5 Ways to Improve Your Health and Life for the New Year - Part 1

Most of us royally fail at keeping resolutions for the new year, me included.  But I have found that actually writing a list of positive changes I would like to make in my life, and then picking one to pray over and work on has actually worked to gradually improve my life.

I call it "Baby Steps", after one of our family's favorite all-time movies - "What About Bob?"  Especially as I get older, I just can't accept living in a rut, doing and being the same way without making a concentrated effort to better myself, health-wise, spiritually, and intellectually.  

As I learn about ways to live a more frugal, healthy, God-filled life, my heart becomes burdened for all of my friends and family with a desire for them to be able to make positive changes as well.  That's what love does.  It desires good things for those you love.  Like God desires good things for us.

I write down my goals for the year in my journal, and also on a page in my budget book where I will see it often.   I may also write down the goal I pick on a little piece of paper and tape it somewhere I can see it often, but not necessarily where every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the house can see it all the time.  I haven't made my list for the coming year yet, but I have been pondering it, and will be sitting down soon to compose it.  I don't call them resolutions, because I feel like it will be destined to fail if I do.

So, having said that, here are 5 positive changes we have made over the last year or couple years that I feel have helped us as individuals, and as a family:

1.  We progressed from not buying white sugar at all, to buying unrefined sugar like Demerera or Sucanat, to switching entirely over to Pure Stevia, and occasionally honey for our sweetener.  Even Amber and Josh have made this change.  White sugar is what I call "death in a bag", and it had to go!  It is easy to research the effects of white sugar on your health.  There is nothing good about it.  Even unrefined sugar causes your blood sugar to spike, which makes you gain weight and also promotes diabetes.  We do indulge sometimes when we are away from home or eating out, but not too much, because it usually makes us feel icky.  Once we stopped buying sugar, ways to cope with the change just happened naturally.  Sugar cravings can be overcome!

2.  Getting rid of our microwave.  This was a little harder to get used to at first.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out how I would melt butter, pop popcorn (microwave popcorn is also "death in a bag"), or defrost frozen food.  HAHA, I am sure my homestead ancestors were laughing at me from the other side.  Once again, when the change was made, and we didn't have a choice, we adapted.  Now it is like second nature, and we don't miss it at all.  Microwaves kill the nutrients in your food, and you absorb the waves when it is on and you are standing close to it.

3.  Not buying margarine, and rarely using food packaged in a can, even if it is BPA-free.  Margarine is basically one molecule away from plastic, and is more or less a non-food in composition.  Deadly for your health.  It had to go.  Kroger- brand canned food are supposed to be BPA-free (BPA is an industrial chemical used to make plastic), and some organic brands say BPA-free, but that doesn't change the fact that most of the food in cans is already over-processed, nutrient-deficient, and probably has preservatives added that aren't good for health.  It does require some extra preparation to go can-free, but even a reduction in their use would help.  The closer to raw that you can eat your fruits and vegetables, the better.  We keep lots and lots of produce available to use for cooking and eating raw.  The expense is still WAY cheaper than doctor's visits and prescriptions, and better than getting as sick in the first place.

4.  Drastically reducing our TV time.  We have one old television in our house.  It has been years since we had satellite or cable.  We progressed from the whole shebang to the Christian programming provided by Dish called Sky-Angel (This was before we moved 3 years ago).  When our "life-long" subscription became obsolete due to technology upgrades, we ditched it all.  We are not completely anti-media.  We have decent movies and series that we like.  We watch them on the Clear-play (clearplay.com) DVD player that Amber saved up for and bought. You can set the level of filter you want.  We have it set to filter out all profanity (it even filters out "Oh my God", which makes us happy), all sex scenes, and some of the gorier violence.  I can't tell you the cleansing effect on our spirits to not always have JUNK of one kind or another entering our ears, minds, and eyes.  I WANT to be sensitized.  I have been de-sensitized, and I didn't like it.  TV crap offends me, and I don't want it not to.  We also listen to (on our Sirius) and watch football when we are at my mom's or brother's house.  We don't prefer most commercials, or scantily-dressed cheerleaders, so we usually switch it to something decent in between.  If there isn't anything on, we mute it during commercials.  We don't mind missing award shows and other things like that where we KNOW the envelope will be pushed and we will see things that don't need to be viewed.  We were quite addicted to media at one time, and now we aren't, so I know it can be done.  Any baby steps for improvement in this area would definitely be beneficial, and you will notice the difference in your mind and spirit as well.

5.  Still working on this one.  We have chosen to live a frugal, sustainable, minimal lifestyle.  We went from home ownership of a 2100 sq foot home in town with porches, decks, hot tub, pool, fenced 1/2 acre yard, and tons of closets to non-home ownership (it is my mother-in-law's house, she now lives with her daughter) of a country home that it probably 1200 square feet or less.  It had one closet when we moved in;  it now has two.  Amber's room is in the attic in true American Girl fashion.  She likes it there.  We had to reduce to fit our stuff in the home.  We have done it several times since.  If we have clothes or shoes that aren't worn much or at all, they go.   Just last week, in an effort to reduce again, I went through my kitchen cabinets and packed away more plates, cups, coffee cups, and other items that we had too many of.  The kids can pick what they want when they leave home.  A lot of things end up going to the thrift store when we reduce.  I am developing an intense dislike for clutter of all kinds, and happily sort through things to get rid of, or save for the kids.  This is good, because we have little room for knick-knacks, and I hate dusting them anyway.  I like not being attached to material possessions, although this doesn't apply to my Kindle.  HAHA.  Reading is a life-long passion that helped replace TV time long ago.  The simple life is for us.

I sincerely hope that some of the changes we have been able to make over the last few years can help someone in some small way.  There are more changes for us in the future, and we will baby step along toward them as well.  Here's to improved health and happiness!