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Staying fit is a very important factor in staying healthy. Fitness increases energy, decreases stress, improves health, strengthens the immune system, and gives people an overall better lifestyle.

Obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease plague Americans, in part because they don’t focus on fitness. They sit all day in offices and wait until the weekend to get any exercise, and that, according to health experts, is what contributes to an unhealthy lifestyle.

Fitness is actually easier than most people think, even when you don’t have a lot of time. Here are some steps to improving your fitness:

• Park at the far end of the parking lot
• Take the stairs instead of the elevator, even if just on the way down
• Walk your dog an extra block or two
• Ride your bike to work
• Even riding a bus to work gets you walking to bus stops, etc.
• Make it a point to get out of your chair and walk around the office a few times per hour

Finally, spend that necessary time being active with your friends and family. Take a stroll through the mall, walk on the beach or at the park, and play games with your children. You’ll have fun and stay fit at the same time.

As more and more products fill the shelves of our grocery stores, it gets increasingly complicated to choose healthy foods. We know we want to avoid harmful additives, foods high in sugar and salt, and snacks that have no nutritious value, but sometimes all of those elements are very hard to avoid.

What makes it even more difficult is when food companies claim their products are made from “natural” ingredients, when instead the foods undergo such dramatic processing and chemical alteration that they don’t contain the natural nutrients of the original food at all. Unfortunately, the FDA doesn’t strictly regulate what companies call “natural.” As long as the food was somehow derived from plant or animal products, it can be called natural, no matter what kind of chemical changes it was subjected to.

Organic foods are regulated carefully by the FDA. Unlike natural foods, they are never grown with pesticides or genetically-modified properties. To label a product “organic,” it has to be grown without pesticides or modification. For meats, eggs or milk to be organic, the animals must eat healthy organic diets and be given no antibiotics or growth hormones.

Organic shoppers know they are getting some of the healthiest foods available. However, they also know the food was grown in a way that didn’t leave harmful pesticides or herbicides in the soil or water, and that the animals most likely lived healthy, cruelty-free lives. Buying organic foods is an important first step in protecting the health of your family and supporting an environmentally friendly lifestyle.

Eating whole foods is an important part of getting the nutrition you need to be healthy. Whole foods are foods that preserve the same shape, freshness and nutritive qualities that they have while they are growing on trees, vines, in the soil or on bushes.

When foods are processed, chopped, crushed or otherwise altered, they begin to lose some of their nutrients. The longer it takes to get those processed foods to you, the more nutrients they lose. Also, high heat and excessive cooking also removes nutrients from foods.

There are some ways to preserve some of the nutritive value, however. Freezing foods immediately once they have been harvested retains most of their nutrients. Refraining from overcooking the food also retains nutrients.

Here are some tips to get the whole food nutrition you need:

• Choose fruits and vegetables that are ripe and fresh
• Don’t overcook food; instead, steam it carefully
• Frozen foods have nutritive value as long as it was frozen right after it was harvested (and frozen as close to whole food form as possible)
• Frozen foods lose value once they get “freezer-burn”
• Whole grains are also essential to a whole food diet
• Whole grains are those that have not undergone extensive processing. While eating whole grain bread and pasta is OK, also remember to choose whole grain rice, couscous and millet that hasn’t been processed.