Recommendation #4: Hold the Cheese

Over the past 5-10 years I have noticed an increase in the amount of food that is being "enhanced" with cheese. Many restaurants are now smothering steak, chicken, fish and other foods with cheese. Many items in the supermarket now have cheese in them. We accidentally bought chicken nuggets for our kids, and they were infused with cheese. I never expected that I had to look more closely at the chicken nuggets to choose the non-cheesified version.

Let's face it, we just don't get as much exercise as we used to. Cheese is fattening, so if you eat too much of it, you will most likely get fat. I'm not saying to completely eliminate cheese from your diet, after all, it is yummy and avoiding it would feel like punishment. But eating cheese should be a conscious decision. Just pay attention to it. At the restaurant, if there is a steak smothered in cheese, and there's another with no cheese, get the other one. I don't know why steak needs melted cheese on it anyway, it should taste good without it. If it's a choice between the onion rings or the mozzarella sticks, get the onion rings. If you really want mozzarella sticks, then just eat one or two, instead of five or six. Try to avoid meals with lots of cheese, avoid cheese fries and chicken parmesan. If you can't control yourself and you just can't give up your cheese stuffed jalapeno poppers, then go ahead and eat them, just try to have them less often. It's all about moderation, and as long as it is a conscious decision each time you have some cheese, in the long run you'll probably wind up having it less often and in less quantities.

As I've mentioned before, make sure to go slowly with these recommendations. It won't work if you do things too drastically. Like in this case, don't eliminate all cheese. Just slow it down a bit and give it time. Your body will thank you for it.

Recommendation #3: Don't Use Antibacterial Soap

Here's the next recommendation for a healthier body that doesn't require any extra effort, other than exercising your right to choose products that will be helpful to your body rather than harmful. Antibacterial soap is a menace. Your body needs bacteria as part of normal function. It is the bacteria in your body that actually prevents sickness and disease. Yes there are a few strains of bacteria that are bad for you and cause sickness. But once your body encounters one of these and you get through it, you will have developed antibodies that will combat that strain of bacteria in the future.You need to rely more on your body's natural defenses and less on manufactured chemicals.

Your hands have natural bacteria on them. This bacteria is meant to combat the bad stuff that your hands might come in contact with during the course of your day. You need the bacteria on your hands to be there and be strong, and work for you the way it was intended. When you use antibacterial soap and you kill that bacteria, you are making yourself more vulnerable to sickness, not less. Without any bacteria on your hands, there is nothing to combat the bad stuff when you do eventually come in contact with it.

So which soap should you choose? Hopefully one day I'll be popular enough to get an endorsement from some big soap company and I can tell you which one to use. But alas, this is not so. The best I can do is tell you to use the soap with the least amount of chemicals in it, and definitely non-antibacterial. Personally I use Dove soap. You should avoid soaps that are scented very strongly too, mainly because that probably indicates a large presence of chemicals and soap should be cleaning the chemicals off of you, not putting them on. So the next time you're at the supermarket, check out the different soap options, and make a conscious decision that follows the recommendation given here.