A little over a month into 2010 many of the resolutions that you made in January probably has fallen by the wayside. When the ball dropped on New Years Eve you might have resolved to go to the gym more often or to eat less fast food on, now, in February those promises seem as stale as the fruit cake in the back of your refrigerator. You might be feeling that you still want to change a few things this year but your earlier resolutions didn’t work out; below you will find 10 tips to bring a positive change to your life in 2010:
1.) Make room for mini meditations through out your day, close the door at your office, hold your calls, and just relax for five minutes. Hubert Benson, the co-founder of Harvard’s Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine, recommends doing this a few times throughout the day. It allows you to turn everything off and recharge.
2.) With states increasing cigarette taxes and cities banning smoking in bars and restaurants there has never been a better time to quit smoking. Many employers, faith groups, and even some local governments offer resources to help you stop smoking for good.
3.) Make an effort to have a social life. Getting bogged down in the stresses of daily life is easy to do. Make a promise to yourself to hang out with your friends at least once a week.
4.) Be aware of your health. Get a physical this year, even if you had one last year you need to make it an annual event. Being proactive is the best way to maintain a healthy life.
5.) Stay positive. It sounds simple, but if you try and keep a positive outlook on life you will find that you enjoy your work, family, and life in general a lot more.
6.) Cut the calories back. This year instead of trying the next fad diet resolve to simply cut back your calorie intake.
7.) Exercise daily. That doesn’t mean become a gym rat it means incorporate some kind of physical activity into your daily routine. It could be something as simple as going for a walk through the park every day, or going for daily bike rides.
8.) Make “wellness” a verb. Don’t think of health and wellness as something to reach for, or something to achieve. Think of as the way you live your life.
9.) Cut back the caffeine. Instead of drinking a pot of regular coffee every morning switch to a 50/50 coffee or caffeine free soft drinks.
10.) Add a little “green” to your life. Mom really was right growing up, be sure to add fruits and vegetables to your meals every day.
These changes, for the most part, are easy to work into your daily life and maintain all year long.
Many people suffer from a sleep disorder known as insomnia. Insomnia is caused by many different factors including stress and an irregular sleep cycle. Most people opt for the chemical method of dealing with it because it doesn’t take any effort or thought. Take a pill, go to sleep. What they don’t consider is the side effects that come from these types of pills, not the least of which is addiction.
Yoga isn’t just for pretzel people anymore, every day people in any physical shape can perform yoga positions, especially those that are specifically designed for people new to yoga. In the cat pose, you get on your hands and knees and take a deep breath, round up your back towards the ceiling, tucking your head down into your chest, then lower your back down and lift your head back into the starting position. In the dog pose, you stay on your hands and knees and basically reverse the cat pose, pushing your tailbone up towards the ceiling, lowering your mid section down towards the floor with your head and shoulders up. You can rotate between the cat and dog position making it all one yoga exercise. In the child’s pose, you start in the hands and knees position, then sit back onto your legs with your bottom pushing over your legs. Let your arms trail out over your head along the floor. Close your eyes and rest your face on the floor. 
There are many yoga positions that can be performed at work without any special tools or space. Many can be done at your desk.
If you’re losing your hair, there may be many reasons other than the ‘natural’ ones. Stress in a multitude of forms can cause hair loss. Stress hits everyone at some time or another through finances, pregnancies, child birth, the death of someone close, disease, job problems, divorce, argumentative situations, etc. The good thing is that stress related hair loss often reverses itself when the stress has been gone for a time. Surgery is a type of stress also and in being such it can be responsible for hair loss, it too will restore after a period of time. A way to speed up the restoration process is upping your amount of exercise, this will help relieve symptoms of stress and help you recover quicker. Massage will often help in that area in addition to relaxing muscles and increasing blood flow to all organs including your hair follicles.
When people think of exercise, very few would overlook running as a definite possibility. Running is a great fat burner. You can burn off a can of soda in one mile, and a granola bar on the way back, and still maintain cardiovascular benefits for up to two hours after you stop running. Another reason running is a great choice, especially for first time exercises, is there is not expensive equipment to buy and to keep it fresh and never boring, all you have to do is change directions. Running has actually been shown to improve self esteem levels, strengthen bones, increase stamina, and give the heart and lungs one of the best workouts of any exercise. The cardiovascular workout provided by running is the very thing the doctor ordered to keep your risk of heart disease and stroke, which happens to be one of the biggest killers worldwide.
