Are you ready for amazing health in 2023? But, do you also find it overwhelming to make huge health changes and resolutions?
No problem, this plan is for you! Let’s take small steps this year. Your small steps each day can lead to big, amazing health in 2023. Here’s how you can change your health. Let’s go!
5 Small Steps for Amazing Health in 2023
Step #1: Have a Word
Instead of a resolution or a goal, start with one word.
Decide what your word will be for 2023. What do you want to get out of this year? How will you face challenges, accept blessings, and keep going strong?
Choose a word and repeat. If you want to take it a step further, memorize a bible verse that represents that word to you.
For example, your word might be COURAGE. You can repeat this word to yourself when things get tough, and when you have new opportunities.
A verse to memorize might be 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God did not give us a spirit of fear. He gave us a spirit of power and of love and of a good mind.”
Step #2: Go Beyond Keto
Next, take care of our diet with the best eating style available: Dr. Colbert’s Beyond Keto.
It’s not a diet. It’s an eating lifestyle and book that aims to ditch unhealthy processed foods, overflow the body with real, living, low-sugar, whole foods based on the Mediterranean Diet, and promote a healthy weight. In fact, Beyond Keto combines the best of the Keto Zone® diet with the Mediterranean Diet. Together, its food and lifestyle supports health from head to toe.
Through scientific study, experience, and decades of research, Dr. Colbert has formulated this eating plan and recipes to promote overall health, healthy weight, reduced inflammation via better gut health, encourage heart health, optimize blood sugars and metabolism, and more!
Don’t wait, take this important 2nd step with Dr. Colbert’s Beyond Keto in amazing health in 2023!
Step #3: Pick No More than 3 Additional Health Strategies
Once you have your word and your nutrition dialed, pick up to 3 more healthy habits on which to focus. Here’s a short list, but there are many you could choose!
- 8+ hours of sleep per night
- adequate daily hydration
- adding outdoor exercise 4-5 days per week
- lifting weights and resistance training
- cold water therapy or plunge
- daily stretching and flexibility
- focusing on brain health and nutrients for your brain (see this article)
- stress reduction techniques and hemp oil
- daily laughter
- daily immune-boosted Fermented Greens smoothie
For a month-by-month guide to healthy habits, see this post from 2022!
Step #4: Prioritize People and Experience over Materials
Next, take time to think about your relationships with the people you love, and the experiences you seek with them. God has created us for relationships, and they are important for overall health and healthy immune function. In fact, positive relationships can improve your mood and decrease stress. This, in turn, can promote a strong immune system and overall health (1).
To maintain healthy relationships:
- Get together when you can. Even though we are all busy, being together is one of the most important parts of the human experience.
- Invest in the relationships within your household, neighborhoods, and towns. Head to a park for a pick-up game, watch movies together, take walks, invite friends for simple gatherings, and create other ways to make great memories together.
- When you can’t always be with each other in-person: Stay in touch with loved ones however you can. Write letters and send cards. Use technology to video-call, send videos to friends, and keep in touch. Social media can be a negative addiction if left unchecked, but it can also be a great way to feel a sense of community if you’re away from loved ones. Be proactive and initiate re-connections if you’d like!
Maintain the relationships that are important to you. It’s good for your health and immune function!
Step #5: Choose Contentment and Optimism
Want better, youthful health in 2023?
Give gratitude, contentment, and optimism a try. Paul wrote: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (Philippians 4:12).
In 2023, what if you worked to truly be content with every small aspect of your life? Of course, this does not mean we aren’t motivated to change bad situations or aspects of our lives. But in the meantime, choosing to feel content with your life, and optimistic for healthy changes you can make, supports mental, physical, and emotional health. It encourages:
- Stronger mental health: Amazingly, you can decrease cortisol (the stress hormone) by up to 23% by practicing gratitude (2). What’s more, healthcare practitioners have sustained lower perceived stress (decrease of 28%) and depression by keeping a gratitude journal (3). Controlling cortisol is crucially important to overall health.
- Healthier Hearts: In studies, gratitude is associated with better cholesterol levels, lowered blood pressure and decreased heart rate variability. This all works together to improve cardiovascular health and overall health (4, 5).
- Ease with Change and Healthy Habits: Some benefits of gratitude work in reverse. Researchers have found that those who practice gratitude also tend to make healthier choices. Specifically, there’s an association between those who are reportedly grateful for less use of tobacco, more exercise, and better food choices (6, 7). On the flip side, gratitude intervention shows promise when helping patients increase healthy habits. In one study, 31% of participants quit smoking and maintained abstinence after 6 months, compared to meta-analysis averages of 23% with a nicotine patch alone (8).
- Stronger Immune Function: Gratitude and optimism can actually improve your body’s response to inflammation. Studies have found that our bodies produce more disease-fighting cells when we are grateful and optimistic (9). In addition, anytime you reduce cortisol, you maintain a healthier balance with DHEA levels. This supports healthy immune function (10).
- Better Sleep and Healthy Aging: One key factor to healthy aging is brain health. One necessity for brain health is sleep. Fortunately, gratitude supports better sleep (11)! In one study, gratitude was linked to a 10 percent improvement in sleep and a 19 percent decrease in depression levels in patients with insomnia (12).
BOTTOM LINE
Can small steps change your life and health in 2023? Yes, they can. Try our 5 small steps this year, and optimize your health without the stress of resolutions. Start with a word, revamp your diet, choose a few more habits, prioritize relationships, and learn to be content. You can do this!
