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Why Fixing Sleep First May Be the Smartest New Year Health Reset

Every January, millions of people commit to healthier habits. Gym memberships spike, nutrition plans reset, and wellness goals feel within reach. Yet by February, motivation often fades. While diet and exercise are frequently blamed, sleep disruption is increasingly recognized as a major reason why health resolutions stall.

Sleep plays a central role in physical recovery, mental focus, and energy regulation. When sleep quality suffers, so does consistency making long-term health goals harder to maintain.

When Sleep Is the Missing Piece

Snoring and mild obstructive sleep apnea are among the most common sleep disruptors, affecting both sleep quality and daytime performance. Interrupted breathing during sleep can lead to fragmented rest, morning fatigue, reduced concentration, and lower motivation to exercise or maintain healthy routines.

Research continues to link poor sleep with challenges in weight management, cardiovascular health, and overall wellbeing. Yet many people delay addressing sleep issues due to discomfort with traditional overnight treatments or concerns about disrupting bedtime routines.

A Shift Toward “Fix Sleep First”

Health experts increasingly point to a simple principle: address sleep first, then build healthy habits on top of it. Improved sleep quality can support better focus, energy levels, and recovery, all of which make consistency easier over time.

This mindset is driving interest in alternative sleep solutions that work outside the bedroom, rather than during sleep itself.

Daytime Therapy for Sleep Disruption

By improving sleep quality first, eXciteOSA daytime sleep therapy may help support better daytime focus, consistency, and overall wellbeing, factors that are often disrupted when snoring or mild sleep apnea goes untreated.

Unlike traditional overnight devices, eXciteOSA is used during the day for about 20 minutes. It does not require masks, hoses, or wearable equipment during sleep, allowing users to maintain their usual bedtime routines.

By supporting better airway stability overnight, the therapy aims to improve sleep quality without adding complexity to nightly habits.

Why Better Sleep Supports Health Goals

When sleep improves, many people notice benefits that extend beyond the bedroom. Better rest can support improved daytime focus, more consistent energy, and better recovery after exercise. These factors often determine whether health routines feel sustainable or exhausting.

Addressing snoring and mild sleep apnea may help remove one of the most common barriers to long-term wellness, persistent fatigue.

A Practical Reset for the New Year

As people look for realistic ways to make health goals stick in the new year, sleep is emerging as a foundational starting point rather than an afterthought. Solutions that fit into daily routines, rather than disrupt them, may offer a more approachable path forward.

To support early-year wellness resets, Spring Sleep is currently offering an exclusive discount code, 10SLEEP, for those exploring eXciteOSA as part of their sleep improvement strategy.

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January 1, 2026
Thanksgiving All Year Long: 5 Simple Gratitude Practices for Daily Life
5 Simple Gratitude Practices for Daily Life

1) Begin with Gratitude for Your Body—Elaine Smookler

Some days I wake up and notice that my spring has already sprung and each movement has a kind of creaking quality. After years of practicing mindfulness, it makes me smile. Whatever experience I’m having—good, bad, pleasant, unpleasant—I will never pass this way again.

This is an invitation to explore the experience of the present moment in all its gory glory. You can do this practice sitting, standing, upside down or whatever way you find the present moment.
1. Let’s start by taking three nice big breaths. Breathe in for a count of three and out for a count of five. Do you notice? You’re alive. It’s actually kind of amazing. Can you bring your attention to the jaw-dropping wonder that is the human body?
2. Let’s start with the toes, bringing attention to your feet touching the ground. You may be amazed by how many sensations there are to experience, whether it’s tingling, pulsing, restlessness, hot, cool, moist, dry, ticklish, itchy, numb, neutral. What do you notice about paying attention to these small experiences? Is it possible that they could help you cultivate gratitude for this body that’s going to accompany you through your life?
3. As you move up the legs, what do you feel? Whenever I feel anything uncomfortable, I notice how much I want to make meaning out of it. Instead, I invite us all to just feel what’s here without making any meaning of it at all. It’s all so interesting. So this is what’s happening now.
4. Moving up the land of pelvis, I notice clenching the moment I go to explore sensations in my bladder. Do I dare? Again, reminding myself that it’s not about trying to relax or make anything easier or better. I use these moments of awareness to widen the palette of colors available to experience what it is to be a human. When you do this, what do you notice?
5. Continuing the journey up the body, eventually we encounter the beautiful belly filled with so many stories. Loss, longing, yearning, wanting. Can you be grateful for all that it’s experienced and send it love and appreciation?
6. Moving up through the torso, this luscious landscape which houses heart and lungs, you may picture an inner river pumping and flowing, bringing juicy life through the body.
7. When you reach your shoulders, you can lay gentle hands on yourself, massaging some of the day’s stress away. Taking a moment to be grateful for all that our shoulders shoulder. Swooping down through arms to fingers, I thank them for allowing me to be independent in so many ways. Can you offer appreciation to your hands and arms that work so hard?
8. We visit the neck and face. Are lips dry or moist? Are your teeth clenched? What about the jaw? Can you feel the air moving in and out of your nostrils? Can you notice your eyeballs, top of head, back of head, side of head, and ears?
9. On an out-breath, let go of focused awareness. On an in-breath, expand your attention around the entire body, noticing all the sensations reminding you that you are alive right now. What do you notice when you bring the spirit of gratitude into every precious moment that you and your body share together?
2) Allow Gratitude to Connect You to All Living Things—Shauna Shapiro

