A Healthier Lifestyle this Summer – LinkedIn Challenge
A Healthier Lifestyle this Summer – LinkedIn Challenge
You will be pleased to hear, I am not going to challenge you to stop doing anything! You already know what is not good for your health. Instead, I want to encourage and motivate you to start looking after your body. It is truly miraculous, so let’s stop taking good health for granted. I know you will feel the benefits of undertaking this LinkedIn Challenge for June, along with my publisher, Bookbook Learning. I am suggesting five small challenges that will quickly have a positive impact on your health and provide you with a Healthier Lifestyle this summer. These are the five changes, which you will be committing/promising to undertake this June:
- Have fresh lemon juice in water as your first drink of the day.
- Keep your body hydrated by drinking more fresh natural water at work.
- Take an apple to work and eat it when you have a sugar craving or with your lunch.
- Eat a new type of vegetable and get a variety of green vegetables into your diet, each day this June.
- Undertake to do at least 30 minutes of some form of exercise, every day of June.
These changes are not too onerous and should be easy for you to incorporate into your daily lives. If you rise to this challenge, then you should feel the benefits by the end of June. Remember consistency is key so stick with me. It is exciting, I hope you agree, and I will look forward to your feedback please at the end of the challenge. I will be doing a weekly video to help keep you on track.
The first challenge is that in the morning when you rise, I want you to have freshly squeezed lemon juice, (juice of one small whole lemon), in a large glass or mug of warm water, not boiling water as this will kill the vitamin C content. If you find lemon juice too sour, then add a little honey. Do not clean your teeth straight after this as lemon juice may soften the enamel of your teeth. I tend to clean my teeth as soon as I get out of bed.
Lemon juice helps alkalise the body, sounds strange but it is true. When our bodies are too acidic it creates inflammation. Inflammation is not all bad. You will have noticed when you cut or injure yourself that the area swells and becomes red, it is the body’s healing mechanism. Tiny macrophages are busy doing their work, healing the wound. But too much inflammation is bad and can be responsible for many illnesses, so keeping the body as alkaline as possible, helps protect us from disease.
Also, during the night, the body is busy cleaning and repairing so there is debris, and the lemon juice will help flush this from the body. Makes sense now, I hope.
The second challenge is easy, I want you to commit to drinking more plain water during the day. Aim to drink half a litre of water in the first 2 hours at work. Keep water on your desk and keep hydrated. At least 5 to 6 glasses during the day. I know this may be difficult for some people, but the benefits to your body are enormous. Keeping the body hydrated will improve your concentration, your digestive system, and your skin, and help all the intricate processes that are going on all the time in our bodies. I drink warm water so you could try and see if you like it better that way.
The third challenge is also easy. Take an apple to work preferably organic. Eat it when you have that craving for something sweet. Apples are brilliant, they are like eating a multivitamin tablet with the benefit of fibre which we all need more of in our diets. They are also low on the glycaemic index so will not shoot your blood sugar levels sky high. If you don’t like apples, then choose a fruit that you like but not ripe bananas as these are high on the glycaemic index and hard to digest for some.
We all know we should be eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, so challenge number 4 is to include one new vegetable into your diet every day, for the whole of June. For example, Kale, Spinach, Asparagus, Broccoli, Chard, Green Beans. Any green vegetable that you don’t normally eat and not the same one every day because the aim is to get more variety into your diet while increasing the number of fresh greens you are eating, which are packed with antioxidants.
The final challenge is of course to increase or build more exercise into your daily lives. At least 30 minutes of exercise that increases your heart rate. You must know by now my mantra is “Move that Body.” We were born to move, not to sit at a desk in front of a computer screen all day. Remember to get up and stretch those legs frequently. I challenge you to do at least 30 minutes of exercise every single day in June. Walk, jog, run up and down stairs, do squats, lift weights, dance, play tennis anything you enjoy will be good.
Well, what are you waiting for, just put your name down on Bookboon’s LinkedIn or the Access Group, or my page and we are ready to go. Why not get your colleagues involved and promise yourselves a healthier lifestyle for the second half of the year once you feel the health benefits of these changes, I am sure you will continue taking better care of your health.
Live with joy and health 💚
Elizabeth Beetham