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Last time we talked about making those small changes in your lifestyle and diet that can add up over time to help you achieve some pretty serious results. The list I’ve compiled is based on eating and drinking these unhealthy things ONCE A DAY, which I know not everyone does. (Who eats Dominos every day?) This is meant to illustrate how daily choices can add up over time to net us big-time benefits. Here’s the breakdown of what small food choice changes can do for you:

Soft drink > water
Once a day, drink a glass of water instead of a 20 oz Coke.

Chips > apple and nuts
Once a day, eat an apple and a handful of raw almonds instead of a grab bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips.

Candy bar > Muscle Milk
Once a day, trade that post-work out Snickers bar for a Muscle Milk Light Ready-to-Drink.

Bad lunch salad > good lunch salad
Once a day, exchange an Outback Queensland salad w/ Blue Cheese dressing for a Panera Bread Asian Sesame Chicken Salad.

Domino’s > California Pizza Kitchen
Once a day, eat 1/3 of a California Pizza Kitchen Thin Crust Margherita Pizza instead of 2 slices of a Domino’s Large Ultimate Pepperoni pizza.

If you implemented changes like these, your net total loss of calories would be 1,491,308, for a total pound loss of 426. Maybe it’s time to examine your diet and see if there are some places that you can make some substitutions to make big changes down the road!

Detox from the holidays
Everybody does it: over-indulge just a bit in December: take some extra egg nog, eat some extra pastries. Hey, you earned it, right? 2010 was one difficult year all around! But once the holiday decorations are safely boxed up again and your life begins to resume its normal shape, you turn your mind to making some changes in your life to fully realize a new and more healthy you. Be it changes in your beauty regimen, vowing to exercise more and consume less, or tailoring your diet to help you look and feel better, most everyone spends the first week in January taking stock and making some commitments to change for the better. Well, when it comes to making changes, there are some best practices and recommended changes you can make that will help you do it right in 2011 and make the changes permanent.

Set goals and make incremental changes
I know you’ve heard it before, from nutrition experts, personal trainers and life coaches who stake their reputations on knowing how people and their bodies work: SET GOALS FOR YOURSELF. And I’m not talking those Big Dream goals, I mean the small ones that you can celebrate next week and a month from now. (And steer clear of rewarding yourself with food—get a massage, buy yourself some new clothes, or treat yourself to some spiffy new deco for the house.) If your goal is weight loss, make a plan to lose 1-2 pounds a week (which is typically what doctors recommend). Losing a lot of weight by taking on an extreme low calorie diet or crash diet rarely lasts beyond the last day of starvation. And when making all those lovely long-term plans, make sure to identify and implement incremental changes to help you get there. Changing everything at once—promising to go from carnivore to vegan, run 15 miles a week and volunteer for 10 hours of charity work every week—will more than likely end in miserable failure, unless you have truly Herculean amounts of self-control and discipline. (And if that’s the case, more power to you!)

Post-holiday detox changes you can make today:

• Exchange one soda for a glass of water. Nutrition experts and doctors the world over have banded together to loudly decry the continued mass consumption of soft drinks and other high-sugar beverages. Whether diet or full sugar, these drinks are bad news and often spell disaster for well-meaning dieters’ weight loss goals.

• Exchange one impulse, nutritionally deficient snack for a healthy snack a day.Eating an apple and a handful of almonds in the afternoon, as opposed to a grab bag of chips or a candy bar, will help boost your energy and still those hungry grumblings until dinner. For a super boost, try Runa, a tea-like drink that imparts the benefits of caffeine without the crash and the less savory side effects of another cup of coffee or an iced tea.

• Get a little more exercise every day. And by this, I am certainly not telling you that you need to join an expensive gym, or hit the treadmill for an hour every morning. I am a firm believer in slowly and steadily increasing exercise until you reach a goals. Walk around the block tomorrow morning. 5 minutes. Nice and slow. Try to go a little bit faster the next day. Maybe make it 2 blocks the next day, or next week. If you work up to a place where you feel uncomfortable, back off a bit until you feel better about it. If you miss a day, don’t beat yourself up. Just relax and enjoy being outdoors!

