How to Create the Best New Year’s Personal Health Code Ever

New Year's Day signifies a new beginning. But is it genuinely new?

By Dr. J.E. Williams |

Couple practicing yoga at sunrise on the beach facing the sea

New Year’s Day signifies a new beginning. But is it genuinely new?

Isn’t it more a continuation of one year to another? To make a clean break from the cycle of broken resolutions, why not try something more meaningful this year?

Instead of tricks and patchwork resolutions, why not establish a health strategy? Better yet, set up a life plan that is compatible with your beliefs and goals.

A Personal Health Code to Live By

Forget about giving up things. Instead, add positive habits like taking a probiotic daily. Why not consider positive affirmations instead of an expensive gym membership that you won’t use?
Don’t emphasize negatives and generalizations like “I’m too fat, so have to lose a lot of weight.”

Don’t set yourself up for defeat. Forget comparison charts. Instead, set your sites on reaching attainable milestones.

Consider how much weight you could gradually lose in 26 weeks. Is it one pound a week? Two pounds every four weeks over 52 weeks? At the end of the next year that’s 24 pounds.

Another effective way to make positive change is with affirmations like, “I will own my health every day.”

Own Your Health

A personal health code is the best way to own your health. How you conduct your life in relationship to your body in health and disease matters. What you do every day matters.

A comprehensive, personal health code includes disease prevention but also takes in wellness, fitness, and reproductive health. Likewise, it embraces the daily details of how you live. This includes dietary choices, what nutritional supplements you take, how much time you devote to exercise, and how long and well you sleep. Additionally, it looks at the big picture including spiritual practices and healthy aging.

A personal health code necessarily embraces your nutritional philosophy. Are you a vegetarian, vegan, cooked or raw foodie? Do you adopt a paleo diet, or are you healthy omnivore? Do you follow a traditional Chinese or another ethnic diet? Avoid gluten and GMO foods? Eat all organic? Raise your vegetables or buy local?

woman chooses healthy green produce

A healthy lifestyle doesn’t stop at what you eat and how much you exercise. It also includes healthy consumer choices. Do you shop for clothing made from sustainable fabrics sewn in fair trade factories? Do you take nutritional supplements and where do you buy them? Are they pharmaceutical grade? Do you buy fresh vegetables and eggs from a farmer’s market?

Movement and Motivation

Your personal health code particularly puts movement as a priority. What is your choice of fitness activities? For example, are you committed to the yogi lifestyle including Ayurveda philosophy? Or, are you someone who includes yoga postures into a stretching plan? Do you walk or hike? Are your exercise sessions short or long? Are the intense bursts of interval training your thing? Do you practice martial arts, swim, lift weights at the gym, run on a treadmill or jog in a park?

What is your approach to health care? Do you read self-help health books? Are the authors genuine experts in their field? Do you believe in annual medical checkups or instead avoid conventional medicine except for major emergencies?Is a naturopath or acupuncturist your primary doctor? Do you get IV vitamin infusions?

Health is a system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, you cannot control every aspect of your health. But, you can make a significant difference in your health and how well you age by having a plan.

Jump-Start Your New Year’s Health Goals With Positive Affirmations

Positive affirmations actually help rewire your nervous system to align with your body’s healing capacity. They equally affirm your values like faith, health, family, nature, and career.

Additionally, researchers using brain imaging found that affirmations condition the mind to help us subconsciously make healthier choices.

Your personal health code might include some of these 12 affirmations:

  1. I honor and respect my mind and body, my most valuable assets.
  2. I assume responsibility for my health and wellness.
  3. I live in a manner that supports my health and happiness, and that of my family and others.
  4. I make healthy choices even when under stress.
  5. I only eat real food, fresh and organic, and locally grown when possible.
  6. I take nutritional supplements to correct underlying deficiencies or support and optimize health, including healthy aging.
  7. I recognize the value of activity and exercise daily, and get up and regularly move during the workday.
  8. I keep a lean body mass with well-toned muscles and the appropriate fat-to-muscle ratio.
  9. I maintain a healthy body mass index (BMI) for my height.
  10. I do not abuse alcohol or tobacco, or any other drug.
  11. I track my health markers regularly, including ordering blood tests.
  12. I discuss corrective options with my doctor and take an active part in her suggestions.

Affirmations are crucial to the success of your resolutions. But, initiating the right motivation is also necessary.

Engage the Magic of Purpose & Motivation

In practical terms, motivation comes from within. But you can also be inspired by the achievements of others. Reading inspirational books help. Taking motivational workshops help. Yet, these external methods are temporary. Change requires repeated behavioral rewiring. A trained psychologist or coach can help significantly to keep you on track.

Psychologists define motivation in the following ways:

  • An internal or external drive that prompts action.
  • The ability to initiate and persist toward a chosen objective.
  • Investing 100% of your time, effort, energy, and focus on your goal.
  • Being able to pursue change in the face of obstacles, boredom, fatigue, stress, and distractions.
  • The determination to resist ingrained and unhealthy patterns and habits.
  • Doing everything you can, and rallying every resource to make the changes you want in your life.

Are you motivated enough to see your New Year’s goal through to completion? Of course, you are. Release the magic locked into a driving purpose and the energy created by powerful motivation.

make a list, use positive affirmations, set milestones, establish daily monitors, get positive input, manage stress, sleep better, find your bare minimum

Set A Bare Minimum

I don’t believe that we can exercise our way out of the harmful effects of an unhealthy diet. But exercise, like a healthy diet, is essential to creating and maintaining wellness.

A lot of people don’t like spending hours at the gym. Many do, however. Many gyms offer more than weight and cardio equipment. They may also have yoga and other exercise classes. With the busyness of everyday life, it becomes all too easy to blow off exercise. But I also recognize that being sedentary is dangerous, so I make time for mindful movement every single day.

When I don’t have time, which is nearly always, I have my bare minimum. Ten minutes of stretching, light weights, balancing, and finish with five minutes of mindful awareness in the form of an ancient Chinese exercise called Qi Gong.

To make lasting change, to get darn good at anything, requires consistency over time. And it doesn’t have to be hours a day. Change happens even if devote only ten to fifteen minutes every day to movement.

Last Thoughts

Set aside enough time to plan your New Year right. Make time from January 1 through 5 to get started on the best personal health code ever. Write it out.

Your personal health code is not a list of “do not” and “avoid this.” It’s not about resolutions you won’t keep. It’s a decisive, proactive approach to life and health.

Remember, it’s your life. You’re worth it. A good starting point includes life-affirming principles, daily affirmations, and staying motivated through the rest of the year. To be effective, it can’t be generic. It has to be personal. What’s your health code?