Everyone wants to be healthy. It helps you live longer. You feel better. You may even inspire others to get healthy by setting an example. But how do you get healthy and stay healthy? Just do these 5 things everyday and feel like you will live forever.

Drink lots of water to be healthy. Water is the most pure beverage out there. No artificial sweeteners or preservatives. Water helps your digestive system work properly and steadily. Some people think if you drink a lot of water, that you will retain more water and feel bloated. The opposite actually happens. By drinking water, your digestive system acts like a waterfall instead of a still pond. As you drink water, your body wants to keep flushing it out, taking toxins and waste with it. If you get dehydrated, all the bad stuff just sits still in you and that is when you get bloated.

Always eat breakfast to be healthy. Somewhere along the way, people started to think that if you eliminate a meal you will lose weight. The most popular meal people stopped eating was breakfast. If you are just counting calories to lose weight, then not eating breakfast would lead you to believe that you would consume fewer calories for the day. The opposite actually happens. By not eating breakfast, your body goes into starvation mode. This significantly lowers your metabolism (the rate you burn fat) and then makes your even more hungry lunch. So when you get to lunch, you will probably overeat and end up consuming more calories than you would have by eating breakfast. The point is to eat breakfast to fuel up your metabolism for the day, eat smaller meals throughout the day and burn more fat.

Keep your portions in check to be healthy. Meal portions in America have consistently increased over the last 30 years. This has lead to the ever expanding waistline of public. A proper portion of protein (meat, fish, eggs) should be the size of your palm. The correct portion of carbohydrates per meal (pasta, breads, rice) should be the size of your fist. Half of your plate should be covered by vegetables and fruit (more veggies than fruit). Oh, and your plate should be no bigger than 10 inches. Seconds are never necessary with this meal makeup.

Eat power snacks to be healthy. Power snacks keep your metabolism steady throughout the day because they prevent you from getting too hungry between meals. Snacks should be low in fat and have equal percent daily values of protein and carbohydrates. Low in fat should have a daily value of less than 5%. Foods low in fat usually have reasonable daily values of protein and carbohydrates, so you don’t have to worry about what that value is as long as they are close percentages. Keep an eye on sodium too. Some foods compensate for less fat by adding more salt.

Whole foods help you to be healthy. The easiest way to do this is look at the ingredients of everything you pick up at the grocery store. The goal is to eat foods with five or less ingredients that you can pronounce. The best types of foods that meet this criterion is when there is no label at all on the food. In other words, the food is in its natural state. Fruit and vegetables meet this every time. Water, natural dairy products and whole grains are good candidates too. A good way to remember what natural foods are is to only eat foods that could be made when no factories existed.

Hopefully these 5 to-dos hit home with you and help you get on the bandwagon to be healthy. This is not a fad diet and there are no promises of significant weight loss or guaranteed long life. Doing these 5 things will make you feel better (physically and mentally) and give you more energy. This could lead to a snowball effect of incorporating more exercise which then leads to obtaining your ideal weight. In other words, only good things can come when you make the decision to be healthy.