February Wellness Challenge

This month, I want to encourage you to take small steps to improve your overall health and well-being. Below are daily challenges. Each day, focus on incorporating the challenge into your daily lifestyle. At the end of the month, you should have practiced all the challenges daily, unless otherwise stated. Going forward you can continue to use what works for you and leave the rest for when you’re ready to make it a part of your regular lifestyle. You can get a printer friendly copy here.

1. Drink warm water with lemon each morning. This will not only cleanse and deodorize the colon, but it also hydrates the body, cleanses the liver, and supports the lymphatic system. The liver and lymphatic system work hard on your behalf to remove toxins out of the body.
2. Schedule your workouts. Put your workout time in your calendar or create an alarm on your phone that goes off each day at the designated time. This will help you commit to making exercise a regular practice in your life.
3. Drink half your body weight in oz of water. For example, if you weigh 140 lbs, drink 70 oz of water, which is half a gallon, daily
4. Have fruit, a juice, or a smoothie for breakfast. Need ideas? Sign up to receive free weekly meal plans here.
5. If you’re consuming dairy, omit it from your diet from now through the end of this month’s challenge. In your journal, record now the condition of your skin and overall health. Record your weight. Take stock of where you are at this moment and record it. We will come back to look at this to see our progress at the end of the challenge.
6. Incorporate weights in your weekly exercise plan 3 times per week. Weight training helps the body burn more fat. Try this workout to see how you can incorporate weights.
7. Prepare your meals at home. From now until the end of the challenge, try to prepare all your daily meals at home. You may need to buy some containers to bring your lunch to work. This will not only help you lose weight and get healthier, but it will also help you save money. Bringing your meals to work from now until the end of the challenge should save you an estimated $140. This could buy you a FitBit!
8. Snack on fruit. When you get hungry in between meals, snack on fruit instead of packaged, processed food-stuff. Apples, bananas, blueberries and grapes are easy to keep in the office to grab when you need to munch on something.
9. Make sure to get in at least 10,000 steps a day. This is the recommended baseline for cardiovascular health. With your workouts, you are probably already getting this, but having a pedometer or fitness monitor like a FitBit will help you check and make sure you are meeting this goal daily.
10. Have fun! Do something you enjoy daily. It could be reading, playing a game, ice skating, watching a movie or a show, watching a comedy, singing, etc. Spend at least 15 minutes daily doing that which really lights you up inside.
11. Journal each day 10 things you’re grateful for. Expressing gratitude daily will help you develop a more optimistic mindset.
12. Meditate in the morning for at least 10 minutes. Sit quietly in silence and just observe your breath.
13. Practice pranic breathing during the day when you are low on energy. To do so, place your tongue on the roof of your mouth right behind your front teeth. Take a deep slow inhale until the lungs are full. Pause, then exhale slowly all of the air from your lungs until it is near completely empty. This is one cycle.
14. Happy Valentine’s Day! Celebrate with a Heart Chakra Meditation.
15. Treat yourself to a massage. Get one scheduled or have your spouse perform one on you. You can also massage yourself daily with natural oils, like jojoba oil, coconut oil or sesame oil, after your shower.
16. Take time off from exercising once in a while. It’s ok to give yourself a break. You don’t have to do intense workouts daily. I personally take a week off a month and a day off a week. Find what works for you.
17. Make sure to get at least 8 hours of sleep each night.
18. Eat salads for lunch. If you need recipe ideas for your salad, sign up to receive free weekly meal plans here.
19. Switch up your exercise routine. If you’ve been doing the same type of exercise since you started the challenge, try something new and fun and incorporate that into your weekly plan. For example, if you’ve been going to the gym, try a home workout routine. Going to the club and dancing and/or performing detailed house cleaning for an hour are also cardiovascular and functional fitness. There is a wide range of possibilities here.
20. Try yoga.
21. Call a friend or family member you haven’t spoken to in a while and make a promise to yourself to keep in contact with that person at least once a month.
22. Take a salt bath each week using dead sea salt. Dead sea salt contains numerous minerals that nourish the body. If you don’t like baths and prefer straight showers, try a salt scrub.
23. During your journaling time, identify people and/or situations in your life that drain your energy. Cut the cord with those people and those things. It does not mean you don’t love them, but make a commitment to yourself to interact with those people less and engage in those draining activities less or not at all if possible.
24. Laugh daily. Watch a comedy or listen to jokes for at least 15 minutes each day.
25. Detox your home.
26. Creatively express yourself in a way you love best. Here are some options: drawing, painting, dancing, singing, blogging, acting, poetry, etc. Think back to what you enjoyed doing as a child to provide inspiration.
27. Eat plant food exclusively. If you need ideas of what this would look like, sign up to receive free weekly meal plans here.
28. Observe and journal how your body feels today and what your experience has been being without dairy and implementing the daily challenges. Observe the condition of you skin and your bowel movements. Did you lose weight, gain weight, stayed the same?
29. Periscope check-in. Follow me on Periscope @RawFoodMealPlan. I will go live at 6 PM CST / 7 PM EST to check-in with all of you to see how your progress has been.