Mindfulness, self-compassion, gratitude, and the practices that emerge from them help free us from the prison of isolation and the delusion of separation. These practices open our minds, awaken our hearts, and deepen our sense of connection with ourselves, each other, and our world. We begin to realize that we are never just practicing for ourselves. Transforming ourselves creates echoes in the universe, because as we heal ourselves, we heal each other, and our world. As renowned author Arianna Huffington beautifully puts it, “Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.”
1. Begin by settling the mind and body, taking a seat on a chair, on the floor, or wherever you can sit comfortably upright. Allow a soft smile to rest on your lips, not as a way to paper over how you are feeling, but simply to invite in rest and ease.
1. Bring your awareness to the simple sensations of breathing. Feel how the breath is supporting you, oxygenating the body with each inhale, releasing stress and toxins with each exhale. Begin to sense the beating of your heart. Become aware of how the heart is supporting you, sending blood carrying oxygen and nutrients to all the trillions of cells in your body. Invite in a feeling of gratitude and kindness toward your breath, your heart, your body.
1. Begin to feel your body in your seat, and let your awareness expand to include the earth below you, supporting you. Allow yourself to rest into the Earth, to feel held by the Earth. Feel how there is nothing more you need to do in this moment.
1. Reflect on how the Earth is supporting all beings equally, and that gravity is keeping all beings tethered to the Earth. Reflect on how this planet is connected to a solar system and a vast universe. And that all things—all humans, all animals, the Earth, the sun, and the stars—are composed of the same matter, the same basic particles. We are literally all made of stardust.
1. Feel the web of life into which we are born, from which we can never fall. Feel how you are part of this web. Nothing is separate.
1. Feel yourself resting with gratitude in the heart of the universe. Begin to send your good wishes to all beings, gently and silently repeating, “May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe and protected. May all beings be happy. May all beings be filled with love and kindness.”
1. And then recognize that you are contained within the good wishes for all beings. Rest your attention once again on this one being sitting here, and silently direct the good wishes to yourself: “May I be peaceful. May I be safe and protected. May I be happy. May I be filled with love and kindness.”
1. As you breathe in, you are breathing in this loving-kindness, and as you breathe out, you are sending this loving-kindness out. May all beings here and everywhere dwell with peace. May the Earth dwell in peace. And close by offering: May this practice be of benefit for all beings.
Excerpted from Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Brain for Calm, Clarity and Joy by Shauna Shapiro, PhD. Sounds True, June 2022. Reprinted with permission.

3) Awaken the Flow of Gratitude in Nature—Georgina Miranda

Regardless of where I am experiencing nature—at a local city park, perched up high on mountain tops, or swimming in the sea—I’ve found it is always a good time to pause and be present with the gratitude I feel for our inherent connectedness to nature. Our breath is an anchor that can always bring us home. A few deep breaths, connecting with the space we are in, bring home a knowing that there is no separation between us. We need our Grand Mother, the Earth—her air to fill our lungs, her living things to feed us, her awe to keep our souls warm. She needs us too—to look after her, to shift our day-to-day ways of living, to treat her as one of our dearest friends.

Next time you are in nature, see if you can shift from a state of doing into a state of being. The key difference between exercise and movement is that when you move with the intention of exercise, you quickly enter a state of doing. Movement is free-flowing and allows you to enter a state of being. The benefits are vast when you allow yourself to be one with the nature you choose, connecting and moving with gratitude.
1. Give yourself permission to be. Go into nature without an agenda or expectations and just to be with it and move with it. If you are struggling with stress, anxiety, depression, or sluggishness, let movement outside help ignite an internal shift.
1. Breathe and pay attention. Bring all the attention to your breath, its rhythm, its ability to inspire a reset with each inhale and exhale. Notice the air you are breathing in, the smells, the temperature, the freshness. Let each inhale be an opportunity to connect you deeper with the nature you are in. Let each exhale be an opportunity to let go of anything that is not needed at this moment.
1. Breathe and feel deeper. When you’re connected to your breath, what else do you feel? As you take each step, what flows through your body? How does the sun, wind, snow, or rain feel on your skin? What can you hear? While you notice each breath you take, can you start to unite with the space you are in, versus be separate from it? Can you notice you are one with the earth, the air, the water, around you?
1. Breathe and open up to gratitude. Look around, and while staying connected to your breath, let your heart open to any gratitude that’s arising in this moment. Gratitude for the pause in the busyness of life and existence…to your body for its willingness to move freely…to this natural setting and the natural gifts from Mother Earth to you…for this moment of well-being…for knowing that this type of movement, state of awareness, and pause all in one is always available to you.
1. Surrender. Surrender completely with the help of the beautiful nature around you. Become one with it, one with your breath. Just be and soak in the feeling of liberation that can come from the present moment.
4) Counteract Resentment—Barry Boyce

