5 BEST THINGS YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR BODY THIS SUMMER

My favorite season is approaching ~ summer means long days, sun on your face, feet in the sand, and feeling like every day is something to celebrate. Let's get ready, mind and body!

Jen's 5 best things you can do for your body this summer

1.  Pick one "first thing in the morning" healthy habit

This one is easy.  Commit to one of hundreds of habits that the healthiest and most successful people on the planet do every day as a part of their morning routine.  You can opt for something tangible, adding a new piece to your dietary regimen, or something to increase mindfulness and presence throughout the day.  As always, add in just one at a time.

Here are a few examples of habits you can create as soon as you wake up:

  • drink 16 ounces of hot or room temperature water with lemon juice (squeezed from 1 whole lemon)
  • take a (high quality) probiotic
  • write or think about 5 things you are grateful for specifically from the day before
  • stretch or do sun salutations
  • drink a green juice (make your own or purchase cold-pressed juices such as Suja or Blueprint brands)
  • jump on a rebounder (mini trampoline) for 10 minutes
  • meditate for 15 minutes
  • journal
  • perform deep breathing exercises for 5-10 minutes
  • set an intention for the day, such as, "Today, I get everything done with time to spare."

2. Make one of Jen's salad dressings

Salads are one of the easiest ways to add in real food, especially our much-needed green vegetables.  They are so much more than the old iceberg-cucumber-tomato side salad of my youth - now they are a packed, delicious, meal.  While some people actually love salads (like me - visit my salad page!), many of us find salads a chore and a bore.  To me, the dressing makes the meal, and so I encourage my clients to choose one of my Top 5 Dressings and make one every week.  You can double, triple, quadruple the recipe as needed for your family, and keep in in a mason jar on the counter.  Then, when you are ready to eat, throw the dry ingredients in a bowl and toss with the ready-made dressing.  

This is great for dinner salads when you might be short on time, but I also like having dressing ready for my "assembly line" lunch salads.  Lay out 5 Pyrex bowls at the start of the week and fill each with the dry ingredients for your salad, "assembly line-style."  In the morning, grab your lunch salad, drizzle some dressing from the mason jar, and go.  Each of my top 5 dressings are so delicious that they will actually make you want to eat more salads - maybe even one a day for the summer...

3. Add in greens and supergreens every day

Greens are the number one most-missing food in the average American's diet.  For some reason, we find it difficult to get them in throughout the course of a day.  I offer my clients six options for adding in greens, and ask them to chose one every day.  Once that becomes habit, then they can move to two per day, and then, (if they really want to feel great) three a day.  Click on each one to see examples:

4. Touch the earth

For thousands of years, humans walked barefoot on the Earth, and reaped the benefits of its healing energy.  Now, we live and work indoors, and we spend our time outdoors wearing rubber-soled shoes, which prevent connection with the Earth and its powerful source of energy and healing.  Our planet has an amazing ability to neutralize the positively-charged free radicals that are involved in the chronic inflammation at the root of so many of our modern imbalances.  It is called "grounding" or "Earthing," and it is a great gift from Mother Nature.  

An excerpt from grounded.com:  "Earth is basically a battery that is continually being replenished by solar radiation, lightning, and heat from its deep-down molten core.  The natural rhythmic pulsations of energy flowing through and emanating from the surface the earth keep the biological machinery and global life running in rhythm and balance - and that includes you!  Unfortunately, we live like cut flowers, detached from the nourishing Earth energy." 

The lucky part is that all we have to do is touch the Earth - by walking barefoot on grass, sand, dirt or concrete, touching a tree, gardening with bare hands, laying on the ground, being in the ocean - to be connected to the FREE energy source that was meant to recharge us all along.  Technology has brought us grounding devices, such as mats, sheets, blankets and sandals that will act as conductors for Earth energy while we are indoors.

For more on this subject, check out Earthing:  The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? by Clint Ober.

5. Commit to hydrate

Do you drink at least half your body weight in ounces of water every day?  More on hot summer days or intense workout days?  If you find yourself thirsty, you're already dehydrated.  If you drink coffee, tea or alcohol daily, you're even more dehydrated.  Commit to hydrate your brain and body by starting each day with two 16-ounce glasses of lemon water.  Then carry a (preferably glass) water bottle throughout the day to keep track of your intake.  If you fill your bottle twice, you'll know you got in 40 ounces, for example.  

Note:  water quality matters.  If you don't filter, your water, your body will be the filter!  If you are in the habit of using plastic water bottles, upgrade to a glass bottle and use a charcoal filter to keep it pure.  

Jennifer Kellyhealth, summer, mind, body, block 3