reversible. You can prevent or delay type 2 diabetes by eating a healthy diet, losing weight, and exercising.

Adopting a healthy lifestyle increases your chances of not being a statistic

Some risk factors for these diseases include smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. You can reduce your risk by quitting smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet, and exercising regularly.

You don’t have to be perfect to be healthy. Just making small changes in your lifestyle can make a big difference.

Simple Guide

I made a simple step guide to get started (in the steps with multiple options, select one and try. You can always vary later depending on results or boredom).

So, without further ado, here are 61 easy ideas to get healthy:

1. Decide.. many thoughts enter our heads every day making decisions challenging, but once you have had enough, the choices are much more manageable. If you are tired of being tired, you feel sick all the time, or energy is a distant possibility. Talking yourself into living a healthier lifestyle is the first step.
2. Stop Eating .. Cut it off 2 -3 hours before bedtime. That allows plenty of time for your body to digest the last food you ate, so it won’t disrupt your sleep but leaves a small enough window before bedtime that you won’t go to bed feeling hungry.
3. Sleep Well .. Sleep Well .. Sleep is vital for physical and mental health. Most adults need seven to eight hours of sleep per night. Create an environment to avoid insomnia by blocking out the light and sleeping in the darkest room possible, with no TV & Phones.
4. Drink more water .. Water is the most important and easiest thing you can do for your health. Drinking water daily will help flush out toxins, improve your skin, and boost your energy levels—only a few other beverages to consume except Coffee or Tea. Be mindful of your water source.
5. Limit your alcohol intake .. Alcohol can damage your health if consumed excessively. If you choose to drink alcohol, do so in moderation. I can’t help but drink a little wine every once in a while.
6. Wake Up with a renewed sense of purpose and implement some morning mood action items such as meditation and brain exercises (ex., learn a new skill, read, or now of days, YouTube an exciting subject). Exercising the mind is healthy.

• Journaling will enhance good mental health. It takes the clutter circling your brain and makes it visual, providing clarity, better understanding, and a healthy mind.
• Meditation creates clarity
• Brain exercises (an example would be to learn a new skill, read, or now of days, YouTube a subject that excites you)

After the Preparation begins the activity:

Exercise .. Get into the zone with physical activity that is beneficial for overall health and wellness, so throw on your favorite activewear and get busy with one of the following:

1. Stretching
2. Yoga
3. Yoga with weights
4. Walking by yourself, in nature, or RUCKING!
5. Golfing
6. Pickleball
7. Swimming
8. Biking
9. Kayaking
10. Strength training with free weights
11. High-intensity interval training (HITT) Involves short bursts of activity followed by a short period of rest or recovery in a 30-minute (or less) session.
12. Boxing
13. Kickboxing
14. Mixed martial arts training
15. Tai Chi… A gentle way to fight stress and helps reduce stress and anxiety. And it also helps increase flexibility and balance.
16. Bodyweight exercises
17. Online live or on-demand exercise classes

Healthy Eating will be the most improvement for health and well being

1. Wait .. 12-20 hours from the last meal to eat. Consider some type of intermittent fasting program or time-restricted eating. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern where you cycle between periods of fasting and meals. It doesn’t specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them. There are different types of intermittent fasting, such as the 16/8 method or OMAD.  
2. NO SUGAR .. eliminate or cut back on sugar. Consuming too much sugar will lead to high glucose levels, overstressing insulin production, and can lead to weight gain. Sugar is the biggest culprit of the public health crisis and has no place in nutrition.
3. Try a Healthy Diet .. along with a bit of fasting, I started the Keto diet in November of 2018 to get my health back on track, and it continues to help control my glucose today.

From the following list, try any diet as a 30-day challenge: (source the best food possible and within budget). These diets include a healthy lineup of options for anyone to implement. The mix of protein, fat, and carbohydrates guides each diet. They have a combination of healthy Meat, Eggs, Fish, Nuts, Dairy, Vegetables, and fruits, which are all part of the major food group.

Find high-quality, nutritious food sources or snacks like Nuts or Biltong. You can watch calories if you want to, but enjoying good, nutrient-dense healthy foods and avoiding sugar is a great start.

Consider a gut cleanse along the way, but just taking a step in the right direction is a start, and just one piece of information from each diet you implement into your healthy choices will allow you to start playing the game.

Adjust the macronutrient balance for yourself depending on your results. Supplement with the best nutrient dense option when it makes sense, because getting healthy requires trial and error to find what works for you, but it is worth it!

Don’t let time be an excuse, because there are great low carb meal replacement options to keep you on track.

How do you know how you’re doing?

It is normal to hear advice to exercise and eat a healthy diet, but how do you know how you’re doing?

Get Connected and monitor the progress by documenting results. If it’s important to you, you need the data.