To begin this gratitude practice, I’d like to start by considering one of the biggest obstacles to gratitude: resentment. We can dress up our resentment with a sophisticated storyline about how others—one, or many, or multitudes—are doing us wrong, but what it simply boils down to is being upset because we’re not getting what we want.

The world is too complex and multifaceted for us to continually get our way. It’s good to aspire for the best for ourselves and others, while nonetheless remaining committed to the journey more than the satisfaction of achieving a fixed outcome. If everyone gets their way, we can’t have a cooperative world. From time to time, we need to undercut our own perspective and see things from the other side—maybe even from all sides. Gratitude is a practice that can work with the tendency to cling to fixed outcomes and to feel resentful when we don’t get our way.
1. Bring to mind something that seems unlikely to change and that you do not accept. Perhaps it’s something that’s happened to you or it’s something that’s going on with a loved one or in the world at large. It can be big or small.
2. Counter-intuitively say thank you for that. You’re not being thankful for the thing itself, you’re being thankful for the opportunity to let go. To accept how things unfold doesn’t mean we condone bad behavior or indulge in pessimism or martyrdom. Rather, the point is to use gratitude to undercut our resistance to working creatively with difficult situations.
3. For about 3 minutes, keep imagining things you resent, that you’re irritated about, things that you have trouble accepting or allowing.Try having an attitude that says, “Thank you for the opportunity to work with this.” When we open to deep gratitude for the opportunity to let go of our grasping to outcomes, we can foster a kind of embryonic openness that can lead to other more outward kinds of gratitude.
4. In this next step, let’s be grateful in concentric circles, moving out from our immediate situation, with prompts like the following: I’m grateful to have the necessities of life. I’m grateful to have people to love and to share love with. I’m grateful for friends and the companionship they offer. I’m grateful for the people who serve my needs, who pick up the garbage, take care of the roads, or fix my bicycle. I’m grateful for the people who provide energy and take care of the vast infrastructure that supports society and life. Thank you to the people who sell me food. I’m grateful to health care workers. I’m grateful to the people who are dedicated to keeping me safe. Finally, I’m grateful for the need to encounter those who mean harm, who are tormented by mental and physical pain that causes them to act badly or even violently. While I do not condone purposefully harmful actions, I am grateful that there is a spark of compassion available for those who do harm, and for all of us when we do harm, and the possibility of beneficial change emerging in time. Thank you very much. I’m grateful to share this with you.
5) Nurture a Felt Sense of Gratitude—Gina Rollo White

