What Are the Top 10 Things We Should Do for Optimum Health?

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Could you please summarize by level of importance, the top 10 things we should do for optimal health? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Kathleen from a recent masterclass I did asked this question. Could you please summarize by level of importance the top 10 things we should do for optimal health? Wow. Well, that's a doozy. I had to make a bunch of notes for this one and yes, I will and I'll be right back. Stay with me.

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So, Kathleen, here's the challenge. The order of priority really depends on you, because if you are not doing something, then that will become a bigger priority. So I'm going to go through them in what I think of as order. But really, it really depends on what's going on with you. Your genetics, your health, your goals, your lifestyle. And it's different for everybody. But there are a couple things that probably aren't what you think. I'm going to say that I'm going to put right up there at the top. And the first one really has to do with having a belief bigger than yourself, whatever you want to call that, having a belief in a higher power bigger than yourself. And next up, really having a purpose to your life. So higher power purpose to your life. And beyond that, doing what you need to do to be positive. I have a girlfriend, Marci Schaimoff. She wrote happy for no reason because she was depressed. And what she found was that chronically depressed was that she lacked this happiness gene in, but she realized that she could work on it and basically learn how to be happy for no reason. So positivity. I start every morning out, no matter how wacky the morning is or what I got going on. I pull out my journal, I write down at least three things I'm grateful for. Super important. Gratitude is a huge game changer for health and for your immune system too. So right along with that, of course I'm going to talk stress and sleep. Now I'm going to put sleep first because if you've been around my community, my hood, for any amount of reason of time, you know how much I prioritize sleep. I sleep with an OURA ring and there's a couple different varieties of these types of rings. But I believe what you measure and monitor, you can improve. I track my sleep every night. Super important. And I spend a lot of got a lot of podcasts on how to get a good night's sleep. A lot of blogs on my website as well. It's jjvirgin.com so sleep is really important. And right now when we're doing this, I'm actually on sort of lockdown. They sort of lifted it up, but I sort of haven't left. But sleep is more important than ever because it's so key for your immune system, especially the melatonin that you release during it. Now, one form of stress is poor sleep. And then as you know, poor stress leads to poor sleep. So stress is another key one. And so let's think of a couple things that can really help you handle stress because, you know, just like the situation now. When I was in the situation with my son that I wrote write about in Warrior mom, where I almost lost my 16 year old son when he was hit by a car and left for dead in the street, I knew that while I couldn't change the situation, I could do everything that I could to help myself handle it. That included adding in things like tapping. High intensity interval training that helps your body manage stress, teaches your sympathetic nervous system how to handle stress and recover. Reaching out to friends. Seeing my dog, my doggie right now, I tell you, my dog is the happiest dog right now with, you know, us being around so much. So one of the things I just mentioned there is that I reached out to friends and relationships are so key. In fact, they've correlated social isolation with the same detriment to your health as smoking a half a pack of cigarettes. So if you do find that you're in a time period where you can't readily be with your friends, we have a, our friends have a WhatsApp group. We're all hanging out together. We've been doing Zoom happy hours and Zoom dance parties. So do what you need to do to maintain those relationships because not only are they fun and they can be there for you in times when things get sketchy, they can also boost your health. Yes, it's true. And here's one thing I said at an interview the other day, and I think they were like, you didn't just say that. Like, they were like, what's your top tip? And I said, if you want to be healthier, find fitter friends. And so that's the other thing is find people. If you want to have better relationships, find people in better relationships. If you want to be more positive, find more positive people. You know, you become like the people you hang out the most with. So choose wisely, grasshopper. All right, One of the other things I mentioned there that of course has to be in here is exercise. And I divide exercise into a couple different parts. One is just moving more. And that's where again, some kind of a tracking device is so great. Also a dog with those eyes that will look at you and you'll feel so guilty. So walking, you know, just moving more activities of daily living, super important. Then also burst training. Again I talked about how important that is for stress and I like to say say burst to blast fat. It's high intensity interval training and resistance training. So those are key important. And remember if you're aging, if you're not using it, you are losing it. Right? All right. Drinking lots of pure water throughout the day, very important. And now we're getting into food and that that's surprising here I am a nutrition expert and I'm putting food over here. But again if you don't come from a place of self, love, positivity, believing in something bigger than you, having a purpose in your life, you probably will not feel like you've got, you are worthy to go take care of yourself. So we gotta start there first, then come through diet, a couple key important things. Number one, eating from the rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Yes, that sounds, that sounds cute but there's actually a reason for it. And all those different colored, especially vegetables, the greens, the blues, the reds, they have different phytonutrients, those are plant chemicals that do great stuff for you mainly act as antioxidants so and are anti inflammatory. So super important for that. Number two is to intermittent fast. And I actually going to be doing something really cool with this and my, my book the Sugar Impact diet. Because obviously lowing sugar and eating healthy fats, clean protein and lots of fiber from non starchy vegetables and a little bit of slow low carbs at the meals you do eat. Super important for keeping blood sugar balanced and insulin low. But that will allow you then to start to shorten your eating window first by stopping eating three to four hours before bed and then to lower it down more until you're eating sometime, you know, ideally eight hours a day, a couple times a week at least. But you know, starting out 12 hours a day and then just creeping it down and just watching it and just listening to your body. And one of the things I do there is I stop the snacks, put the water in instead and know that younger hunger equals younger. And a little bit of hunger is fine. Use your water. A lot of times you're just thirsty. And then of course multis are super duper important supplements in general. I always start with food. You cannot get what you need from your food. Wish you could. Not anymore. Plus we are barraged by so many more, so much more stress and toxins than we were 10,000 years ago. So we have the soil demineralization. We're not getting food like we used to. It's, it's got transfer time, sits around, et cetera. Supplements are necessary. The first one is a good multivitamin mineral antioxidant formula, professional grade. And then add some good essential fatty acids like fish oil. And then most people are going to need a little extra vitamin D with K D3, K1 and 2, and some extra magnesium. And then finally, and then the other stuff after that, we'll have to have a whole conversation. If you want to know more about supplements, remember this is Ask the Health Expert. You can ask questions, pop on over to me on Instagram JJ Virgin or over on Facebook, especially my Facebook community. Come on over, join me there. JJ Virgin lifestyle community. Ask your questions, then I will shout you out and answer it on the call on this podcast. Okay, final one that I just think we don't emphasize this enough and it's really to me coming clear right now because you know, we had this quarantining and some people couldn't even leave their house, especially in some parts of the world. We need sunshine, we need nature, we need to get our feet in the grass. I am so lucky and I, I, this is my gratitude every day that I live in Florida now on the water and I can walk outside in the sunshine pretty much most of the days on the grass and then go to the water and it just paddleboard a lot, et cetera. It just really recharges me. But there's something electrical good vibrations from that. All right, there you go. So again, those were probably more than 10 and really it's more of a checklist there to go. Which ones of these am I doing? And here's my big recommendation. If you looked at those and gonna start doing all of those, well, that's just ridiculous. That's just a setup to fail. Pick one, pick one, journal it, get that dialed and then go to the next. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetoj.com.

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