2021 has begun and now you have started planning for your work, studies, and other activities, and yet, often you forget to think about your health. You want to plan for your health as much as for other goals. Recently your physical and mental conditions have become such important assets that can influence your performances. Especially now with this pandemic, not having a strong immune system has a high risk.
Today, I will share with you how to plan for your health in 2021.
There are four areas to plan, diet, exercises, mentality, and lifestyle.
Diet
Review the Ikigai Diet book to note the essential elements.
1. Use organically or naturally grown ingredients.
2. Use locally grown ingredients.
3. Eat and make fermented foods.
4. Eat whole food, Ma Go Wa Ya Sa Shi I, dietary fiber, and One Soup Three Dishes.
5. Not all carbs are bad for you; you don’t need to avoid whole grains.
6. Eat fermented brown rice, wheat berries, oat groats, barley groats, and other grains.
7. Eat local cuisines.
8. Avoid consuming soft drinks, sweets, French fries, chips, other snacks, processed food, fruit juice, meat, and dairy products.
9. When you eat, eat vegetables first, then protein, and finally, carbs.
10. Stop eating when you are 80% full, chew a lot, and don’t eat between meals to give your gut plenty of breaks.
11. Drink a lot of water.
12. Don’t become too strict about your diet and enjoy eating.
13. Use Hare and Ke to balance your diet.
14. Bring hygge and Zen into your dinner and make your eating a cozy and sacred experience.
15. Make exceptions when you socialize with others or eat out.
16. Create a social circle that can influence one another positively.
Plan your weekly menu based on the Ikigai Diet. Try to include Ma Go Wa Ya Sa Shi I plus grains as much as possible. Please set a day when you skip a meal to give your stomach and intestines a break. It can be breakfast, lunch, or dinner, just skip one meal once a week.
You also want to make a monthly plan. In the monthly plan, set a date for Eat Nothing Day and feasts. You need a day every month when you don’t eat anything to give your stomach and intestines a break. You also want to have feasts from time to time to enjoy eating. It can be once a month, twice a month, or every weekend depending on how you want to proceed.
If making a weekly or monthly plan is a bit too much, you can just plan for each day. Think of a menu to cover Ma Go Wa Ya Sa Shi I plus grains each day.
Exercises
1. Find a suitable exercise such as walking or Nordic walking and do it daily.
2. Train your internal organs instead of your muscles.
3. You want to build flexible muscles rather than big muscles.
4. Breathe through your nose
What I do is I go Nordic walking for about 40 minutes and then, I do push-ups 20 times, 3 sets. After that, I do some stretching.
Mentality
1. Think positive.
2. Past successful experience meditation.
3. Kamion Kansha and be grateful for what is happening in your life.
It is good to set a time every day to do your past successful experience meditation or Kamion Kansha, even just 5 minutes a day. I usually do them during my Nordic walking.
Lifestyle
1. Move to the countryside and practice a Satoyama lifestyle.
2. Find Ikigai as your life mission.
3. Working toward building a Sanpo-Yoshi society can be your life mission.
4. You can find your Ikigai through what you love doing.
5. You can find your Ikigai through what you are good at.
With the Coronavirus pandemic, we all know it is safer to live in a less crowded place. You may want to start thinking of moving to the countryside now. You’ll be working remotely anyway, so what is the point of living in a big city?
Even if you decided not to move, you can always start gardening. There are many places where you can grow vegetables in a city, too, such as roof-top gardening.
You can set a day every month to go to a forest to do Shinrinyoku. Put dates of the new moon and full moon in your calendar so that you can live with the natural rhythm.
Another calendar I bought is the Japanese old calendar, which is based on the lunar cycle. I will be living using this calendar.
Since it is the beginning of the Air Age, you want to shift your life direction completely other than just where to live. Find your Ikigai. What I mean by it is to find your life mission. Ikigai has two meanings, the first one is your daily joy and the second one is your life mission.
How to find your Ikigai as a life mission?
To find your Ikigai as your life mission, I recommend that you read my books IKIGAI BUSINESS and Zen and a Way of Sustainable Prosperity.
Well, that’s it for today. I hope you practice the Ikigai Diet this year and lead a healthy, and fulfilling life in 2021.
The Ikigai Diet: The Secret Japanese Diet to Health and Longevity
POD Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4991064864
Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JGB45HF