Forming habits
Experts say that it takes 60 days, more or less, to form a habit. Performing the same action on a regular basis for 60 days will make it automatic and less a matter of will power and discipline. So instead of surveying your long-term fitness or nutritional goals with dismay, commit to making a few tiny changes, repeat for 60 days, and then consider adopting some more. With time, luck, and a little perseverance, you WILL successfully detox from December 2010, and be in a great position to reach your goals for 2011. Make a plan today to ring in 2012 with a great deal of style and no guilt at all!

So you took the step of purchasing a drinking water filter in your house? Congratulations! You should take time to relish the relief you feel at providing healthy and safe drinking water for your family. I don’t know about you, but before I installed a drinking water filter, I always felt a kind of sour internal feeling that maybe drinking the tap water wasn’t really in my best interest, my heart plagued by guilt and doubt. But no more!

Bath & Shower Demons
Now let’s turn our attention to another source of nasty business in the house: the shower and bath water. If you have noticed that your hair and skin seem to be dry and that your baths or showers irritate your skin, that is likely the result of shower water contamination: chlorine, lead, VOCs, SOCs, chloramine, and other harmful vapors. The potential damage that shower water contamination could be causing goes much further than just irritated skin or dry hair. When you take a shower, your skin “drinks” water that it comes in contact with. In fact, during an average shower, your skin absorbs as much water as you would drink during an average meal. If that water is not filtered, the good work you did to protect your family from bad water in the kitchen may be undermined in the bathrooms. Here’s a quick rundown of the effects related to showering and bathing in chlorine-laden, unfiltered water:

• Contaminants absorbed more easily through skin and inhalation

• Mild or inflamed eczema and other skin disorders

• Inflamed asthma

• Dry, brittle hair

• Excessively dry and sensitive skin

• Eye irritation

• Respiratory irritation

The Upshot…
The great news is that by taking the step to filter your bathing water, you can enjoy a good number of health and beauty benefits. It’s amazing how much changing just that one little thing can do:

• Healthier skin

• Softer, more manageable hair

• Healthy steam

• Less respiratory inflammation

• Improvement in existing skin conditions

Just Don’t Inhale!
Do you love taking long, steamy hot showers as much as I do? Ever had the unpleasant feeling of a tight chest or feel the need to cough? That steam we dig so much is the vaporized water coming out of the shower faucet, which—when unfiltered—contains all that vicious chlorine. That vaporized water invades your lungs and pollutes your body with even more unhealthy toxins. As much as we may love the idea of a relaxing, hot and steamy shower, the idea of standing in a small room with toxic steam makes the idea somewhat, shall we say, less appealing.

Shopping for a Shower Filter
For the best and most effective results, you should look for a filter that employs carbon, which filters out synthetic chemicals, THMs and VOCs. Also look for a filter to have a KDF stage of filtration, to reduce the amount of chlorine and balance the water’s Ph (for that healthy glow).

You may have heard the reports of the 60,000 chemicals from our industries that sometimes make their way into our drinking water supplies; the press keeps us abreast on what contaminants affect your water. You’ve no doubt heard all the dramatic warnings concerning the dangers of heavy metals, chlorine, bacteria, viruses, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, cow pee and fairy dust. Depending on the amount of unfiltered tap water you consume and the specific contaminants, you and your family’s health may be at risk.

Contaminants everywhere
The Gulf Oil Spill. Lead and giardiasis in city water. Water boiling warnings. You’ve seen this stuff all over the news, especially when the media run stories on local water supplies showing that this or that contaminant has been found. In these circumstances, your concern is probably justified. You may begin to worry, sniff the water that comes out of your taps, run water for 30 seconds before using it to cook or drink, or even make plans to buy bottled water or a water filter. Get the facts before you act. Consider the following:

1)    Contact your municipal water supplier. You have the right to review their annual Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) for ongoing water quality issues. If there is a widespread, short-term problem, your municipal water supplier will have some sort of statement prepared, and will likely have it posted on their website along with instructions on what to do.