Most people rush into an exercise routine knowing very little, if anything about the muscle groups that they are working, the exercises that they are performing, or what goal each individual exercise is intended to produce. Many times people start running, swimming, or lifting weights without first learning to recognize progress when they see it. Sometimes there is benefit that is never seen, so the person stops thinking the activity a failure, or they are doing the activity wrong, and fail to recognize this as the reason for lack of results.
Getting that washboard stomach that you always wanted is not as complex as some might lead you to believe. I did not say it would be easy, but I can promise you that it can be simple. There are 3 steps to anybody strengthening or shaping workout. Diet, exercise, and repair.
The general population is exercising less and less every generation, causing a major push to get the youth involved in physical activity harder than it ever has been before. Registration in physical activity programs, especially extra educational are at the lowest levels in history. With the norm now edging toward a total lack of interest in physical fitness, and societal pressures such as television and video games having a stronger impact on the daily activities of our youth, encouraging your youngster to be more active no only falls to the parent, but should be explored at as early time as is possible.
There is no quick fix to exercise, 
It is popular belief that you have to be flexible to exercise with yoga; this belief can be generated and driven by the pictures normally seen of someone performing yoga. Generally this is a person with a little body that is bent into positions that might make a pretzel jealous. This is untrue, while 
Pilates (pronounced puh lah teez) was created by a fellow named Joseph Pilates during the First World War in Germany. The basis of his concept is that mental and physical health are intertwined, without one you could not have the other. The concept of his exercise program was to strengthen and rehabilitate the returning veterans by not only working on their physical problems, but also working on their mental health by way of meditation, breathing, learning how to relax not only the body but the mind. Learning on how to focus the mind and then set it free. 
Many people believe they have no time for exercise, or they believe they get enough exercise moving about the office and back and forth to the car. This is not normally a correct thought. Most people are woefully under exercised and as a result, they have lethargic muscles and possibly a dull outlook on life in general. They have time to have coffee breaks, time to watch tv, time to read the paper, time to gossip, etc. but they don’t consider this as time they could be putting into the health of their body. 
Exercise is extremely important for a healthy body and even a healthy mind. Many people believe because they work a day job, there is no way for them to exercise. This is simply not true, there are many things you can do to exercise at work. There are pedaling mechanisms that you can stash under your desk so you can pedal while you work. 
Protein is a wonderful thing for your body, it helps you build lean muscle and helps build muscle strength, but protein isn’t a one man show, it needs help, by itself it won’t do your body much good. In order for your body to fully utilize the protein, you need to take in a balanced number of carbohydrates. Only with the carbohydrates can your body use the protein to it’s full extent. 
It is a proven fact that eating smaller meals many more times a day is all around a healthier way to eat. In eating smaller meals more often, your metabolism stays up and you burn more fat. If you go longer periods between eating, your body goes into a starvation mode where it begins to store calories as fat, turning to burning lean muscle instead. Our bodies are naturally tuned to eating small meals many times per day; they function best under these conditions. You will stay more awake and alert, not feel weak and run down. You will not tire so easily nor stress so badly. You will not feel the hunger pangs, nor fall victim to the desire to fill yourself to the bursting point. You will be able to think clearer and have more stamina in your every day life if you change your eating habits to match your body chemistry.
The first and most important diet tip, drink water. People don’t drink enough water. The body has a way of telling you it’s dehydrating, but it is very often misunderstood as a hunger pang. Eating will quell the pang, but that’s only because food has moisture in it. The pang will come back again, mis-prompting the person to eat yet again. If you get a pang, drink some water, more than likely this is what your body is needing, not more food.
First and most sensibly, the best weight loss plan for you is the one that you can stick to. You can pick the most rigorous plan, but if you can only stick with it for a week or two weeks or a month or any other set amount of time, it’s not going to do you any real good. You need a dietary plan that will help you not only loose weight, but one that you can stick to for the long term. Many people make the mistake of going onto a dietary plan, sticking to it until they’ve lost the weight they want to loose, and then they go right back to their old habits which starts packing the pounds back on. 
Yoga is a very popular and effective exercise. In fact, many people actually set aside time each day so that they can be an active participant in Yoga. Let’s see what some of the Yoga benefits are that actually attracts people to this older exercise that has been around forever.
Many people have shared how they have experienced spiritual benefits simply by being active in Yoga. There’s truly a lot of spiritual energy that Yoga holds within for those who truly wish to take advantage of the spiritual benefits of Yoga. Let’s take a look at some of the most common and basic spiritual benefits of Yoga below.