❓Are you looking to learn more about health and wellness?
❓Are you ready to make positive health changes in the new year?
❓Do you seek healing, pain relief, weight loss, emotional stability, regular bowel movements, clear skin, reducing aging damage, or want to live longer?
If you answered yes ✔️ to any of these questions, chances are you are ready for some positive health changes in the new year. New year, new beginnings, right?! Well, you landed on the right page!
In 2024, we ran our very own first CLNF 8-week health challenge and the participants have seen and felt incredible results. So we wanted to share it with all our readers to experience the same benefits! (We will do another challenge in 2025 around April, so keep an eye out)
This 8-week health challenge is a great opportunity to learn about healthy living and make lasting positive changes to your lifestyle. With this challenge, we take a slow but steady approach, sharing one new habit, principle, or change per week, to help you build healthy habits at a reasonable pace that will actually stick.
Too often we set drastic goals (new year's resolutions, any one?) or have unrealistic expectations that are bound to set us up for failure. Did you know that it takes, on average, 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic?
That's why it is important to start small with a realistic and simple habit and make it your focus for the next couple of days or weeks.
So, are you ready to improve your health in 2025? Let's get started with the first 4 weeks of this challenge!
READ MORE: How to develop a new habit in as quickly as 60 days
8 weeks to a healthier you (Part 1)
Week 1: Nutrition
Proper nutrition goes way deeper than occasionally eating the rainbow color or adding some raw veggies to your plate. While it may not be as easy as eating the standard American diet, a balanced, nutrient-rich diet does not have to be complicated.
The biggest mistake people make when starting a well-balanced diet is trying to fit in healthy foods without removing the unhealthy foods. Imagine trying to get clean water from a river filled with chemical waste. It would be impossible without extreme measures.
This is the same thing that happens in the body when we only add good, healthy foods to our diet. First, you must stop and assess the significant negative contributing factors to your well-being and start eliminating them, from the biggest to the smallest.
You might say, “I thought this section was about nutrition, yet I’m only being told I need to cut things out of my diet.” Here’s why we start here: continuing to add harmful foods and chemicals to the body while also adding healthy and nutrient-dense foods is preventing your body from optimal nutrient absorption. Your body will work harder to digest processed and refined foods, leaving the healthy foods in stomach juices to be putrified.
Still, eating the food rainbow is an easy and quick way to add a wide variety of vitamins and minerals to your diet. When shopping, consider what side veggies compliment your proteins and starches that can add color and exciting flavors.
Health Challenge: Find creative ways to paint the entire color wheel on your family's plate and add a portion of vegetables or fruit to each meal this week and throughout the challenge. Tip! Sprouting seeds are a great and easy way to add nutrients ;-)
Journal: Inside your health journal, track your daily veggie and fruit intake and the colors of the rainbow you eat weekly. How can you improve your nutrient intake?
Additional Reading:
Week 2: Exercise
Of all the principles we cover in this 8-week health challenge, this one has the biggest impact on the quality of life experienced in your final years.
The primary two forms of exercise are aerobic and anaerobic. Some examples of aerobic exercises worth trying are long-distance running or bike riding. These involve circulating a lot of oxygen through the lungs over a long period. The two best examples of anaerobic exercises are weightlifting and sprinting. Here, your muscles produce explosive energy in short periods.
While there is no one-size-fits-all, any amount of heart-pumping activity over an extended period can be considered a form of exercise. Swimming is regarded as one of the healthiest forms of exercise due to its low-stress impact on the body. When swimming, you get the same exercise as running, bike riding, and working out in the gym.
Regardless of your chosen activity, find what works best for you and your schedule, and stick to it. Consistency is the number one key to achieving the results of exercise.
It is so easy to let each day go by without actively doing anything to increase our heart rates. It takes determination to go outside and do something good for yourself, especially when it takes months to see results. Forming the habit of regular exercise will increase your capacity for self-love, and you will find yourself respecting your body more.
