As the year draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the importance of healthy New Year’s resolutions for 2024. An old Chinese saying advises us to ‘Out with the old, make way for the new.’ This is the perfect moment to discover resolutions that can enhance your health, fitness, and sleep.
The key to a healthy and happy self in 2024 starts with sleep. The first resolution is to improve your sleep quality. Surprisingly, sleep quality is more crucial than the quantity of sleep you get. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, is a case in point. He claims to average only six hours of sleep each night since 2015, yet he manages to get enough deep, restorative sleep.
This allows him to have more awake hours to accomplish even more tasks, such as running his other company, Tesla. However, for most people, the idea of averaging only six hours of sleep every day might seem less realistic than Elon Musk’s space ventures.
Did you know that your sleeping routine doesn’t necessarily equate to the quality of your sleep? Before diving into tips and tricks for better sleep in the new year, it’s crucial to debunk 7 Common Myths about Mattresses to ensure you have the best mattress and the softest bedding.
Healthy New Year’s Resolution #2: Regularly Wash and Change Your Bedsheets
We spend more time in bed than anywhere else in a 24-hour day cycle. Your bedsheets are the closest thing to you, touching you for about a third of your life. Therefore, it’s essential to maintain them regularly to keep them in excellent condition.
Microbiologist Philip Tierno explains that the human body naturally produces sweat, which traps bacteria, fungi, and even dust mites. If we don’t change our bedsheets regularly, these accumulated germs will remain on them, impacting our health and sleep quality.
Healthy New Year’s Resolution #2. Change and replace bedsheets regularly. Accumulating germs in bed is gross! To avoid this, change your bedsheets at least once a week. Also, consider replacing them once a year. A new year often means new bedsheets!
Healthy New Year’s Resolution #3. Make napping a regular habit. Hong Kongers are always busy. Daily work and family commitments take up most of the awake time. For office people, 8 hours of sleep per day is a luxury. But napping isn’t just for children. Adults can and should nap too. A perfect nap takes around 20 minutes and makes you feel refreshed, awake, alert, and productive. Do it during the holiday. It helps recover your mind and body and gives better sleep at night. Healthy New Year’s Resolution #4: Cut down on caffeine intake. Caffeine acts on the central nervous system to make you feel more alert and less drowsy.Consumption of caffeine through drinks such as coffee, tea, or cola can speed up your heartbeat and breathing rate to take in more oxygen. This may mask sleep deprivation but also creates an unwelcome cycle that can lead to insomnia and certain sleeping disorders.
To cut down on caffeine doesn’t mean saying goodbye to coffee beans and soft drinks. It just means being smart about intake. Don’t drink too much and avoid it after 3 PM. When offered coffee after dinner, choose decaf! Healthy New Year’s Resolution #5: Declutter your mind and practice mindfulness. Have you had a night where thoughts and creativity were thriving even when trying to sleep? If 2022 is an indication, stress, work, and other life challenges will continue in 2024. The solution? Try turning on relaxing music, clearing your mind, and practicing mindfulness.Research shows that a healthy mind can keep you on the right track, no matter what life throws at you. Even if you skip your regular gym session, having a healthy mind can provide immediate boosts in happiness, energy, and overall health!
Looking for an effective way to clear your mind and be more mindful? Try meditation. This simple practice has been shown to make people calmer, more productive, exercise more self-control, and rewire your brain for the better. It can even boost your social life by helping increase your emotional intelligence and compassion while decreasing the feeling of loneliness.
And the best part of meditating? When your thoughts swirling in your head are less cluttered, you can fall asleep swiftly and easily.
Healthy New Year’s Resolution #6: Exercise regularly (it will help you fall asleep more quickly!) As recommended by the Department of Health, regular physical activity of moderate intensity helps improve your health and well-being.
How does the Department of Health define moderate intensity? Simply any activity that makes your heart beat faster and stronger, or makes you feel sweaty or breathe heavily.
The good news is that many activities can fall into the category of promoting health. It’s not difficult to find activities you enjoy. The challenge is making them a regular part of your life. For the new year, pick a few favorites and commit to them for the whole year. Not only does it help balance your physique, but it also enables you to fall into a deep sleep cycle quickly.
Healthy New Year’s Resolution #7: Keep up the good work. All of the above is easier said than done. We all want to be fit, healthy, and well-rested in 2024. The key to achieving health and wellness goals is maintaining motivation and developing consistently healthy habits. Making small lifestyle changes and exercising self-discipline in tracking resolutions can help you stay on target to achieve the best version of yourself. Our advice this new year? Set your goals now, work steadily toward them, and get plenty of rest! Stephanie, Certified Wellness Consultant & Co-founder of Hush Home. About Stephanie: As a certified health and wellness consultant, Stephanie is on a mission to inspire everyone to live a fuller life by sleeping better.Stephanie is a professional in the bedding industry who designs and leads sleep workshops for Fortune Global 500 Companies such as Citibank, Manulife, and Standard Chartered. These workshops aim to enhance employee performance and productivity through the science of sleep.
When Stephanie is not enjoying her 8 hours of sleep or engaging in reading and writing about sleep and wellness, she can be found hiking with her little Pomeranian, Dookie.