A fun and super easy health challenge for National Wellness Month: get on track before you’re back to class.
Summer is coming to an end, back to school is right around the corner and life is about to get BUSY, with a capital "B" prioritize your health for this month and join our challenge to rock the next few months with renewed energy!
Don’t worry, every day of this health challenge will have a simple action; we’re looking for small and incremental changes that help you reach your health goals - not deter you from them.
Week 1: Mind and Body Detox
To prepare for a healthier you, we’re going to start cleaning out the house: meaning what you feed your body and your mind.
Day 1: Start the day with a glass of lemon water
The easiest way to start a body and liver detox is to bring your body back to its ideal alkaline levels. Before breakfast, mix one freshly squeezed lemon into a cup of warm water and drink it up. This is part of our 14-day lemon water for weight loss protocol, feel free to check it out as a follow-up.
Day 2: Take the stairs instead of the elevator, whenever you can
If you’re on the 11th floor, stop at the 10th floor and do one flight of stairs, but if you’re up for it - do the whole thing! If you don’t have stairs try to walk 150 steps more than usual today.
Day 3: Put your phone on airplane mode during meal times
Putting your phone on airplane mode and keeping it away during your meals will allow you to focus more on your food, savor it, and detox from your device. This small change helps to slowly reset several of your hormones, including cortisol, melatonin, leptin, and ghrelin - the most important ones in the hormone weight loss connection.
Day 4: Drink a Green Juice for Breakfast
Add more nutrients to your day and support liver detox. The USDA recommends five portions of fruits and vegetables per day, drinking vegetable-based juice helps you hit that mark with little effort.
For this health challenge: either make your own beginner friendly green juice, try our just-add-water Green Juice, or stop at your favorite juice spot.
Day 5: Cook a New Vegetable in a Healthy Way
There’s more to the world than lettuce, tomato, broccoli, and kale. Try a new healthy vegetable or legume today. Here are a few ideas:
- BBQ Balsamic Beets they help liver detox!
- Creamy Parsnip Mash (by Power Hungry) If you’re like: “what is a parsnip?” It’s an overlooked super healthy food.
- Sautée or juice purple cabbage. You’ll be surprised by the benefits of purple cabbage.
- Bok Choi in a stir fry (by The Spruce Eats) Satisfying at only 105 calories.
Day 6: Unfollow two social media accounts that give you anxiety
Whether it’s the news, a couple of friends that drive you nuts, or some accounts that make you feel like comparing yourself - ditch them. Hit unfollow, snooze, or block. You’re doing your nervous system a favor.
Day 7: Do Yoga for a Healthy Liver
Yes! A great way to relax and help your hardworking liver (which we never think of, unless there are symptoms of unhealthy liver function) by doing one of these three routines or poses at the end of your day.
- Yoga for a Healthy Liver by Good Times (6:43” beginner level and slow, plus great info about the liver!)
- Five Yoga Poses to Detox Your Liver by Ventuno Yoga (2:49” intermediate level, faster pace)
- Yoga Wash by Adriene Mishler (23” beginner to advanced, light practice)
Well done! You’re killing this health challenge.
Week 2: Find Fun Ways to Exercise
Do you love to exercise? No? That’s fine, we’ll help you move your body in a way you like. The Heart Association of America recommends 150 minutes of exercise every week, let’s make our health challenge a fun one!
Day 8: Do a 3-Minute Dance Video
Don’t be scared by the name Fitness Marshall, you’ll likely be laughing too hard to notice you’re moving your body. We really like this one, follow “Remi” for the simplest version. Bonus: the kids will have fun.
Day 9: Take a Leisurely Walk in Nature
If you can’t be among trees or waves, then take a 15-min walk around your neighborhood carrying nothing. Your health challenge today is just to move your body.
Day 10: Try a 10 Minute Beginner Yoga Routine
Yoga looks daunting when you people do headstands, but there are many beneficial and short routines you can do at home before you take a shower. Try this 10 Min Slow Stretch by Sara Beth Yoga
Day 11: Pick it Up With a Low Impact Cardio for Beginners
This super easy routine is only 11 minutes long and gets your heart pumping- you can do it while watching TV! Try the Feel Good Warm Up Cardio by the Fitness Blender.
