5 New Years Resolutions (That Will Help Avert the Most Common Causes of Death)

Most people become preppers because they want to be able to keep themselves and their families safe from harm.  And when they think of harm, all manner of problems come to mind (rape, robbery, active shooters, kidnapping, et al).  But when you look at the actual statistics of how people die in the US, you will find that the most common causes of death have nothing at all to do with the aforementioned threats.  In actuality, people's bad health habits have much more to do with their future causes of death than any social/political/economic/etc issue.

First, check out this list of how people actually die in the US.

Then, consider that if you can avoid accidents (a declining cause of death) and suicide (unfortunately, an increasing cause of death), the rest of the top 15 causes rest heavily on how you treat your own body.

With that in mind, here are five New Year's Resolutions you may want to consider (that can do more for preventing your untimely death than, say, having a nice collection of firearms or a stockpile of food).

1. Walk everyday.  For at least an hour, preferably longer.
2. Engage in other physical activities.  Consider this list of sports.  Consider what you need to motivate yourself to do these sports (join a bowling league to keep you accountable, set a big goal like a mini triathlon and work towards that goal, join a hiking club, etc).
3. Make your diet healthy.  The paleo diet and the Mediterranean diet seem to be the most popular.  Both seem to limit junk food and both seem to limit mixing starchy carbs with protein.
4. Stop eating junk food (easy to say, not so easy to do when you consider more than 50% of the stuff in stores these days is junk).
5. Reduce stress.  Stress negatively impacts nearly every facet of your life if you don't get a handle on it.