Baby Steps to a Healthy Lifestyle

The journey to a healthy lifestyle can be long and filled with many hurdles that need surmounting in small, toddler-type steps with consistency and persistence. Of course, healthy living or any other concerted effort at improvement must be preceded by a desire to succeed. The want to must be present along with the support of significant others such as a wonderful spouse/best friend, other family and friends, and even the doctor(s) and other personnel at the clinic. These latter professionals should be positively upbeat, enthusiastically happy, energetically passionate about health, know your name quickly, and care about your health challenges. Delores and I found all this together at Exodus Health Clinic in Brentwood, Tennessee. If we can do it at our age, so can you. Unless my memory fails me, here are the steps we took on the road to a healthier lifestyle:

1. Saw a wellness physician chiropractor who advocates and practices holistic health – nutrition and diet; vitamins and supplements; restoring the Arc of Life in the neck and straightening the spine by anti-inflammatory adjustments (three times a week for the first three months); adjustments that fix the spine and don’t just relieve symptomatic pain (although they do that, too); changing the body from acidic to alkaline (mainly by what we do and don’t put into it); detoxifying the body of unnatural and unnecessary chemicals and substances; and developing a positive attitude with a life vision and action goals.

2. Began shopping for and eating on Dr. Axe’s Healing Diet (natural/organic/raw fruits and veggies; grass fed, range free, hormone free beef, bison, chicken; cage free eggs; wild caught Alaskan tuna and salmon; basically replacing our man diet with God food and learning that fast food doesn’t have to be junk food). Within one month we had lost weight, gotten off all medications (diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol); and were feeling great with maximum levels of energy and vitality. Cooking healthily together became a favorite couple’s activity with a lot of experimenting in the kitchen.

3. Eschew many of the toxic substances never to put in your body mainly because they are toxic. These included, but are not necessarily limited to pork, shrimp, artificial sweeteners, pasteurized dairy, and processed sugar.

4. Started taking the “right” healthy vitamins, nutrients, and supplements (natural, raw, and/or organic) as recommended by our wellness physician. This meant chunking the Wal-Mart multi-vitamin and selecting a natural, whole foods (a type, not a store) vitamin. We discovered that vitacost.com is a Website that has all sorts of natural, organic, raw, and healthy foods, vitamins, nutrients, supplements, and even hygiene products, most at much lower cost than Whole Foods (the store) or other stores (if you can even find any of this at other stores – Kroger in our Middle Tennessee area does have some).

5. Rid our kitchen of the microwave. Lots of research is available on the unhealthy nature of that appliance – not only the radiation danger but also what that level of cooking heat does to anything healthy in most foods even just “warmed” in the wave machine (tsunami when it comes to healthy living). Yes, warming foods in the toaster oven or on the stove top does take a little longer; but it is so much healthier and better tasting that way.

6. Without a microwave we no longer use for all the plastic containers we had used for years for warming stuff to eating temperature. We still use some of the “safer” plastics (odd numbers, it seems) to store food in the refrigerator and take in our lunches.

7. Tossed the Teflon-coated cookware in favor of much healthier stainless steel and glass cookware.

8. Changed our drinking habits to healthy water (Delores does tea as well – often hot, especially in this cold winter of 2010). We got an Aquasana filter for our kitchen sink for most of our drinking and cooking water as well as one for the master bath shower so our bodies aren’t soaked in chlorine, lead, and other toxic chemicals every time we bathe. We rely on bottled spring water mostly when away from home as well.

9. Evolved into using natural personal and household hygiene products (still making this gradual transition). We probably should have chunked the junk immediately, but we didn’t. We eased into it as we ran out of something. We have mostly replaced things such as the laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, bath bar soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, breath mints, etc. I am ordering natural sunscreen and bug repellent for my mission trip to Honduras this June.

10. Treated the initial cold symptoms naturally. This meant at the first feeling of getting a head cold, I put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in each ear (alternating for three minutes each, then draining and doing the other ear). I felt the fizz as when I put that on a cut. The literature indicates that germs enter the ears as much as the mouth and other facial openings. I also started popping 3-4 thousand mg of Vitamin C per day in 1K doses. My cold symptoms were totally gone in three days and never progressed past the mild stage – no cough or sore throat at all. This was the first time in years that a cold didn’t last at least a week usually turning into a sinus infection and often to bronchitis with a hacking cough that would linger sometimes weeks after the other symptoms had faded. That was over three months ago and no hint of a cold has returned this winter. So much for even the passing thought of getting a flu shot.

11. Purchased and began using pH strips to keep track of our journey from a body that is acidic to alkaline at the “ideal” level of 7.3.

12. Added houseplants to the main rooms. This will help clean and filter the indoor air that is often more polluted than that outdoors. Will add a few more as spring arrives.

13. Exercised more regularly (still not bursting as much as we should) using the traction and head weight apparatuses that Dr. Josh sent home with us (just like the ones we use each time we go to the clinic for adjustments). We also bought some 2, 3, 5, and 8 pound dumbbells to help with the weights that he says we should mix with the burst training. We liberated Jiggling George from the closet and began using that again (vibrating ankle machine that helps with circulation and relaxation in the lower legs.

14. Began reading a lot of healthy living books such as:
· Maximum Energy by Dr. Ted Broer
· The Maker’s Diet by Dr. Jordan Rubin
· Eat To Live by Dr. Joel Furman
· The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth by Dr. Jonny Bowden
· The Anti-Inflammatory Diet by Dr. Andrew Weil

15. Started a Life Plan notebook including numerous articles printed from both the draxe.com and mercola.com Websites. These contain lots of articles on a wide variety of health topics. I copy them, paste them into a blank Microsoft Word document, “clean” them up so they take less paper, and print them. We then read these aloud to each other at various times when at home or traveling.

16. Created a vision board illustrating dreams and goals for both short and long-term. These “visions” for the future included physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual “action items” for the rest of our lives together.

17. Began reading a couples devotional book together. We started with Night Light by James and Shirley Dobson.