In this practice, we will be connecting ideas and thoughts with bodily sensations. I’ll walk you through all of it. Follow along and do what works for you.
1. Choose a posture that’s comfortable for you: standing, sitting, or lying down. If you want to close your eyes, you can. Know that at any point, if you feel uncomfortable, you can always open them. If you are standing, sometimes closing your eyes can make you a little wobbly, so you can open them, adjust, and close them again.
1. Before we begin, take a nice big inhale. So inhale…and exhale. In this practice, we will be connecting ideas and thoughts with bodily sensations. I’ll walk you through all of it. Follow along and do what works for you.
1. Begin by noticing the length of your body. Just noticing the entire length of your body, from your feet all the way up to the top of your head. And bring to mind this idea of length, but also this idea of strength and pride. Feel yourself, standing tall or lengthening long, and connect with the sensation of your feet all the way up to the top of your head, so the entire length of your body is connected with the idea of strength and pride and length.
1. Now we’ll move to the back of our body. See if you can imagine what the back of your body looks like—the back of your head, your back, your seat, the back of your feet—and connect that with the idea of the past. Everything that’s behind you, your entire past, is connected with the backs of your shoulder blades, your seat. Maybe you can notice the space in between your shirt and your body, or the space in between your shoulder blades. Just bring to mind the back of your body, and connect it with the past.
1. Next, we move to the sides of our body. See if you can imagine the sides of your body from shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, outside edges of your feet, maybe ear to ear. Think of that as connecting with the outside world, connecting with community. Even raise your arms up and see if you can create a little circle around yourself. Connect the sides of your body with this idea of protecting yourself, so you can create boundaries. But also, if you can, open up and reach your arms really wide, reaching out to your community, to those around you. Notice how you can reach really far and feel connected with those around you, but also create the safety of boundaries, connecting with the sides of your body, your shoulders, your hips, the outside of your feet.
1. Take a moment to continue connecting with community by sending thoughts of love and kindness and gratitude toward others. Bring to mind someone or something, maybe a pet, that you have an uncomplicated relationship with, who you feel safe with. As you bring to mind someone who creates safety or something that creates safety, imagine sending these words to them: May you feel love and kindness. May you feel safe and secure. May you feel healthy and strong.
1. And now, broaden those kind thoughts to your inner circle or your local community or neighborhood. Bringing to mind your community, send thoughts of love and gratitude: May you feel love and kindness. Imagining. All those people. May you feel safe and secure.
1. Continue opening your arms and your circle of love and gratitude. Broadening your arms even more, maybe continuing it out to your nation, to your continent. Imagine all the people and beings on your continent, and then even further out, to the entire world: May you all feel love and kindness. May everyone, every being, every animal feel safe and secure. May you all feel healthy and strong.
1. And now, bring your arms in closer to your body. Making that circle smaller and smaller, you can come back to our neighborhood, your community, all the way back to that first person or animal that makes you feel safe and secure. Connect with the outside of your body, the outside of your feet, your hips and shoulders.
1. Bring your focus now to your internal world. What’s occurring inside of your body? Notice your heartbeat, your stomach digesting, your lungs as you inhale and exhale. Connect that with the idea of present-moment awareness. What’s occurring right now, in this moment? Your breath. Your heartbeat. And also yourself, connecting your awareness with all that you are. Take a moment to send yourself gratitude and love and kindness. If it’s available to you, put your hands over your heart.
1. Think to yourself as you’re standing here in this present moment: May I feel love and kindness. May I feel safe and secure. May I be healthy and strong. May I be happy. Place your hands by your side, and move from the internal once again to the external. From the front of your body, the tips of your toes to your belly, to the outside of your chest, the outside of your shoulders, your face. Connect the front of your body with the idea of forward movement, and with the idea of all that is before you.
1. Picture your entire body, connecting all the parts. The front of your body, the sides of your body, the back of your body, internal head to toe. Bringing it all into one thought, one image, and take a moment to send yourself some gratitude. You might say to yourself, Great job. Great job for practicing today. Maybe even put your hands over your heart again and saying, Thank you.
1. Place your arms by your side, and then if you can, as you inhale, reach your arms up really high, all the way up. As you exhale, lower your arms. If your eyes were closed, you can open them. Just take a moment to look around and take in the colors, the sights, maybe even the sounds.
1. Get curious about what you feel right now. What is the quality you feel right now? And then as you close this practice, give yourself one final moment of gratitude, saying to yourself, Thank you. Great job.
How to Practice Gratitude

Practicing gratitude has incredible effects, from improving our mental health to boosting our relationships with others. Explore ways you can be more appreciative in our mindful guide to gratitude.
Read More

Mindful Staff

September 21, 2023
The Science of Gratitude

Research shows gratitude isn’t just a pleasant feeling—being grateful can also support greater health, happiness, and wisdom in ourselves and our communities.
Read More

Misty Pratt

February 17, 2022
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November 24, 2025
What Entrepreneur and Innovator Joe Kiani Has Been Up to One Year After His Masimo Resignation

In over three decades, Joe Kiani led Masimo from a California startup into a global leader in patient monitoring. Since his resignation in late 2024, Kiani has not slowed down but rather redirected his energy into a series of ventures that combine health, technology, and human connection.

Continuing a Legacy of Health Innovation

Soon after his departure, Kiani deepened his focus on Willow Laboratories, a company he founded in 1998 to advance human health through data and behavioral insights. Willow’s mission centers on empowering people to manage their health proactively rather than reactively.

A key part of that mission is Nutu, a digital platform designed to help individuals improve their well-being through small, measurable changes in diet, activity, and sleep. The app uses wearable data and user inputs to generate a “Nutu Score,” a personalized indicator of progress. The system emphasizes gradual lifestyle improvements and sustained engagement, rather than one-size-fits-all recommendations.

The company’s approach reflects Kiani’s longstanding belief that technology should simplify health decisions and help people live longer, healthier lives.

Entering Media Technology with Like Minded Labs

In July 2025, Kiani became CEO of Like Minded Labs, a Santa Monica–based media technology company focused on transforming digital communication and creative collaboration.

Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek also joined the company’s board around the same time, highlighting its focus on scalable, content-driven innovation.

Kiani’s leadership at Like Minded Labs appears to be grounded in the same principles that guided his previous ventures: technical rigor, long-term thinking, and a commitment to products that improve the way people connect.

A Consistent Commitment to Safety and Purpose

Kiani continues to chair the Patient Safety Movement Foundation, which he established in 2012 to reduce preventable deaths in hospitals worldwide. The foundation works with healthcare providers, policymakers, and technology companies to share best practices and advance transparency in patient outcomes.

This ongoing advocacy reinforces a throughline across all of Kiani’s work: a dedication to applying technology ethically and effectively to improve human wellbeing. Whether in hospital systems, personal health apps, or media platforms, his focus remains on how innovation can serve people more directly.

Strategic Investments in Healthcare Innovation

Kiani has also recently put capital, board roles, and domain expertise into emerging and established health-tech ventures, including MY01, SMS Biotech, IRIDAMED, and CDX Medical Technologies, all of which reinforce a commitment to transforming the frontiers of medical care.

Building on a Proven Foundation

Joe Kiani’s professional trajectory shows a consistent pattern: identify a problem, build the technology to address it, and scale that solution until it changes an industry.

While the industries and companies have evolved, the core mission remains clear: leveraging engineering and creativity to make technology serve humanity more effectively.

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October 30, 2025
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April 30, 2025
2024 Year in Review
Celebrating 2024. Celebrating Your Support.

What a year NutritionFacts.org had! Our successes, output, and outreach in 2024 are thanks to your support. We simply cannot do what we do without your generosity. Thank you.

You’re invited to read our 2024 Year in Review in full. Please share in the work we were able to accomplish. The lives we were able to touch.

Some of our highlights:
- Dr. Greger’s book tour for his New York Times Best-Selling How Not to Age took him to more than 70 events, presenting to thousands of individuals in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and the companion four-part webinar series was our most popular ever, drawing more than 9,000 participants who wanted to learn how to live longer, more vibrantly.
- NutritionFacts.org hired Kristine Dennis, PhD MPH, as our first Senior Research Scientist.
- We released our first self-published book—Ozempic: Risks, Benefits, and Natural Alternatives to GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs.
- On the Chinese platform WeChat, we hit nearly 400,000 blog views in just one month.
- We prepared the manuscript for the forthcoming How Not to Age Cookbook, once again working with famed recipe creator Robin Robertson.
See our 2024 Year in Review for the full scope of our work last year and a preview to what we’re focusing on in 2025.

Thank you, again, for your commitment to sharing evidence-based nutrition and health information and your dedication to NutritionFacts.org.
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April 13, 2025
Dad Dies Year After Brain Tumor Diagnosis, Doctor Initially Dismissed Symptoms As Stress, Accused Him Of Faking

A 53-year-old U.K. man with troubling signs, including headaches and jumbled speech, was initially dismissed as stressed. His doctor even accused him of faking symptoms before being diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. A year later, he died. Now, his daughter is running a marathon to raise awareness and money for cancer research.

Stephen Blakeston, from Hull, England, started experiencing massive headaches and was jumbling up sentences when his wife noticed the symptoms and took him to a doctor in October 2010.

“I couldn’t believe it when we visited the GP, who dismissed his symptoms as stress-related and even said he was faking, something I know my dad wouldn’t do,” Blakeston’s daughter Hollie Rhodes recollected.

Blakeston later got a CT scan done and realized that a tumor was growing on the left side of his brain, which was affecting his speech. He underwent surgery soon, and a biopsy confirmed that the tumor was a glioblastoma, a fast-growing, incurable cancer, leaving him with just 12-18 months to live.

After the surgery, Blakeston underwent intensive radiotherapy and two rounds of chemotherapy to halt the growth of the tumor and scans showed no signs of further regrowth.

However, around 9 months later, Blakeston suddenly collapsed and died after a blood clot, believed to be related to his treatment, or the tumor traveled to his heart.

“It was horrible for us to lose him so suddenly, but there is some comfort in knowing it was quick and likely the way he would have wanted to go. I’ll always miss hearing his laugh,” Rhodes said.

Glioblastoma is a fairly common form of brain tumor, with more than 13,000 Americans are diagnosed with it every year. The symptoms vary but often include persistent headaches, nausea, confusion, memory loss, and personality changes. Other signs to watch out for include vision problems, speech difficulties, muscle weakness, and seizures, especially in those without a history of them.

“It’s the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40, so it should absolutely be a priority to stop these deaths. It almost feels like people view brain tumors as a final prognosis. That whole narrative needs to change because more funding in research would bring hope to those impacted,” said Rhodes, who is running the London Marathon to raise money for Brain Tumor Research.

