At WellBe, we like to say that the 100 choices you make every day are your healthcare. And every day, I make choices in the hopes that they’ll make me, personally, healthier. Some of those choices work out, some of them don’t. So at the close of every year, I like to take some time to reflect back on the changes I made, and to pinpoint which ones made a real, lasting difference in terms of my health.
So, without further ado, here are the 10 most impactful health changes I made in 2019:
1. Taking nuts with me everywhere
I noticed toward the end of 2018 that when I made poor food choices, it was always on the run or when I didn’t prepare or think ahead and was stranded in an airport with no healthy options at all. So I started doing a big nut and seed shop every few months (buying organic walnuts, Brazil nuts, cashews, almonds, pecans, and pumpkin and sunflower seeds). I’d just throw them all in a pan and roast them at 200 degrees for 20 minutes to kill off any mold since nuts are known to be moldy and fungal. Walnuts are known to be the most fungal but they are also proven to lower your depression risk!
I have a small container of nuts in my bag wherever I go, and in my desk at the office. I have found over the past few months that when I’m in a situation where there seems to be no choice but to eat inflammatory foods, I go to my nuts and seeds. This holds me over until I get somewhere where I can make a better decision. It’s one thing to want to eat something inflammatory once in a while, it’s another to be hungry and stuck. I can happily say my on-the-go nuts and seeds habit has helped me avoid that scenario.
2. Taking a meditation course
I have tried over the past several years to establish a meditation practice using a few different apps and my own determination. It turns out, our habits are STRONGLY resistant to change. I would have a good run for a few weeks and then fall off from making meditation a consistent part of my morning routine.
Finally, I decided I needed more of a commitment and some accountability. For a lot of us, including me, that means spending money. In early August, signed up for a meditation course I’d been recommended, which was two hours, two days in a row, in-person with a teacher named Ben Turshen.
I found the instruction and practice very unique. He instructed us to practice his style of meditation for 27 minutes twice a day for 60 days. Going from nothing to nearly an hour a day seemed like a huge investment of my time, but I had spent the money and 4+ hours of my life on this, so I committed to following his instructions.
After 62 days, I had missed 7, so an 89% success rate, a high B+! The best part of this experience has been that my relationship to meditation has changed. Four months later, it no longer seems like a drag to me — I actually look forward to it. Do I do it twice a day? Hardly ever. But most days I get in at least 15 or 27 minutes and I can feel my whole body change just a minute or two after I start. Our breath truly is the most powerful tool we have to change how we feel, think, and behave.
3. Going to therapy again
I hadn’t gone to professional therapy since the summer of 2011, six months after my mom passed away and shortly before I moved to Chicago. This past year was a challenging one for me mentally, and I realized that I didn’t have anybody to speak to on a regular basis except family members (who were often a little close to the things I was dealing with) and good friends when I occasionally shared that I was working through a few difficult things.
I finally decided a few months ago that you don’t have to have just had a parent die or get divorced or survive a mass shooting to go to therapy. You can just not be feeling your best, or dealing with a few challenging things, and need someone to be there to talk through things with you. Since it has only been about four months, I can’t say definitively what it has done, but I know that I am feeling more capable of dealing with challenges and sticking with my mental health improvement tools — like exercise, meditation, and a diet rich in healthy fats and supplements — than I was before I started therapy. If you’re considering seeing a therapist but don’t know what kind to see, check out our guide to mental health professionals.
4. Making a blood test chart + seeing a new naturopath
I had seen the same wonderful holistic nutritionist and herbalist for 14 years since she first helped me reverse my amenorrhea in 2006. This year, as I learned more about my thyroid, I became determined to reverse my mild Hashimoto’s and kick my thyroid antibodies to the curb. I know a lot of people say this is tough to do, but that doesn’t mean I want it any less. I decided a new perspective might be helpful.
So I went to see a naturopath and made a blood test chart from the stacks of paper blood tests I had sitting in my file cabinet. The oldest one was from 2008 and the most recent from September 2019. Yes it took me a few hours, but I was then able to see such an interesting story of how my health had changed over the past 11 years. I was then able to print that out and take it with me to a new doctor to show her the things I had struggled with over the last decade. This helped her to see not only trends of things that were consistently a problem, but also those things that had been up and down, and therefore weren’t quite as big a deal as one single blood test looked at in isolation might indicate. I decided to create a version you can use with your own blood tests, so grab it below!
DOWNLOAD MY FREE CHART FOR BLOOD TEST RESULTS!
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