2)    Contact local news and media outlets. If there’s a problem, they will more than likely know what’s going on. And if you are the first to bring it to their attention, they will probably investigate it!

3)    Contact local hospitals or a trusted doctor. If there’s been a spike in recent cases of water-borne illnesses or sickness related to contamination, they will know about it and be able to tell you what the danger is to you and your family, what symptoms to look out for and how to avoid it.

4)    Check the EPA’s website for information on contaminants that are prevalent in your area. This can be a good guide, but is rarely specific enough to really tell you enough information on your home or neighborhood. (Or try the Water Quality Association’s Interactive Problem Solver.)

5)    Have your water tested. This is only applicable if the problem persists and the local water treatment supplier is unable to correct the levels of contamination. Find out what, exactly, the problem is so you can take steps to correct the problem yourself.

Now, what to do if there is a problem? And worse yet, what if the problem is persistent? You can go the bottled water route, but that leaves you vulnerable while bathing. I’d go with a water filter, for both drinking and bathing water, with a carbon filter that is certified by one of the two main independent certification organizations: Underwriters Laboratories (UL) or National Sanitation Foundation (NSF). Also, check out this guide for how to choose a water filter.

Treat the problem, not the symptoms
We all have to work together to keep the federal, state, and local government accountable for how they treat the nation’s water supply. This is not an issue that lobbyists should be deciding, but sadly it does come to that from time to time. Make your voice and your opinions known. Write your regional and state representatives, let them know you feel water contamination needs more attention, help set the agenda and get out there and vote on Election Day.

Tap water contamination isn’t a hoax, and it’s no laughing matter. There really are contaminants in your drinking water. Small amounts of those pollutants aren’t usually harmful, but exposure to large portions of impurities affects your health.

For more information, check out some of the stories out there on water quality and the issues that surround it.

If you are under the assumption that all water purifiers are the same, further research is in order. Water purifiers made by Aquasana have been shown to be superior and that means that they deliver quality drinking water. You need to understand that different products manufactured out there in the world of water filters are not all the same.

There is also plenty of variety when it comes to what types of contaminants different water filtering systems are able to remove from the water. Therefore, you need to make sure the one that you get is designed for the types of contaminants found in your drinking water supply. To find out, get a water report that details what has been identified in your drinking water. The EPA requires that this information is kept up to date and accessible.

Aquasana Water Purifiers – You Can Tell the Difference

Water purifiers from Aquasana offer you a system that is very simple to use. This is a great method of removing the various impurities from your drinking water or the water that you bathe in. You certainly don’t want to drink or have heavy metals or other forms of contamination get into your pores when you shower.

As you take your time to explore your own water filtering needs, you will be less intimidated when the time comes to shop for one of them and you will have become an educated consumer. Water purifiers from Aquasana are easier than you think to purchase and begin using. This is a cost-effective method that ensures you can have an unlimited supply of healthy water all of the time.

You don’t have to continue allowing your family to take in harmful forms of contamination. Even if the levels are below what the EPA guidelines are, there are many studies out there that link serious health problems, including cancer, to drinking water. The risk is much too high to feel safe about drinking plain tap water.

The cost of bottled water continues to increase all the time. It also gives a false sense of safety that you are drinking pure water. Bottled water has contaminants in it, just like tap water. The plastic bottles that the product is sold in cause environmental problems, too, so you need to find a better solution than buying bottled water.

Water purifiers from Aquasana can be found online if you aren’t able to buy them locally. They have terrific reviews and that is certainly encouraging. Now is the time to take action and to get quality drinking water in your home. That is going to bring peace of mind to your home. Plus, it will save you lots of money over bottled water.