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February 6, 2025
10 Unbeatable Fitness Challenges to Elevate Your Workout Routine This Year (targeting keywords: fitness challenges, workout routine, exercise)

As the new year approaches, many of us are eager to kickstart our fitness journey and take our workout routine to the next level. One effective way to do this is by incorporating fitness challenges into your exercise routine. These challenges can help you stay motivated, push your limits, and achieve your fitness goals faster. In this article, we’ll explore 10 unbeatable fitness challenges that can elevate your workout routine this year.

Challenge 1: The 30-Day Plank Challenge

The plank is an essential exercise for building core strength, improving posture, and enhancing overall stability. The 30-day plank challenge involves holding a plank position for 30 seconds to 1 minute, three times a day, for 30 consecutive days. This challenge will help you build endurance, increase your core strength, and improve your overall fitness.

Challenge 2: The 7-Day Burpee Challenge

Burpees are a full-body exercise that combines strength training, cardio, and flexibility. The 7-day burpee challenge involves doing 10 burpees each day for 7 consecutive days. This challenge will help you build strength, improve your endurance, and increase your overall fitness.

Challenge 3: The 14-Day Squat Challenge

Squats are a fundamental exercise for building leg strength, improving balance, and enhancing overall fitness. The 14-day squat challenge involves doing 50 squats each day for 14 consecutive days. This challenge will help you build strength, improve your flexibility, and increase your overall fitness.

Challenge 4: The 21-Day Push-Up Challenge

Push-ups are an essential exercise for building chest strength, improving posture, and enhancing overall fitness. The 21-day push-up challenge involves doing 21 push-ups each day for 21 consecutive days. This challenge will help you build strength, improve your endurance, and increase your overall fitness.

Challenge 5: The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

Yoga is an excellent way to improve flexibility, balance, and overall fitness. The 30-day yoga challenge involves practicing yoga for 30 minutes each day for 30 consecutive days. This challenge will help you improve your flexibility, balance, and overall fitness.

Challenge 6: The 7-Day HIIT Challenge

High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is an effective way to improve cardiovascular fitness, burn calories, and increase overall fitness. The 7-day HIIT challenge involves doing 7 days of HIIT workouts, with each workout lasting 20-30 minutes. This challenge will help you improve your cardiovascular fitness, burn calories, and increase your overall fitness.

Challenge 7: The 14-Day Strength Training Challenge

Strength training is essential for building muscle mass, improving bone density, and enhancing overall fitness. The 14-day strength training challenge involves doing 14 days of strength training workouts, with each workout focusing on a different muscle group. This challenge will help you build muscle mass, improve bone density, and increase your overall fitness.

Challenge 8: The 21-Day Cardio Challenge

Cardio exercises are essential for improving cardiovascular fitness, burning calories, and increasing overall fitness. The 21-day cardio challenge involves doing 21 days of cardio workouts, with each workout lasting 20-30 minutes. This challenge will help you improve your cardiovascular fitness, burn calories, and increase your overall fitness.

Challenge 9: The 30-Day Pilates Challenge

Pilates is an excellent way to improve core strength, flexibility, and overall fitness. The 30-day Pilates challenge involves practicing Pilates for 30 minutes each day for 30 consecutive days. This challenge will help you improve your core strength, flexibility, and overall fitness.

Challenge 10: The 7-Day Tabata Challenge

Tabata is a high-intensity interval training workout that involves 20 seconds of all-out effort followed by 10 seconds of rest. The 7-day Tabata challenge involves doing 7 days of Tabata workouts, with each workout lasting 4-6 minutes. This challenge will help you improve your cardiovascular fitness, burn calories, and increase your overall fitness.

Conclusion

Incorporating fitness challenges into your workout routine can be an effective way to stay motivated, push your limits, and achieve your fitness goals faster. These challenges can help you build strength, improve your endurance, and increase your overall fitness. Remember to always listen to your body and take rest days as needed. With consistency and dedication, you can achieve your fitness goals and enjoy a healthier, happier you.

FAQs

Q: What is the best way to start a fitness challenge?
A: The best way to start a fitness challenge is to start small and gradually increase the intensity and duration of your workouts.

Q: How often should I do a fitness challenge?
A: It’s recommended to do a fitness challenge 3-4 times a week, with at least one day of rest in between.

Q: Can I customize a fitness challenge to fit my fitness level?
A: Yes, you can customize a fitness challenge to fit your fitness level by adjusting the intensity and duration of your workouts.

Q: What are some common mistakes to avoid when doing a fitness challenge?
A: Some common mistakes to avoid when doing a fitness challenge include not warming up properly, not listening to your body, and not taking rest days.