Health Challenge: This week and for the rest of the seven weeks, go outside or to a gym 3 times per week and engage in some heart-raising activity for at least 15 minutes each time. If you can go up to an hour, that would be even better! And it doesn't even have to feel like exercise; this was what one of our past participants had to say about getting 20 thousand steps: "I don’t usually get this many steps in a day. But this was from a day of gardening, stacking wood for next winter’s wood supply, and chasing after two young kids. Exercise isn’t always from going to the gym or for a run."
Journal: Write down your starting weight and write down the date and time and how long you exercised this week. Continue doing this each week for the rest of the challenge and every week try to increase the time or amount of exercise.
Additional Reading:
Week 3: Water
Water is the ⅓ most available resource in the world. Our bodies are made up of ⅓ water, and even our brains are composed of ⅓ water. Proper hydration is an often overlooked yet crucial subject matter when it comes to health.
Because we cannot physically see inside our bodies, we can go for years with issues building up and not realize it. We don’t have to wait until we have dry mouths or other symptoms of dehydration to start drinking water.
By drinking the daily suggested amount of water for your body type, you can expect these results: easier bowel movements, more elasticity of the skin, a reduction in halitosis, and a decrease in headaches and dizziness. The list of benefits that water offers is endless.
Did you know that naturopathic doctors use a medical practice called water therapy to help treat certain pain and illnesses?
Water can be applied both hot and cold to the skin at various body parts to produce different results. For example, damp heat around the skull while placing feet in an ice bath pulls blood down from the head to reduce headaches. There are plenty of other water secrets to bring natural balance back to our bodies. We are ⅓ water, after all.
Health challenge: Find out, based on your height x weight x age, how much water you should drink daily and stick to it! You could also set reminders on your phone or fill up a 2-liter bottle and ensure it is empty by the end of the day. Add some lemons, mint, or berries for extra flavor!
Journal: Log in your health journal how much water you are supposed to drink each day so you’re constantly reminded of this fact.
Additional Reading:
Hydration: Why it's so important
How to Properly Hydrate & How Much Water to Drink Each Day | Dr. Andrew Huberman
Week 4: Sunlight
To begin this week's health challenge, here is a story about research on two people groups that get the most sunlight in the world: the surfers in Hawaii and the tribal Africans of the Sahara.
The hypothesis was that since these two groups get the same amount of sunlight, they should have equivalent vitamin D levels and were expecting similar levels of hip fractures and broken bones. However, the researchers were astonished to find that the numbers of hip fractures and broken bones were far higher in the Hawaiian study group than in the Africans. The significant difference between these two groups was that the Africans of the Sahara consumed almost no dairy products, whereas the Hawaiians did.
Fun fact: the countries with the most hip fractures and broken bones also consume the largest amounts of dairy.
Vitamin D absorption starts working when your skin is exposed to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B (UVB) rays; it triggers a reaction. Your skin contains a form of cholesterol, and the UVB rays' energy converts this cholesterol into vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 travels to your liver and kidneys, transforming into the active form of vitamin D your body can use.
Health challenge: Perform outdoor activities each day that take only 15–20 minutes and allow you to get adequate sun exposure. Remember though to apply sunscreen when you are exposed to harmful sun rays for an extended period.
Journal: As the weeks progress, log what you notice about changes in your overall well-being as you get more sunlight.
Additional Reading:
Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health - PMC (nih.gov)
And just like that, we are already halfway through; well done! If you are participating in this challenge, please reach out and tell us about your experience so far! Are you starting to notice any positive changes and benefits? We would love to know.
Stay tuned for part 2, weeks 5 to 8, as we continue to delve deeper into manifesting a healthier body, mind, and soul for a healthier you!
We will host another live 8-week challenge in 2025. Subscribe below to be the first to know about all the details and to become part of our exclusive 8-week challenge Facebook group.