Setting a baseline health assessment helps us to track numerous elements of our overall health. First, it gives us a baseline to refer back to and measure progress. This baseline keeps us on the right path by monitoring changes in health over time, which allows us to identify areas that need improvement and make necessary changes as soon as possible if required. 

With this baseline in place, we have the power to track our goals: everything from monitoring how much healthier we’re becoming to taking more vitamins or eating more fruit and vegetables. Establishing baseline health assessments is an essential step towards good health – because it lets us recognize when it starts going downhill – earlier than can commonly be done without setting those markers!

Track exercise, daily steps, sleep, heart rate, and blood oxygen levels. Tracking the exercise and results of your new diet choice by using Technology to make monitoring easier with wearables.

Then you can answer the questions How are you doing along the way? Do you need to adjust based on your results?

The digital health trend continues to explode, so monitoring this data hasn’t been easier

Here are some of the ways to live well with the latest Wearable Technologies:

1. Fitness Trackers…Fitbit, Garmin Sport, Letsfit, Apple, Coros Pace, Oura Ring, Whoop 4.0, Garmin Fenix, Garmin Lily, Samsung Galaxy Watch4, Garmin Instinct, and the Honorable Mentions.
2. A great Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) can be a great option, obviously for Diabetics, but also anyone challenged with Pre-Diabetes. Tracking the glucose levels in response to food and activity is crucial to fighting the adverse effects of glucose and extremely helpful when communicating with healthcare providers. Knowing how your body responds to certain foods and activities will create clarity and a lot of wasted time for experimentation. Some options are the Senseonics Eversense implantable, Dexcom G5/G6, Abbott Freestyle 2 Libre /Pro, Medtronic Guardian 3, Signos, or Nutrisense. Read more for comparison on the two best.
3. Use a digital scale casting a vast range of options to suit any budget or need; digital scales are an easy way to see how your diet is progressing. Some of the best-rated choices give you a picture of your body composition.

Adapt

Boredom and plateaus will eventually set in, so adapt and consider adding more

1. Home Exercise Equipment/  Online courses…everything from a stretching mat, rollers, free weights, kettlebells, jump rope, Peloton, Mirror, Mashable, or Tonal (smart exercise)…gamify and have fun with one of the following if you can afford.
2. Exercise gyms membership
3. Sauna
4. Steam
5. Workplace Gym program, if you are not working from home these days.
6. Fitness or wellness apps – In February 2022, Home Workout – No Equipment was the most-downloaded health and fitness app in the Google Play Store worldwide. The app generated approximately 2.93 million downloads from Android users. Six Pack in 30 Days was the second-most popular app with around 2.53 million downloads from global users.
7. Wireless Earpieces for music/or your favorite podcast
8. Smart Clothing
9. Posture devices
10. Personal Trainer (now available with AI)
11. Health/ Wellness coaching

What about the items that you don’t normally think about?

1. E.Stim Therapy (EMS), or Thermotherapy
2. Use an Air purifier to ensure you are breathing pure air into your lungs
3. Kitchen Items – WHAT? Yeah, you may need a good blender, a new cutting board, cooking in the right pan, or a knife for the vegetables and meat.

Check-in with your doctor or other medical professionals as needed

Get a clear picture of your health. Beyond your self-care activities, it’s essential to seek information from medical professionals, like staying up to date on new regulations regarding health and wellness and creating a comprehensive plan that includes testing, where you can see progress over time. In addition, establishing baseline assessments is key to understanding how our bodies react to various activities and diet choices. 

Virtual care options now make it easier than ever to schedule an appointment for a physical check-up; this is crucial to catch anything that might be going on with your health. 

In addition, a yearly blood panel will give you insights into what’s happening with your blood work and can detect any deficiencies that need to be addressed. The following are some tests that you should consider:

Blood Tests

1. A Lipid Panel measures the levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in your blood. Understand cholesterol ratios, some are less discussed but probably more important. Possibly push for the advanced lipid tests to identify the size of the particles.
2. A Complete Blood Count (CBC), measures the levels of Red Blood Cells, White Blood Cells, and Platelets in your blood.
3. The A1C test is necessary for Diabetics, but ideal to check for anyone because it is a simple blood test that measures your average blood sugar levels over the past 3 months
4. Checks what nutrients you may be lacking

Your Tomorrow is Today!

It’s straightforward if you decide and move quickly to wanting to make changes. First, pick a nutrition plan that works for you and your lifestyle. Monitoring your sleep, mood, exercise, and food responses keep you honest with yourself and even makes it fun. 

It’s always wise to be safe and prevent harm from physical injury, so start and don’t overdo the process. Also, take the time to de-stress and relax. These all help to improve your overall health and fitness level.