Day 12: Get Up and Stretch Every Two Hours
If you work at a desk, drive, or spend six to ten hours sitting per day, your muscles are likely contracted and in pain. Your health challenge is to get up, move and do some small stretches. Need ideas? This 4-min video by FitYourSpace shows you precisely what to do.
Day 13: Commit to a Fast-Paced 20 Minute Walk
Just go for it, block out 20 minutes of solo time and go for a power walk that gets your heart pumping. You want to be able to breathe, but not sign a Broadway tune (well.)
Day 14: Drop and Give Me 10!
Do ten squats, ten push-ups, and ten lunges. Before you head out for your day or as soon as you get back, it will be over quicker than you know it and level up your health challenge.
Day 15: Do a Forty Second Elbow Plank
If you can hold it for a minute, even better. But just securing those 40 seconds in the day will give you a slight kick in the pants.
Week 3: Practice Mindfulness
You’ve been detoxing, exercising, and amping up the cardio - it’s time to live in the present. Our attention spans are evolving, and we need to re-learn to appreciate the now. This part of the health challenge looks easy, but may actually be the hardest!
Day 16: Do a 10 Minute Guided Meditation
You can download Headspace, Calm, or Insight Timer to your phone for a 10-minute guided meditation. Or you can try this one by Great Meditation, free on YouTube.
Day 17: Write Three Things You Are Grateful For
If you don’t have a journal, take a moment to write a note on your phone and explore for a few minutes three things you can feel grateful for and why.
Day 18: Make GLOW Lemonade Popsicles
Get some Vitamin C and other clear skin diet foods, in these deliciously refreshing popsicles. Just add some chopped kiwi and strawberries to our GLOW lemonade (full of skin-loving collagen) and freeze in a mold. Eat them mindfully, paying attention to color and texture.
Day 19: Do a Crossword Puzzle - Without Google!
Try to answer a crossword puzzle without using your phone or the computer, play some classical music and give your mind a boost. Optional: try a glass of Organifi Pure for heightened learning and memory.
Day 20: Try a Tongue-Twister With the Kids
Be in the moment and give your brain its own health challenge with some of these 20 Tongue Twisters. Make it extra fun by making healthy berry ice cream with them (featuring our Red Juice.)
Day 21: Log Your Water Intake for the Day
It’s easy to forget to drink water, today every time you have a glass write down when you had it. At the end of the day look at optimizing your water intake as your next health challenge.
Day 22: Disconnect for One Hour
Your health challenge of today is to go offline for one hour and do nothing. No TV, no Netflix, no phone, and no errands or chores. Set aside one hour to just contemplate life, notice your surroundings, and breathe.
Week 4: Relax and Recharge
We’re keeping it extra simple this week, the days are going faster and things are revving up - so we’re going to slow down and recharge. Your health challenge:
Day 23: Go to Bed 20 Minutes Earlier
Rest is necessary for life and recovery. Go to bed twenty minutes early and make sure your phone is off.
Day 24: Have a Long Breakfast
Instead of grabbing a quick bite, make a healthy breakfast for yourself and the family if they’re around. Sit and eat slowly - no phones allowed.
Day 25: Deactivate the Flight or Fight Response
We spend far too much time stressed out and worrying, breath-work activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which brings us back to peace. Learn about breath-work from The Holistic Psychologist in this five-minute video.
Day 26: Schedule a Facial
Permission to pamper yourself at home or at your favorite salon. A timeless skin care routine that is also relaxing.
Day 27: Get 20 Minutes of Sunshine
Just go and enjoy the sun! Get that Vitamin D while you can. That’s the whole health challenge today!
Day 28: Take a Bath With Epsom Salts
Soak in the water for thirty minutes to an hour. We recommend playing 528 Hz frequency music to enhance your health challenge with sound therapy.
Day 29: Have a Meatless Dinner
An easy way to help the body detox and get deeper more restful sleep.
Day 30: Sign Up for a New Class
Take a test class of something you like: painting, twerking, barre exercises, or anything that clicked with you from the first weeks.
Day 31: Get 8 Hours of Sleep
It’s the best you can do for yourself now! Get a good night sleep, and feel good in the morning. Best health challenge ever, right?
That’s it! Try it out and let us know how it went. We’re in this together.