If your holidays are as hectic as ours are, then we’re sure you’ll relate with our desire to bounce back and rejuvenate afterwards. Come January 1, our Tessemae’s family is ready to wind down and regain balance in our lives. The past couple of months have been “go!-go!-go!,” and we’re ready to center ourselves and gear up for an exciting new year!

We want to focus on cultivating a healthy body, mind, and environment, in order to best prepare ourselves for the year ahead. We’ve come up with a couple of rules to help us do so.

1. Make sure you get enough sleep.

Quality sleep is crucial to our health, happiness, and wellbeing. It also is an important element of memory, metabolism, mood, and myriad other parts of life. We recommend getting anywhere from 7-9 hours of sleep a night. We suggest you “unplug” from technology about an hour before you plan to fall asleep. My personal goal is to wake up naturally (without an alarm clock) as much as possible in 2014.

2. Set realistic goals for yourself.

Keep it real. We all hear the stories of the people who dive into their New Years resolutions, only to break them before the end of the month. We suggest setting small, achievable goals. This way, you can see the progress that you make, through taking small steps towards a large accomplishment.

3. Drink Water and lots of it.

Staying properly hydrated affects almost every part of your body because it promotes proper cell function. As a general rule, you should drink half of your body weight in ounces a day. For example: a 140 lb. woman should drink around 70 ounces of water. Keep in mind that oftentimes, when you feel hungry you are actually thirsty. Water also keeps your skin looking supple and healthy, and the list goes on…We suggest investing in a nice water bottle and steadily drinking from it all day.

4. Get Outside!

We know its cold, but we think there is something invigorating about getting outside and breathing in fresh air. There are a lot of activities that make being active in the winter enjoyable, such as skiing, ice-skating, walking, hiking, or jogging. It’s also great to get a dose of natural Vitamin-D from the sun.

5. Load up on nutrients

Eat your greens! It is important to make sure that we are not just filling our bodies with food, but that we focus on nourishing our bodies with essential nutrients. This focus on nutrient loading is something that we want to keep up all year long, so make sure to eat lots of veggies and heart healthy fats.

6. Participate in our TesseWay Lifestyle.

Join us in our quest for health and happiness as we work on #bringinitbackhome in 2014. Weekly dinner menus, recipes, and shopping lists are available on our blog, beginning this month. Nutrition, exercise, lifestyle advice, and other tips are to follow. Stay tuned!

7. Don’t do a cross-fit event or a 5k on January 1.

Thanks to champagne and staying up until midnight the night before, it’s usually a bad idea. Just don’t do it. Trust us. And if you need more proof, ask Jenni, our resident cross-fit enthusiast. Make sure you start 2014 off on the right foot, so that you can build a consistent practice of staying active throughout the entire year.