There are many types of water purifiers from Aquasana that allow you to get great drinking water and to filter the water for your shower, and they even have water bottles that you can refill for when you are away from home. They are a company dedicated to making sure you have great water in spite of what is found in your environment.

It is easy to think that the water you are receiving in your home is clean and safe to drink. Local water providers maintain that the water that they provide is pure. But that water is actually not safe to drink. It is not even safe to use in the shower.

It is true that local treatment facilities routinely provide reports on the quality of their water to the homeowners in their area. They are required to do this by law. But did you know that water companies frequently change their numbers to make the quality of the water they provide look better than it is?

Sometimes, what you are told in these reports is not the whole truth but an edited statement. When asked about why they do this, water companies respond that the people will not comprehend the “relevance of these findings.” This is a carefully worded statement that is little more than, “They can’t handle the truth.”

Now that you know that you don’t really know what is in your tap water, you should not be so trusting. In fact, it is appropriate to think twice about drinking or showering in unfiltered tap water. The Washington Post reported that 65 of 3,000 large water purification systems in the country have lead in their water. Years ago, lead-based paint was banned from the country because of the harm it brings to the body. Lead can cause learning disorders and permanent brain damage in children.

It is also important to note that the lead found in your water can also be from your pipes and plumbing. Some pipes and fixtures are made out of lead, and this lead can seep into your water, especially when the water has been sitting for a while. This is a type of water contamination that happens between the local water treatment facility and your faucets and shower heads.

Almost all tap water provided to homes in the US has been disinfected using chlorine by local water processing facilities. Chlorine is not necessarily the best disinfectant to use, but it is the cheapest one available. The US Council on Environmental Quality said that those who drink chlorinated water increase their chances of getting cancer by 93%.

The microorganism called cryptosporidium is a parasite that can potentially cause death. Despite this being a very harmful parasite, it can still be found in tap water samples today. Even the government said that no local water treatment facility can completely remove this parasite from your drinking water. The technology that they are using today cannot handle it. Chlorine cannot even completely kill this microorganism.

Now that you know that your water may not be pure or safe and that it may have chlorine or the deadly cryptosporidium, it is time to think about how your tap water is affecting your health and the health of your household. Since water treatment facilities are not giving you the kind of water you deserve, you need to do something about your water.

The best thing you can do is buy an Aquasana water filter. These filters can remove chlorine, microorganisms, and other contaminants that can be bad for health. Aquasana water filters provide you with pure, safe, and tasty water that is beyond the standards of local tap water providers.

Being a parent is a huge responsibility, but it is one of the most rewarding things we can do in our lifetime. Toxins in drinking water are a primary concern for many parents. They don’t want to expose their newborns to dangerous substances in the water. Drinking plain water isn’t something that is typical of infants. Yet when you prepare juice, cereal, or formula you will need to use tap water.

One of the most common contaminants in drinking water that can pose a threat to newborns is lead. It isn’t always possible for a woman to offer breast milk or to buy ready-made formula. When the powder type has to be used, then it is essential for quality drinking water that is free from toxins to be used to mix it. If there is lead contamination in your drinking water, that poses a threat to the health of your infant when you use that water to prepare her formula.

Don’t assume that bottled water is the way to go, either. Many parents use it for mixing baby formula. Unfortunately, the marketing of bottled water gives us the false impression that it is pure. However, independent testing frequently shows bottled water contains the same contaminants as can be found in tap water.

One way that parents of newborns can protect their child from toxins in drinking water is to boil it. This should be done in a pot for at least 20 minutes before mixing it with the formula. Make sure that the water has cooled before giving the baby the formula. You never want to risk the baby being burned.

A baby needs to maintain a healthy immune system so it can thrive. As a child gets older, he or she will consume more formula. That means more water will be consumed, so it has to be purified. The exposure to various chemicals that might be in your tap water can significantly reduce the chances of them developing healthy teeth and gums.