Q: How can I stay motivated during a fitness challenge?
A: You can stay motivated during a fitness challenge by setting small goals, tracking your progress, and rewarding yourself for reaching milestones.

10-unbeatable-fitness-challenges-to-elevate-your-workout-routine-this-year-targeting-keywords-fitness-challenges-workout-routine-exercise

February 1, 2025
A Guided Meditation to Set Your Intentions for the New Year
Skip the resolutions this year. Set a different tone by cultivating your intentions for the new year with this mindful practice.
While many of us take stock at the end of a year, set goals, or make new plans for the upcoming year, that sense of letting go of what we’re caught up in and the habits we’ve been living through are a part of our everyday mindfulness practice. Each time we sit for a few minutes, there’s an opportunity to let go of wherever our minds, attention, and awareness have gotten caught up in, come back, and realign ourselves with our best intentions and efforts.

It might be a sense of bringing full awareness and attention to our experience, to the people around us, to a conversation with our children. It might be a sense of letting go of reactivity and coming back to resolve with more patience and clarity. It might also be balancing the tendency most of us have to get caught up in stress and giving more attention to gratefulness, positive moments, and things we enjoy. Or it might be a sense of wanting to bring more kindness and compassion to how we treat ourselves, how we treat others, or even how we treat the people we find difficult in our lives. All of that can be cultivated, sustained, and developed through any amount of time we spend in our mindfulness practice.

A Guided Meditation to Set Your Intentions for the New Year
1. Find a comfortable posture. Dropping your gaze or shutting your eyes, notice the physical movement your body makes with each breath. You might notice your belly, your chest, or perhaps the air moving in and out of your nose and mouth.
2. Check in with your effort and intention. What is it you’d like to bring to the practice today? Perhaps it’s an opportunity to settle and gather your attention or a sense of resolve and strength. Of course, you might have the intention to simply show up to this practice without adding any sense of stress or strain.
3. Bring that sense of intention and awareness to your practice today. One way to do that can be within each in-breath, developing a sense of open awareness.
4. With each out-breath, come up with a word that captures your intentions for yourself. Breathe in with awareness and maybe picture something or feel gratitude toward whatever feels appropriate to you right now. Breathe out with your intentions for this moment.
5. You might lose touch with your intentions throughout the practice and in life—you can come back again. If you lose touch with the practice and your mind gets caught up in distraction or reactivity or some sense of discomfort, that’s normal. That’s all part of the practice. Try coming back to the same practice with awareness.
6. As the practice ends, pause for a moment with intention, and choose when to move on with your day.
  Whatever you’re facing in life, all we indirectly influence is how we choose to relate to that. Reactivity and anger so often lead to more reactivity and anger. You can get caught up in self-criticism and in criticism of others. You can develop a more balanced sense of awareness, preciseness, and clarity through mindfulness practice. At any moment, you can catch yourself and realign yourself with your best intentions, recognizing that you may lose touch again and then come back when you do.
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Shelly Tygielski offers a three-step exercise to help you get started with your own self-care plan—no bubble bath required.
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Shelly Tygielski

January 3, 2023
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January 20, 2025
Build Healthy Habits in the New Year With 3 Science-Backed Strategies
Our habits create our lives.

They are the basis for most of our positive outcomes in life. They determine how often we practice mindfulness, our exercise patterns, our ability to place our full attention on our work. They bolster our capacity to interact with the people around us from a sense of compassion and full presence.

Our habits also create most of the problems we encounter in life. They keep us stuck in self-defeating patterns like eating that full pint of ice cream, getting lost for hours on social media, or “checking out” instead of being present for the people we love.

As you begin this New Year, it’s easy to get caught-up thinking only about goals, outcomes, and New Year’s resolutions. These are important. But we think it’s even more important to consider the underlying habits that either keep you stuck or allow you to experience profound changes.

How do you nourish healthy habits? Here are three proven steps:

3 Science-Backed Strategies to Build Healthy Habits in the New Year

Step 1: Take an Inventory of Your Current Habit System

Edward Deming, one of America’s leading management scientists in the 20^th century, declared, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Allow that to sink in for a moment.

The idea here is that your current system of habits is “perfectly designed” to produce the negative, self-defeating, patterns you wish you could change. If you struggle to exercise, it’s because your current habit system is perfectly designed to keep you from working out. If you can’t find time to meditate, it’s because your current habit system is perfectly designed to prevent you from training your mind.

Which existing habits are standing in your way? Which new habits will allow you to make the changes you would like to see?

And that raises an important question: what results do you wish you were getting? For instance, do you want to be more mindful, less distracted? Do you want to be kinder, less agitated? Do you want to spend more time exploring the things that matter most to you, less time binge-watching shows on Netflix? These are the outcomes you want to change.

