After you raise your glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve, think about taking part in Dry January. Dry January is a monthlong break from alcohol. It’s a great way of breaking a pattern of drinking — no matter how much alcohol you normally drink.
Maybe, like many people, you noticed that you’re drinking more alcohol in recent years. While an occasional drink may not harm you, the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that no alcohol is considered risk free. Regular alcohol use increases your risk of many health conditions, including heart disease, liver disease, high blood pressure, and mental health issues.
Aside from the physical and mental health benefits, not drinking for a month lets you experience socializing, and even your daily home life, without alcohol. It gives you the opportunity to think more mindfully about your relationship with alcohol — why you drink and why you may not want to reach for a drink.
Download the Dry January app to get motivating tips and support.
Have some strategies to handle social situations where you may be tempted to have a drink.
If you like to have a drink to relax or de-stress, think about other relaxing activities you can do, such as yoga, taking a walk with a friend, or knitting.
Look for activities to do with friends that don’t revolve around drinking.
Tell people you’re close to or socialize with that you’re participating in Dry January. This will help them support you and limit opportunities for drinking.
Think about what you’ll do in February. Will you continue to abstain, or will you drink but perhaps be more mindful about it? Make a plan so you can maintain a healthy approach to drinking alcohol.
You probably know you should eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Here’s why it’s so important. Many studies have shown that people who eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables each day have a dramatically lower risk of dying from all causes compared with those who eat only 2 servings per day.
Yet adults in the U.S. eat an average of 1 serving of fruit and 1.5 servings of vegetables per day — that’s half the recommendation.
Add fruit to oatmeal, cereal, and yogurt for breakfast.
Grab a banana or apple as a midday snack rather than chips or granola bars.
Snack on crudités and dip, or carrots and hummus.
Add chopped vegetables into omelets, soup, rice, macaroni and cheese, and pasta sauce.
Bulk up sandwiches with dark leaf lettuce, tomato, and cucumbers.
Make a smoothie with fresh or frozen fruit and a handful of spinach or kale.
Replace half the ground beef in burgers or meatloaf with chopped, cooked mushrooms.
Replace a starchy side with a vegetable like broccoli or cauliflower.
Drinking enough water every day helps keep you healthy and prevent dehydration. Dehydration can cause some short- and long-term problems, like mood changes, cloudy thinking, constipation, and kidney stones.
A large study found that even being slightly dehydrated can increase the risk of chronic conditions such as heart and lung disease, and could even decrease your longevity.
The recommended intake of fluids is about 9 cups (8 oz) per day for women and 13 cups (8 oz) for men, though this varies depending on your weight, level of exercise, and where you live.
It’s also important to try not to quench your thirst with sugar-sweetened drinks. Sugary drinks are the main source of added sugars in the U.S. diet. Frequently drinking these beverages is linked to weight gain and a range of health issues.
Popular sweetened drinks include:
Sodas
Lemonade
Sweetened iced tea and coffees
Fruit drinks
Try to choose water as your main beverage.
If you get bored with water, add a squirt of lemon juice. Or make a pitcher of water and add cucumbers, oranges, or strawberries to give it flavor.
Instead of sodas, try low-calorie flavored seltzer.
You can also get your fluids from milk, tea, or coffee.
Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, which also contain water.
Many people know that aerobic exercise is the way to improve fitness, manage weight, and improve your heart health. But you may not know that muscle-strengthening exercises have many of these benefits as well.
The CDC’s fitness recommendation includes strength training twice a week. But only about a third of adults in the U.S. meet these guidelines.
This year, make a New Year’s resolution to add 2 days of strength training into your weekly exercise routine (along with 150 minutes of aerobic activity).
There are a range of ways to strength-train — including with or without weights. Just be sure you’re doing exercises that work all major muscle groups including:
Legs
Hips
Back
Abdomen
Chest
Shoulders
Arms
Start small. Start with 15-20 minutes of strength training each session.
Use machines. If you belong to a gym, use the weight machine circuit, which can make it easy to work many different muscle groups. It’s also good for beginners because they tend to be easier to manage than free weights.
Weights aren’t necessary. You can use your body weight for resistance by doing squats, lunges, sit-ups, and push-ups.
Try a YouTube video. You can find strength-training videos to do at home using light hand weights and tension bands.