Many children are diagnosed with serious health problems while in infancy. There are studies that indicate that these problems could be due to toxins in drinking water. There isn’t a parent in the world that wants to see such an outcome for their children. Increased numbers of infants are being diagnosed with heart problems, circulatory problems, central nervous system disorders, and even cancer so we all need to take extra precautions.

Do everything you can to prevent toxins in drinking water from affecting your newborn. Your entire family can be adversely affected due to various toxins in drinking water. A home filtering system is essential in order for you to be able to ensure that such forms of contamination cannot adversely affect anyone in your family.

Such a filtering system can remove from 90% to 99% of the contaminants in the tap water. If you want to be extra cautious, you can use a reliable water filter system and boil the water. Do all within your power to give your baby a great start for a healthy life. The quality of the water you give to your infant can have a significant impact, giving that child a good start on a happy and productive life.

It is important to know the quality of your tap water. We use water throughout the day for many different things. If we do not have pure, clean water, that could result in some serious consequences. Many people use their tap water without thinking about its quality. It is used for drinking, bathing, cooking, and cleaning.

How can we know the quality of our tap water? Community water systems are required by law to produce an annual water quality report for the people they serve. This report is called the Consumer Confidence Report or CCR. This report includes almost everything you need to know regarding your tap water, such as where the water is from, types of contaminants that are found in the water, levels of these contaminants found in the water, and how these factors could affect your health.

Not all public water systems are required to furnish this annual report. If your water provider is not a community water system, then they are exempt from this requirement. That does not mean that you cannot know more about the quality of your water. You can still call your non-community water system to find out more about your water. You have a right to know what is in the water you drink, so it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Sometimes, the CCR report is only available to those who receive the actual water bill. Because of this, many renters do not get to see this information. If you are in such a situation, you can still find this information. It is likely that the CCR is available in other forms, such as online or in a newspaper or posted in a public area like the cafeteria or the lunch room of a public facility. The water provider can also include you in the mailing list of CCRs by request. Apartment buildings, nursing homes, schools, and private businesses can receive CCRs in their main office. Because of this, you can get a copy of this report when it is sent to them. It is just a matter of knowing who to ask.

By knowing the water quality of your tap water, you have a thorough understanding of what you are taking into your body. You can carefully assess if you want to subject yourself to the level of contamination that is in the tap water of your community. Knowing more about your water can also help you decide what the best purification solution is for you.

No water purification system can deal with all the contaminants in our environment, so the best thing you can do is to choose a system that effectively deals with the specific contaminants found in your water. If your water has too much fluoride, then find a water purifying system that can combat fluoride. If it has too much pesticide residue, then find a system that deals with this specifically. There are also systems available that are great in dealing with the unpleasant tastes and smells in water.

After you read your CCR, take a look at the water filter systems provided by Aquasana. They have a wide range and variety of filters that can deal with different water quality issues. By trusting your water quality to Aquasana, you will have the best water possible at a price you can afford.

When you are expecting a baby, you can expect your life to change in many ways. Aside from the additional weight you will be carrying around, you will need to make changes in order to accommodate the health of the child growing inside you. Changes in lifestyle are necessary for your body to change along with your growing child. Remember that the child in you demands a lot from you and you must be ready to give it.

The body naturally needs water for all of its different bodily functions. By drinking the required 8 glasses of water a day, many illnesses, pregnancy symptoms, and discomforts can be avoided or minimized. The need for plenty of healthy water can easily be overlooked or forgotten, but once you are pregnant, you cannot afford to do any less. Pregnant women need to drink 8 glasses of water a day or more. These should be consumed throughout the day, in between meals, and not all in one sitting.  It is essential that pregnant women avoid becoming dehydrated.

You must remember that dehydration is not the same as being thirsty. Actually, dehydration happens long before you feel thirst, because once you are thirsty, it means that you have been dehydrated for a while already. While dehydration in an average person is unhealthy, dehydration in a pregnant woman is dangerous, both for the mom and the baby. Water is needed to transport nutrients through the blood from the mother to the baby. Pregnant women tend to store extra water in their body, so drinking more water helps flush that out. Urinary tract infections are common in expecting mothers, and water helps prevent that.

