All during August, National Wellness Month focuses on self-care, managing stress and promoting healthy routines. Create wholesome habits in your lifestyle all month long and see how much better you feel!
Research has shown self-care helps manage stress and promotes happiness. Whether you challenge yourself to a new yoga pose or try a different spa treatment, make a small change and impact your health in positive ways.
There are numerous ways to make those small changes, too.
Increase your water intake.
Add more fruits and veggies to your meals.
Monitor your sleep and make adjustments for better sleep habits
Join a yoga, walking, or aerobics class.
Learn to meditate.
These small steps can lead to many more healthy habits in your lifestyle.
Live Love Spa founded National Wellness Month in 2018 to foster community, connection, and commerce in the Wellness industry. The initiative inspires consumers to focus on wellness and provides a platform for wellness companies to highlight their services and benefits.
Every August, let’s amplify the message of healthy living, celebrate those providing amazing self-care solutions, and inspire others to create new healthy habits.
Proclaim “I choose wellness” with a photo and post on social media.
Visit http://www.wellnessmonth.com for a calendar of daily challenges for small ways you can choose to be well each day. Because we believe that small, daily acts of self-care lead to a lifetime of wellness.
Every year in May, Global Employee Health and Fitness Month aims to improve the health of the global workforce. Through initiatives and helpful programs, the campaign encourages employers to engage their employees in healthful activities. It also provides a variety of wellness and fitness programs to complement already existing programs. Employers with wellness programs have healthier employees who are more productive. Wellness programs reduce overall healthcare costs and reduce illness and injury.
Employees who participate in wellness programs have lower stress levels, better overall health, and improved confidence, too. Challenge employees to pair up with partners to take the stairs or go for a walk on their lunch break. Take stretch breaks and eat healthy meals. Make sure to get plenty of rest and track your exercise, too. Join the movement and encourage others to join you.
GLOBAL EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND FITNESS MONTH
The National Association for Health and Fitness launched the observance in 1989 to encourage employers to invest in their employees’ health. Each year the campaign has grown from a national observance to a now global event.
Employers can participate by offering wellness programs and incentives to employees who participate. Create challenges and opportunities to encourage employees to be physically active and focus on their health. Employees, encourage your employer to join the movement. Other ways to participate include:
Invite other co-workers to join you for a walk on your lunch break
Choose the farthest parking space or walk to work
Take the stairs
Use a standing desk
Participate in desk exercises
Use #EmployeeHealthAndFitnessMonth to share on social media.
National Fasting February reminds us that our metabolic health underlies many of the diseases that we associate with aging, from diabetes to cancer to Alzheimer’s disease. Regularly switching from burning sugars to burning stored fats can reduce our risk of metabolic disorders such as diabetes and other conditions of aging.
February is a month for transforming new health resolutions into healthy habits and lifestyles. Since 1964, February has been American Heart Month to help raise awareness of preventable risk factors of cardiovascular disease including obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Diet heavily influences many of these risk factors. But there is a growing consensus among healthcare professionals that a healthy diet depends not just on what we eat but also when we eat.
National Fasting February celebrates the benefits of intermittent fasting on metabolic health. Practicing intermittent fasting is as simple as changing the timing of your meals. It gives your body at least a 10-12 hour break from metabolizing sugar every night.
Intermittent fasting does not require any change in the content of your diet, but rather merely a shift in the timing of your food and sweetened beverage intake. Regularly refraining from consuming any calories for just 10-12 or more hours can increase levels of brain-fueling ketones. It also:
Science-backed ways to practice fasting for metabolic health include:
Time-restricted eating: 10-16 hours of overnight fasting every day or several days per week
Alternate day fasting: Eating fewer than 500 calories every other day
The 5:2 diet: Two consecutive or non-consecutive days per week of eating fewer than 500 calories
NATIONAL FASTING FEBRUARY HISTORY
Intermittent fasting was developed as an alternative to calorie restriction interventions for studies of human aging and chronic disease prevention. Calorie restriction has long been considered by researchers to be a gold standard in prolonging lifespan in many animal species. But calorie restriction, which in humans typically involves eating fewer than 1,200 calories per day, is incredibly difficult for humans to practice. Researchers including Dr. Valter Longo, Dr. Mark Mattson, and Dr. Satchidananda Panda, and others are now finding that intermittent fasting may be just as effective or even more effective than calorie restriction in terms of delaying and preventing diseases of aging.
Fasting for 12-16 hours and exercising while fasted are safe practices for most individuals, except for pregnant women and individuals diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. However, you should consult your primary care physician to make sure that you don’t have a health condition for which fasting is contraindicated.