Meditating is a good way to help lower your stress and may have other benefits like reducing depression and blood pressure. Meditation teaches you to focus your brain on breathing or on repeated sounds (mantras). It also focuses your awareness on what’s going on in your body or around you.
But it takes effort and time to learn how to meditate, which can be daunting for many people. Meditation apps, though, have made it more accessible and offer a convenient way to dip your toe in.
There are different types of apps. Some offer free trials or free features. A few options are:
Aim to practice meditating 2 or 3 days a week. Eventually you might increase it to a daily practice.
Think of a good time to set aside 15-20 minutes to meditate. Meditating in the morning can start your day off in a relaxed mode. In the evening before bed, it can help you unwind and sleep better.
Learning to keep your mind from wandering is a key aspect of meditating. It takes a lot of practice. Try not to get frustrated when your mind wanders. Just refocus and start again.
Staying up to date on check-ups, vaccinations, and screenings is one of the best things you can do to stay healthy and reduce your chances of getting sick. It also increases the likelihood that you’ll catch an illness early, when it may be easier to treat.
There are many types of conditions that can be detected early by routine blood tests and screenings, including:
High cholesterol
High blood pressure
Diabetes (or high blood sugar levels)
Thyroid issues
Cancer
Osteoporosis
Screening recommendations vary depending on your age, sex, health and family history, and other factors. If you aren’t sure which ones you need, talk with your primary care provider. Be sure to ask about physicals, blood tests, cancer screenings, and vaccinations.
Schedule your annual physical in advance. Often healthcare professionals are booked for “well visits” months in advance.
Call your primary care provider’s office to find out if you’re overdue for any screening tests or vaccinations.
Check the CDC vaccine schedule to make sure you’re up to date on your vaccinations.
Make appointments for a dental cleaning every 6 months.
Schedule an eye exam annually.
Add annual reminders in your calendar to remind you of your screenings and exams.
It’s no surprise that staying connected to friends can improve your mental health and well-being. There’s plenty of research that suggests that having strong social support is linked to a range of health benefits including a longer life.
And one study showed that having just one good conversation with a friend during the day can reduce stress and boost happiness. It also goes a long way to strengthen friendships.
But sometimes, when you’re busy with work and raising children, it’s easy to put friendships on the back burner.
Make a resolution to reach out to one friend a day. Ideally, it’s best to spend time with your friends in person. But phone calls are a great way to connect, too.
Schedule a phone call or Zoom call so you can both plan for it.
To prioritize calls with friends, think about it as a date or your activity for the night, rather than something you have to squeeze in between other evening tasks.
If you feel crunched for time, set a time limit on your phone call.
Walk and talk. Take advantage of times when you’re walking to call a friend.
Schedule an in-person walk and talk with a local friend.
If you don’t have time for a call or visit, have a quick text conversation. It doesn’t give you all the benefits of a phone call or in-person interaction, but it keeps your connection going.
One of the reasons people skip New Year’s resolutions is that they think they don’t last. But there are things you can do to increase the chances that your resolutions will stick.
Just remember that developing a new habit takes time and effort, so try not to get discouraged when you hit a roadblock or your progress seems slow.
To improve the odds you’ll stick with your goals and achieve them, follow these tips:
Set realistic resolutions. Aiming for large goals sets you up for failure. Instead make your goals small and achievable. For example, if you want to be more active, walking for 30 minutes 3 times a week is a more realistic goal than going to a gym every day.
Think about the “why.” Write down the reasons why you want to achieve a goal. Ideally, your reasons should be “internal motivators” — ones that are personal and in line with your values. For example, exercising so you are fit enough to keep up with your children is an internal motivator. An “external motivator” may be approval from others or awards.
Hold yourself accountable. Tell your friends and families about your goals and ask them to check in on your progress periodically.
Set a date for achieving your goal. This gives you something to work towards. Once you achieve this goal by that date, you can set another slightly bigger goal.
Use reminders. Your resolution may not stay top of mind as time goes on. Write it down somewhere that you’ll see it often, and put reminders on your calendar.
Be patient. Change rarely happens overnight. It can take weeks to months for a new habit to become ingrained.
Don’t expect perfection. There will be times you’ll slip up and stray from your health habits. But that’s normal, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up or give up on your goal. Just get back on track as soon as you can.