Dehydration during pregnancy is serious. In the third trimester, the mother’s blood volume increases. Thicker blood can lead to hypertension and other cardiovascular problems. Drinking more water than the required 8 glasses a day during the third trimester helps avoid these problems.

Also in the third trimester, dehydration can cause contractions and eventually premature labor, which is something mothers do not usually want for their child. Premature labor makes it harder for the child to survive, but drinking water can prevent premature labor from happening. Other benefits of proper hydration during pregnancy include better bowel movement, less acne, healthier skin, flushing away of excess sodium, less chance of miscarriage, and prevention of nausea or morning sickness.

Pregnant women must not only stay hydrated, but they should drink clean and healthy water during pregnancy. Below are just a few of the contaminants found in tap water and how they can affect the unborn baby you are carrying:

·        Chlorine – Miscarriages and other problems

·        Nitrates – Blue Baby Syndrome

·        Lead – Slows mental development

·        Pharmaceutical drugs – Effects growth and development

It is clear that it is important to be intentional about drinking the required amount of water for the health of the child and the mother. Also, the mother must have healthy drinking water during pregnancy that is free of dangerous water contamination. This is easily provided by using water filters by Aquasana. These filters ensure you that no contaminants will be allowed in your water. Your safety and the safety of your precious child is a top concern and Aquasana can be your partner in making sure the water that comes out of your tap is healthy for mom and baby alike.

Everyone needs water that is free from contamination. Many people keep their ears open to any news about water contamination. If you are paying attention to water contamination issues in your community, that is the right thing to do. It is important to stay informed regarding these things. You must be careful not to be swayed by myths lurking around. Here are some of the most commonly misunderstood myths that you should be aware of concerning water contamination:

Myth: Lead water contamination is caused by water treatment plants.

Truth: Lead usually does not come to you from water treatment plants, but from your own home plumbing. The pipes that carry your tap water to you may have lead in them and the lead in the pipes can easily be absorbed by the water going through them. If you want to know if you have lead in your water or how much lead you have, ask a professional laboratory to test your water for its lead content. If your lead content is more that 15 parts per billion (ppb), then you must take action. Lead is a very harmful chemical that can have an adverse impact on the health of young children and infants as well as pregnant and nursing mothers. Lead affects early childhood development and the result can be permanent health damage to their bodies.

Tip: Water that is left standing in lead-based plumbing can absorb lead even faster. Before using water, especially for cooking or for serving to your family, let the pipes flush by simply running the water until it becomes cold.

Myth: Once water goes down the drain, it is out of your life forever.

Truth: The water that you use today went down the drains of hundreds of other people before it reached your home. Actually, it might just be the water you flushed down the drain a few weeks or months ago. Some water might be used again the same week, while some water might remain unused for years. Water is not newly created every day. It is recycled and used again and again. It is another common myth that we have an endless supply of water. It is a limited and very precious resource.

Tip: Use water wisely and conserve water.

Myth: Water purifies itself.

Truth: Water goes through highly technical processes before it reaches your home. The community you live in processes water to catch some very basic forms of contamination. Public water processing, however, is in no way equipped to handle the thousands of forms of water pollution and contamination that enter the water supply every day. Every contaminant that we throw away, including chemicals, medicines, batteries, fertilizers, and industrial waste, finds its way back into our water.

Myth: Any home water purifying system will make your tap water healthier and safer.

Truth: Not all home water purifying systems will produce healthy and safe water. Some water filters will make your water’s taste, odor, and color better. That step of producing water that is clear and tastes good can give you an illusion that the water is healthy and clean. Just because your water is tasty, odorless, and clear doesn’t mean it is truly pure and safe to drink.

Tip: When buying a home water filter system, choose one that has been inspected and tested by industry professionals. This should be easy to identify on their labels and boxes. Aquasana has been tested and recommended by many industry professionals to provide you with pure and safe drinking water.