Prolonged fasting or going more than 24-36 hours without calories is the subject of early clinical trials. However, it isn’t necessary to glean the metabolic health benefits of fasting. You should drink plenty of water while fasting. You may need to supplement your water with a blend of electrolytes if you are practicing prolonged fasting. Zero-calorie beverages (unsweetened tea and coffee) will also not break your fast. You can consume artificially sweetened beverages while fasting in a pinch, but your gut microbes can break down some artificial sweeteners, and these sweeteners tend to increase your sweet cravings.
Intermittent fasting will not turn an unhealthy diet into a healthy one. You should try to eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables when you aren’t fasting. It’s also best practice to break a fast with a relatively low glycemic index (low carbohydrate) meal to avoid spiking your blood sugar.
Visit lifeapps.io/fasting-february/ to learn more about how to participate in National Fasting February and to read about the health benefits of intermittent fasting.
Choose a fasting schedule that works best for you. Practice it all month long. Intermittent fasting is not a fad diet, but rather a lifestyle for metabolic health. If you’ve never fasted before, start with time-restricted eating. This involves fasting for at least 10-12 hours every night, ideally starting in the early evenings. Don’t worry if you can’t make it to 12 hours at first – work up slowly. Throughout the month, you may work your way up to a 16-hour or an occasional 24-hour fast.
Download the LIFE Fasting Tracker app to track your fasts. Create a fasting Circle, invite family members or join a public LIFE Circle to fast in a supportive social environment.
Share your experiences with intermittent fasting and post photos of how you break your fasts on social media with the hashtag #NationalFastingFebruary.
If you are an experienced faster or looking to achieve weight loss, you may try practicing alternate day fasting or a 5:2 weekly fasting schedule this month.
About Life Fasting Tracker
The LIFE Fasting Tracker app was created by LifeOmic, a precision health software company headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. LifeOmic works with healthcare providers and academic institutions, including the Indiana School of Medicine, to power precision medicine and personalized treatments for cancer and other diseases using ultra-secure cloud technologies. LifeOmic’s LIFE apps provide the missing link to patient engagement in precision healthcare.
The LIFE Fasting Tracker app, free to download for both iOS and Android, is the easiest and most social way to fast. Launched in late 2018, the app makes it easy and fun to harness lifestyle changes to improve metabolic health. With the app, you can track your progress on any fasting schedule, see when you start burning fats for fuel, and intuitively log how you are feeling. You can share your fasts and give and receive encouragement within custom Circles of people you care about, from friends to coworkers to healthcare providers. Join hundreds of thousands of users in their journey to better health.
The holidays may be over, but the New Year celebration and commitments to our resolutions continue with National Green Juice Day on January 26th. Every year, the celebration encourages people to stick to their health and wellness resolutions by drinking a green juice.
There are several veggie-centric ways to celebrate and inspire health and wellness habits in the New Year.
After finding that more than 50 percent of Americans break their New Year’s resolutions by the end of January*, Evolution Fresh founded National Green Juice Day in 2016 as a way to empower people to press ahead with their wellness resolutions by drinking a green juice.
*Survey was conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of Evolution Fresh among 1,001 American adults age 18+ using an email invitation and online survey in December 2015.
As the New Year approaches, many individuals embrace the tradition of setting resolutions—personal goals aimed at fostering self-improvement and positive change. This practice offers a fresh start, encouraging reflection on past behaviors and the commitment to adopt healthier habits or achieve specific objectives in the coming year. Common resolutions often focus on enhancing physical health, improving financial stability, and fostering personal development.
Among the most popular New Year’s resolutions are:
1. **Improving Physical Health**: Many people resolve to exercise regularly, adopt healthier eating habits, or quit smoking. These commitments are driven by the desire to enhance overall well-being and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.
2. **Saving Money**: Financial goals, such as budgeting more effectively, reducing debt, or increasing savings, are common resolutions. Individuals aim to achieve greater financial security and prepare for future needs.
3. **Pursuing Personal Development**: This includes resolutions like learning new skills, reading more, or dedicating time to hobbies. Such goals are pursued to enrich one’s knowledge and enhance personal fulfillment.
While setting resolutions is a widespread practice, maintaining them can be challenging. Studies indicate that a significant number of individuals abandon their resolutions within the first few months of the year. To improve success rates, experts recommend setting realistic and specific goals, creating a structured plan, and seeking support from friends or communities. Utilizing tools like apps for tracking progress can also provide motivation and accountability, increasing the likelihood of sustaining these positive changes throughout the year.
