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Five KEY Healthy Lifestyle Tips

1. Wake Up Early & Plan Your Day

Time management is one of the hardest things in life to master. Many people wander through life blindly, everyday praying they make their train, praying they have time to make it to the gym, and hoping they aren’t late for work or their boss will kill them. But that’s stressful, and stress is detrimental to our health. We could go on forever as to why stress is bad for your health but we’ll keep it simple: Emotional stressthat stays around for weeks or months can weaken the immune system and cause high blood pressure, fatigue, depression, anxiety and even heart disease. In particular, too much epinephrine (adrenalin/anxiety) can be harmful to your heart, which then becomes physical stress & that is a WHOLE other boat of problems for your body. Most people go about their day never knowing when they’ll get just where they are planning to go. Most people hate getting out of bed (when we say most, we mean everyone), but the most important moment of your day, is when instead of pressing snooze and striping yourself of the key moments in the morning to plan your day, you pop out of bed and ask yourself, “OK, what do I need to get done today?” By asking yourself that one simple question, you can alleviate yourself from all of the stress that comes from the term “rush”. No body likes to be rushed, and when we rush, we feel stressed. Again, no good! So pop out of bed, set your ONE alarm for five minutes earlier everyday, and give yourself a mental map of an allotted amount of time to transition from work, to the gym, to any other prior engagements you’ve made for that day. If you make this a habit over time, you’ll begin to notice the normalcy that comes with just taking the extra moment to plan your day and lifting that stressful weight of rushing off of your back. (P.S. It only takes 7 days to create a habit, of say, waking up early—So…what are you waiting for!?!?)

2.Eat Nutritious Breakfast

Nothing sets us out on the right track for the day like nourishing our bodies with the proper foods for the day. Consider every morning a fresh start to becoming a better version of yourself. Mornings are the greatest gift we were given. For those of you stuck in some sick cycle of life, or someone who has had more bad days than good: consider life beautiful because it has given you mornings. Mornings give us the time to erase the day before, to say, “This is behind me, I have survived, and now it’s time to kick today’s a**!” That is why the morning is SO crucial to our vitality. Did you have a serious snack binger the night before? Did you drink way more than you planned too and over slept just slightly? THAT’S OK— as long as you pick yourself up the next morning, eat a nourishing breakfast, and go tackle the day stronger and better than the day before. The best part is, every morning we are one day older than we were—yes, wiser as well. So learn from the day before, learn from the month prior, you’re already a better person than you were. So make the right choices when you wake up, load your breakfast up with healthy fats (avocados, coconut oil, whole eggs, chia seeds, nuts, and yes… lots and lots of acai…), and load up on healthy proteins and go kick today’s booty!!

3. Get Out

Whether it is to the gym or to the park: get outside. Living in Hoboken often becomes a difficult struggle especially when it’s cold and wet outside but the truth is, nature will always be nature and you need to make a decision if you always want to be someone who uses the weather as an excuse to determine the destiny of your day or not. Our advice is set a goal of at least a half hour of physical activity. Walk to the grocery store instead of driving, walk up by the river, or, walk to the gym. Walking releases stress, it gives us a critical time to ourselves to think and reflect. When we do not give ourselves a time of the day solely dedicated to the release of stress (exercising), we begin to go a little stir crazy living under the pressure we put on ourselves each and everyday. Stress, again, is very detrimental to our health in a plethora of ways. Therefor, anything we do to skip out on alleviating stress, only comes back to haunt us at the most unwanted times. Set a goal of 30 minutes and we can almost guarantee that due to the abundance of healthy endorphins that you release during an exercise, you’ll boost that exercise up to 45 minutes or sometimes an hour. (**Intense exercising for longer than an hour is no suggested; consult a physician if you intend on exceeding 1 hour of maximum strength exercising**). We here at Shaka believe that allotting AT LEAST a half hour of the day fully to YOURSELF, is one of the most imperative healthy lifestyle tips you will take into consideration.

4. Eat this, NOT that

While exercising is one of the most imperative things you can do for both your mental and physical health: You have no idea what eating the right foods for you can do for both mental and physical health. While we would never ever tell you that you CANNOT eat something, because as we said in our previous blog cutting any one food group from your diet can be just as detrimental as it can be to eat it in excess, we can tell you that you do have choices to make. You have choices when you choose to eat out, you have choices when you open your fridge, or your cabinet late at night. You always have a choice, and that is the first rule of thumb when choosing what to eat and what not to eat. Everyone is different; we can’t make you eat anything and we can’t make you not. What we can do id just promise you that anything you WANT TO EAT, there is 100% a healthy alternative that is just as tasty, but 10x healthier for you. So we’ll keep it short and say: do your research. Learn about yourself. Know yourself most importantly. What do you like? What do you not like? Determine and decide, what’s a hard yes, and a hard no for your dietary restrictions. Food is one of the greatest parts about life and it shouldn’t be a job. So look for the healthy alternatives, read up about it on the internet, talk to your friends, your coworkers and your peers, and see what you can do to make the right choices for you. The best part about this vital role that eating healthy food plays in our life— most people are on board with this whole new “eat healthy” thing, I know we here at Shaka are. We promise the benefits ARE as good as the people say they are. Food is a gift from the earth itself, of course we should treat it as so by only consuming the best!

5. Count Your Blessings

Lastly, we’re going to leave you with this: Nothing will make us appreciate the beauty that exists in life all around us like appreciating what is right in front of us. Tell someone you’re thankful for them today. Compliment somebody who rubs you the wrong way. Do not spend one extra second of your day dwelling on something you cannot change. Because we here at Shaka understand that life is precious, that life is a gift. And a healthy lifestyle does not only begin with how early you wake up, how often you exercise, how well you eat, but rather it begins with how well you treat your mind, and the minds of those around you. It begins with a positive perspective, if you can master seeing the good, you’re already well on your way to living a healthy lifestyle—No tips, or hacks involved. Just pure bliss—because it exists everyday, all around you, and we promise, the sooner you begin to thank life for 5 things you’re blessed to have, and be apart of, you’re already 1/5 of the way to being the best you, that you possibly can be. Thanks for reading guys. We hope you choose. Choose to live a better life. We’re all only given one chance at this thing we call life. And sometimes it’s pretty tough. Heck, most of the time it’s kicking us down more than it’s picking us up. Most of the times you have no control, the only thing you can control are your choices & your perspective. We hope you choose right. We hope you choose positivity. And overall, we hope you choose to live a healthy and happy lifestyle, because there is only ONE you, and we’re positive you’re pretty rad. So keep on keeping on, and we’ll be back with more for you next week.