The joys of being healthy
When your body is at its peak performance you will have excellent mental clarity, energy throughout the day, sleep well, and you will not only look great but you will feel great as well. Making your health a top priority is important, since optimal health makes just about everything else in your life much better. Developing healthy behaviors and making them a part of your lifestyle is the key to staying healthy and young. We encourage you to explore this website; you will find helpful information and programs that fit every interest level. This resource guide is for you to enjoy the regional resource we have in Central Pennsylvania and make healthy living easy whether you are a novice or fanatical about your health. Up until now you have had to look between printed materials and several websites to get the information you wanted on obtaining and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Natural Health Information
As you explore, you will find the information is focused around natural health. Statistic show that if you are proactive with regard to your health the better quality of life you will enjoy. The key is to develop your own personal wellness program that will fit with your current abilities and interests. Everyone’s genetics and lifestyles are different, so there is no cookie cutter approach to meet everyone’s needs. It is recommended when you develop a program that it includes these basic guidelines to living healthy:

1. Breathe deeply- most people breathe shallow, and are not getting the proper amount of oxygen to transport nutrients throughout the body. It is recommended that you breathe deep until your lungs are full, hold it for a count of 4 and release slowly. Work you way up to 10 times at once and 3 times a day. You might feel light headed at first so be careful when you do it. Fresh air is best but it is not always possible. Doing this consistently you will find that you have more energy throughout the day.

2. Drink filtered water- Drinking water is extremely important since than half of your body is made up of water. Water helps to cool your body down, cushions organs and aids in the digestion process. It is recommended that you drink a minimum of 8 8oz glasses of water a day. Filtered water is recommended since your water supply could have chemicals and contaminants that can affect your health.

3. Physical Activity - Physical activity doesn’t have to mean going to the gym it can mean hiking, walking, roller-skating, what ever your interest might be as long as you are elevating your heart rate for 20 minutes or more, 3 to 4 days a week. If your body is not accustomed to this much activity, consult with your physician first and then work your way up to this. It is also important to add resistance training to your cardio workout as well. Resistance training should ideally be done with free weights, but you can start with yoga, DVD’s that work on isolated muscles groups or exercise bands.

4. Eat Healthy Foods- Everyone seems to be busy from morning to night, and the norm is to eat out of a box or fast food. Fast foods and boxed meals are highly processed, and are littered with chemicals and fats our body can not handle.

These foods are stored as fat and the chemicals used to process the foods are stored as toxins in the fat cells. In order to get the proper nutrition you must go as natural as possible. The rule of thumb is that the food must look like its source when you start food preparation and it must be in its natural form.

Meaning does the piece of meat look like chicken or does it look like an unidentifiable breaded object. Eating healthy on the run just requires a little advanced planning, but the nutritional value is worth it.

5. Take Supplements- In order to get the recommended daily allowance on all vitamins and minerals it is necessary to take quality supplements to maintain good health.

6. Eliminate Soda Pops- drinking sodas is the worst thing you can do for your immune system and your bones. One 20oz. soda has 90% of the maximum daily allowance of sugar in it. Don’t think that diet gets you off the hook, most diet drinks contain aspartame, when processed by the body it turns into formaldehyde. The high content of sugar and phosphates in the soda makes your body acidic. Your body fights the acid by taking stored calcium, starting with your jaw bone, to lower the acidic level naturally. If you continue drinking sodas your bones become brittle, which makes both men and women prone to fractures and osteoporosis. When the body runs out of calcium your immune system is severely compromised.

7. Reduce stress- If your life is full of stress or worry it is important to start on a stress reducing program. Stress is a contributor to poor immune function which is the main culprit for illness. Yoga, exercise, laughter, and meditation can be great stress relievers.

8. Maintain a healthy Body Fat Percentage-Weight is only part of the solution, the focus should be on body fat percentage, since that determines the risk factors for many preventable diseases. Measurement of weight and body mass index (BMI) do not take into account how much fat a person is carrying, which is deceiving. So throw the scale away, unless it reads body fat percentage. The recommended body fat percentage varies on age and gender, see healthy weight loss for more information.

Your dimension of wellness will be determined by how many of these principles you incorporate into your lifestyle. These might seem like basic principles but rate all of them on the scale of 1-10; 1 = you do it rarely and 10 =it’s a daily habit. If your score is under 56, take the lowest scoring principal and focus on improving it for 30 days continuously. Change is hard at first, but it will become easier the longer you do it. Then continue with the next lowest principle, and by the end of eight months you will look and feel better than you have in a long time.

Tools For Wellness
Healthy Living in Central Pennsylvania wants to help you make lifestyle changes easier by providing health and wellness links as well as local service providers to assist you in your journey. The key to remaining healthy is to change your lifestyle. According to Wikepedia, lifestyle is simply the way a person lives, and is a characteristic bundle of behaviors, which are a mixture of habits and conventional ways of doing things. With that in mind have fun exploring Healthy living in Central Pennsylvania and check back often, since this site will be continually evolving.