7 Simple Healthy Resolutions to Optimize Your Health: How to Make a Healthy Start in 2022
Author: Millennia TEA’s Official Science Steeper, Allison Tannis MsC RHN
The most common resolutions are exercising more and losing weight, but are those resolutions you should make (and actually maintain)? Simple resolutions are best when you’re trying to make changes that will optimize your health. Here’s what science says are the best healthy resolutions to make (and keep), that are simple.
Are New Year’s Resolutions Healthy?
It’s suggested that people who choose to make a resolution are 10 times more likely to keep them over those who pursue improvement in another way. So, yes, a New Year’s resolution can be a healthy choice. But… (oh, the dreaded ‘but’ in an answer), to make a resolution that you can keep, it needs to be simple, attainable, and motivating.
What Are Some of the Best Healthy Resolutions?
With so many ways to live a healthier lifestyle being posted on social media and wellness websites, it can be hard to know what is the best resolution you can make. From experts and based on science, here are 7 simple changes you can commit to making this New Year that will optimize your health.
7 Simple, Healthy Resolutions to Optimize Your Health in 2022 (Backed by Science)
1. Eat More Plants
Eating more plants is good for the planet, linked to lower rates of many diseases, and may help shrink your waistline, according to scientists. Eating 3 more vegetable servings a day led to the equivalence of a 1 cm reduction in waist circumference in adult women, according to a scientific review of studies.
2. Move More
It makes you feel happy when you move – talk about a simple resolution to optimize your health. A walk after dinner each night is one of the best ways to increase your daily movement while reducing stress and promoting sleep. Need more reasons to move? Evidence shows exercise makes people feel happy and smarter! To help, find what type of exercise you have positive feelings about. For example, do you enjoy being social? Then, surround yourself with active people - research shows hanging out with active people can help propel you to exercise.
3. Go to Bed on Time
Getting enough sleep could make you smarter, improve your skin, reduce your risk of dementia, and promote healthy weight loss, according to studies. Recommendations vary; however, the majority of health organizations suggest adults should sleep about 8 hours a day, with 6 to 7 hours being sufficient for some elderly adults. Getting to bed on time a few nights a week is a healthy, simple resolution to optimize your health.
4. Choose Convenience Foods Less Often
Swap out a commonly consumed convenience food in your routine for a more nutritious, quick snack to optimize your health this new year. In scientific papers, the consumption of ultra-processed convenience foods is associated with an increased risk of many diseases, including weight gain. A fan favourite quick, healthy snack is a green smoothie: you can create in a blender in under 3 minutes, transfer into a reusable cup and take with you as you run out the door. That’s what you call, a simple healthy resolution!
5. Hydrate
Seems simple enough – drink more water. But, what about optimizing your health a bit more? What if you hydrated with water that’s steeped with beneficial nutrients from the tea plant leaves scientists know supports your health in many ways, including:
- Productivity enhancer
- Benefits your skin
- Immune supporting nutrients
- Cardiovascular support
- Stress reducing
- Supports weight loss
How Do You Make a Good New Year’s Resolution?
It’s possible to make a resolution you can keep. Start by setting yourself up for success by choosing a resolution that is motivating. That could mean you choose a resolution that when you do it, you feel a sensation of wellness, such as movement, mediation, or healthy eating. A goal, that has small steps along the way you can successfully achieve, can be really motivating. Accountability can also help, so tell a friend about your goal. Most importantly, be kind to yourself – perfection simply isn’t achievable, nor worth striving for. But, progress towards a healthier lifestyle, is.
6 Tips to Making a Resolution You Can Keep
- Choose a small, specific goal
- Set attainable benchmarks
- Aim for progress, over perfection
- Stay positive
- Tell a friend about it
- Don’t give up
How Do You Start a Healthy Resolution?
You just start. It doesn’t have to be the first day of a New Year to start making small, simple, healthier choices that make you feel better and healthier. Why not start today?
Whether your healthy resolution is to go to bed by 10pm a few more nights of the week, or to incorporate more plant superfoods, such as Millennia Tea Superfood cubes, into your day – remember, you are capable of making positive change. Nothing feels better than healthy.
You’ve got this!
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Impact of sleep on the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. Curr Opin Psychiatry 2014 Nov; 27(6):478-483.
β-Amyloid accumulation in the human brain after one night of sleep deprivation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2018; 115(17).
Excessive daytime sleepiness and fatigue may indicate accelerated brain aging in cognitively normal late middle-aged and older adults. Sleep Med 2017 Apr; 32: 236-243.
Molecular ties between lack of sleep and weight gain. National Institutes of Health, 2016.
A systematic review of the relationship between physical activity and happiness. Journal of Happiness Studies 2018.
Can exercise make you smarter, happier and have more neurons? A hormetic perspective. Front Neurosci 2016;10: 93.
Desire for weight loss, weight-related social contact and body mass outcomes. Obesity 2016 May, 24:7.
Effects of perceived fitness level of exercise partner on intensity of exertion. Journal of Social Sciences 2010; 6(1): 50-54.
Consumption of ultra-processed foods and health outcomes: a systematic review of epidemiological studies. Nutr J 2020 Aug 20;19(1):86.
The effects of tea on psychophysiological stress responsivity and post-stress recovery: a randomised double-blind trial. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 2007 Jan; 190(1): 81-9.