Next, look one level deeper, at changes in habits that will help you achieve these outcomes. And this begs a second question: Which existing habits are standing in your way? Which new habits will allow you to make the changes you would like to see?

Step 2: Build New Habits By Stacking Them on Habits You Already Have

By now, you should have a few new habits in mind that will help you achieve the changes you’d like to make. The question then becomes: how do you build these new habits?

In our work with high performers and executives, we’ve found that the best way to build new habits is to, in the words of habit expert James Clear, “stack” them on top of existing habits.

For example, let’s say you want to build the habit of spending less time distracted by your phone. You could try to build this habit from scratch by saying, “I am not going to look at my phone at all in the evening.”

Stacking this new habit on top of an existing habit is a much more effective strategy. For example, you can say: “After I walk through my front door and take off my jacket in the evening, I’m going to put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode.” This approach increases your likelihood of building the habit not only by tying it to an existing habit (taking off your coat as you walk in the door) but it also includes a specific action, which the research says is another important strategy for making habits stick. Instead, saying vaguely, “I’m going to try to look at my phone less,” it’s based on a tangible action, “switching my phone to Do Not Disturb.”

The path to changing your life is more about the process of building the habit than the specific habit itself.

There are numerous ways to enact this strategy in everyday life. You could use your walk into the office as a time for practicing present moment awareness, use slowing down in your car at stop signs or stop lights as a cue to take one or two mindful breaths, or use beginning meals as a cue for expressing one thing you are grateful for.

The possibilities here are endless with this simple strategy: Stack the new habit you wish to create on top of an existing habit so that it becomes integrated into the midst of your everyday life.

Step 3: Build and Sustain Your New Habits Using the Four C’s

The final step uses what we call the Four C’s of habit formation to weave these new habits deep into the fabric of your everyday life.
1. Commence Small. This first critical tip builds on Stanford professor BJ Fogg’s research, which suggests you start with a goal you can realistically achieve. For example, it’s better to start with 5 minutes of meditation each day than to set yourself up for disappointment by trying to meditate for an hour. Be careful of setting unrealistic New Year’s goals that risk failing in mere days because they are too big. Remember, the path to changing your life is more about the process of building the habit than the specific habit itself.
2. Commit. Make a 100% commitment to building your new habit. It turns out that it’s actually easier to commit to building a new habit 100% of the time than 99%. That 1%, after all, can make you miserable. It fuels that voice in your head that says, “I’ll skip it just this once.” But by making a 100% commitment to a tiny habit, you end this mental argument. We have seen over and over again with thousands of people that this is really the key tip for creating new habits.
3. Create a consistent Cue. Going back to the idea of habit stacking, where creating a “cue” helps you remember to act. Use one of your existing habits as your cue, as a trigger that helps you remember to build the new habit. If you want to spend less time mind wandering and more time noticing the sights, sounds, and sensations of the present moment, for instance, come up with a regularly repeating cue that reminds you to practice, a cue like waking up, going to bed, walking upstairs, stopping at stoplights, riding in elevators, or standing in line at the store.
4. Celebrate. All you have to do to celebrate is savor the experience for just a few seconds. Savor the exquisite feeling of connecting to your breath. Savor the feeling of pleasure that you derive from doing the activity you made a 100% commitment to carry out.
So, while the world hammers on about goals, outcomes, and New Year’s resolutions over the next few weeks, remember that real change and progress only happens when we carefully construct a system of habits that make new outcomes possible.
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January 14, 2025
10 Essential Design Trends to Watch in [Year]

Here’s a 2000 words article on the Essential Design Trends of [Year]:

Exploring the Exciting Frontier: 10 Must-Watch Essential Design Trends

As designers continue to shape our digital experiences in [Year] and beyond, it’s paramount to identify innovative trends that would shape the paradigm of modern creative work. Since design plays such a critical in shaping brand visuals, interacting tools, and connecting with diverse segments of end-consumers (users and patrons alike), design trends emerge gradually, culminates on how we evolve across the technological waves. Thus understanding the core transformations in art with the tools around us remains fascinating. Design encompasses a holistic visual representation as communication, hence ensuring that designs cater to this vision. From conceptualization and storytelling to practical engineering, essential to the craft which is reenforced at best by incorporating relevant trends while taking into the industry’s context demands. Thus focusing on core insights, which encompass the overall impression, these cutting-edge techniques shape the evolution journey.

In particular, ten most significant emerging pattern trends as witnessed in design sphere, along as the expected milestones for that area, thus embracing the growth factor. While an overview highlights 10 critical observations, also delving a small bit deep onto each in various aspects which drive the progress made.

Typography: More Flexible and Less Verbose

January 6, 2025