5 pillars of health live your best life now by JoAnne Mbonigaba

12/17/2016

5 Pillars of Health - Live Your Best Life Now

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5 Pillars of Health - Live Your Best Life Now Are you someone who recently had a serious health scare and are now educating yourself about how to support your total wellness? Or, are you someone who has always been relatively healthy and just always like to be aware and update and learning as you maintain your health?

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Or perhaps you are someone right in the midst of a minor to signiﬁcant health challenge and looking for information to help you get through and recover to the best of your ability? If you fall in any of the three above categories, then I'm glad you stopped by to read my blog post. In this blog post, I will share brieﬂy what the 5 pillars of health are and some key tips and practices you will want to implement to live your best life now. So what are the 5 Pillars of Health and why are they called Pillars? The 5 Pillars of Health are

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Pillar 1: Healthy Eating Pillar 2: Healthy Sleeping Pillar 3: Healthy Movement Pillar 4: Healthy Environment Pillar 5: Healthy Thinking They are called the 5 Pillars of Health because they are the ﬁve essentials to Optimal Health. The pressures of daily living — a busy schedule, the demands of work, inadequate family or personal time, not enough rest, environmental challenges — can lead to a life thrown out of balance, a disturbance of our natural equilibrium in any or all of these 5 areas. Now before we get started, release that expectation, thought or goal that you must be perfect in all 5 areas (or that I might suggest that!), that's extremely unrealistic. Instead envision your health as journey and consider what things you can do daily to improve your experience and journey. http://digitalbloggers.com/food-and-drink/5-pillars-of-health

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5 Pillars of Health - Live Your Best Life Now

Let's look at each pillar individually.

Pillar 1: Healthy Eating

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Adaptating a strategy for healthy eating is one of the ﬁve pillars because we are what we eat. Literally! The food we eat becomes our cells, a healthy life needs a healthy body and a healthy body is formed from healthy cells. Well what does it mean to eat healthy? First oﬀ, leading research has shown that traditional food pyramid with a heavy quantity of starch is actually a leading contribution to many of the healthy complications that we are seeing in the world and particularly in North America. Countries like Brazil and Australia have actually already released an updated food pyramid as pictured below.

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You can see that the shift in the definition of a healthy diet is to consume more vegetables and fruit and lower quantities of grains as in the past. The key to healthy eating is to first recognize that the status quo is broken. If the status quo was working then why are we seeing a rapid increase in cancer, diabetes and heart disease? It's time to buck the trend! Stop believing any nutrition, health and wellness information from the media and start doing your own research. Although there are several great companies like Isagenix and Kashi that are really focused on bringing quality food and nutrition to the market to support your optimal health, unfortunately many companies aren't. Instead, many are focused on producing the largest profit quickly which often leads to corners being cut and your health being compromized.

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5 Pillars of Health - Live Your Best Life Now

Finally, recognize that there will ALWAYS be opinions for something AND against so do your own research and then make the best decision that suits and feels right for you. There are some great holistic nutrition thought leaders out there like Dr. Pearl Mutter who wrote an excellent book called Grain Brain Whole Life Plan and Dr. Mercola who runs a very high quality holistic nutrition site. Educate yourself, do your own research and then apply that knowledge to improve your eating.

Pillar 2: Healthy Sleeping 

Sleep is the second pillar listed because it is while we sleep that the body is able to repair and rejuvenate itself so you can function at your best when you are awake. Now, here's a simple test - can you all agree that when we don't get a good night's sleep we struggle a lot the next day? That's a BIG clue. :-)

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5 Pillars of Health - Live Your Best Life Now

There is an excellent book by Shawn Stevenson called Sleep Smarter. It shares many great tips and insights. Some key take aways for you is that between the hours of 10pm and 2am are critical sleeping hours so if you have to be cut out sleep then wake up early instead of staying up late! Also, get more natural sunlight during the day, exercise and move your body daily (pillar 3), get the electronics out of your bedroom and have a caﬃene curfew.

Pillar 3: Healthy Movement

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There are so many benefits to having healthy movement/ exercise incorporated daily in your life. One that you may or may not know is that it what we call a cornerstone habit. Ie, science has proven that those who regularly exercise tend to more healthy in all the other areas of their life- socially, nutrition and mindfully. Also, those who start to exercise consistently then find it a lot easier to incorporate other healthy habits to move towards a healthier lifestyle. Overall, one can achieve the benefit of healthy movement in just 15 minutes a day. Healthy movement can be a simple as taking a walk with your dog every day to hitting the gym and doing that http://digitalbloggers.com/food-and-drink/5-pillars-of-health

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intense workout. Aside from helping you to maintain a healthy weight, exercise can also help to maintain a positive mood, boost energy and promote better quality sleep. If you are someone who hasn't exercised in a long period of time, do consult your doctor before starting any exercise routine.

Pillar 4: Healthy Environment

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Pillar 4 is having a healthy environment. The term "healthy environment" is a huge one and in this scenario focus on on healthy environment ecologically and socials. http://digitalbloggers.com/food-and-drink/5-pillars-of-health

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Ecologically speaking, there has been an quantum leap in the amount of toxic chemical we as humans come into contact with and these is having signifcant negative impacts on our quality of life. Check out this quick video called Toxins, The Silent Killer. Fortunately for us, the world and political leaders are slowly moving towards minimizing this, and things like recycling, ﬁltering our waters, eco friendly products and services are becoming more and more popular. Consider developing a strategy to review the products you are using daily and what small switches you can make to minize toxicity in your life be it from ﬁltering your water, to switching out your laundry detergent or doing a full body gentle cleanse.

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Socially speaking, would you agree that being around people who truly care about you, respect you and you enjoy being around can have a huge impact on your quality of life? We have humans have an ingrained need to connect and feel connected and in community with others so having a positive and strong social circle allows each of us to full engage in our lives. If you feel isolated or alone, reach out to family and friends, go join a club on a topic that you love. There are billions of people in this world so you are sure to ﬁnd other who like the things you like to share life with.

Pillar 5: Healthy Thinking

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5 Pillars of Health - Live Your Best Life Now

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Do you know the saying: "Thoughts become things!" It's true, your thoughts lead to your feelings, which lead to your actions, which lead to your results! So thoughts do become things! Knowing this, it makes sense why healthy thinking is the ﬁfth and ﬁnal pillar to living your best life now. Keeping your mindset positive will allow you to attract positivity into your life, it helps to reduce stress, turn problems into opportunities and helps you to value all the great things that you have or receiving in your life. Key habits and practices that have known to help others just like you have healthy thinking are visualization and meditation. Take a few minutes a day to visualize yourself having the life you desire and enjoying your life helps you to draw that desired life to you. Likewise, taking a few moments a day to control and quite the mind and be at peace, helps to build the internal muscle of

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controlling your mental choices so that when you want to be choosing healthy thinking you have that mental muscle through the practice of meditation to help you.

Summary and Next Steps So those are the 5 pillars of health- healthy eating, healthy sleeping, healthy movement, healthy environments and healthy thinking. Where do you see that you may need to do some small or big changes to help live your best life now? What are the top 2 small daily habits you can adopt after reading this post that will help you shift into a better life?

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Okay,great, say yes to you and start today! Thanks for stopping by to read my bost on the 5 Pillars of HealthLive Your Best Life Now.

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5 Pillars of Health - Live Your Best Life Now