To explain what health and fitness is, sometimes it's best to explain what it's not.

It's not a pipe dream.It's not that phrase that first emerged in the late nineteenth century as a way of describing the wild dreams people experienced while smoking opium. It's the opposite, something that can easily occur if you're willing to do a few relatively simple things.But that is not to say that there are no health-and-fitness pipe dreams. One of mine, for instance, is to have mindfulness meditation classes become standard in public schools in all grades.According to research performed at Carnegie Mellon University, as little as three, 25-minute sessions on consecutive days reduced stressful feelings when subjects gave speeches and performed math tasks under conditions created to be stressful. The 25-minute sessions primarily consisted of simple breathing exercises designed to focus attention on the present moment.Now I've been a devotee of mindfulness meditation for years, and it's reduced the degree of stress I experience as a teacher, writer, athlete, and human being considerably. I can't help but feel it would do the same for students, with the end result being fewer discipline issues, improved test scores, and most importantly better overall mental health.But you know the dire financial straits of public education is facing and how improbable securing the funds to implement such a program would be. So if I lobby too forcefully for such a change (write multiple columns about the cause, organize meetings, create a web site to increase awareness and accept donations) you could accuse me of being on something besides my bicycle 12 hours a week.Like opium or any of the more popular modern-day street drugs.And you could also accuse me of the same if I implore all of Carbon County to go out buy books on how to meditate. So I will not. I will limit myself to some simple suggestions to keep the proverbial pie out of the sky and off your kitchen table.Suggestion #1:Stick to a healthy lifestyleA University of Zurich study sought out ways to decrease the incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and breathing disorders, ailments that increase in countries ironically as they become more affluent and modernized. By correlating data on nearly 17,000 people from ages 16 to 90 between the years of 1977 and 1993, researchers also reinforced the long-term benefits of following a healthy lifestyle.In fact, according to lead author Eva Martin-Diener in a Medical News today.com article, following their designated four healthy behaviors "can make you 10 years younger."One of the most telling stats that the number crunchers found can best be followed by considering the behaviors of 75-year-old men. If they eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, drink alcohol moderately at most, and abstain from smoking the four healthy behaviors assessed in the University of Zurich study two out of every three of them will live to see birthday number 85.If they don't do all four, two out of every three will die before then.Researchers also determined that regardless of age, those who hurt their health by not following all of the aforementioned healthy lifestyle behaviors increased their risk of dying prematurely by 250 percent.Cigarette smoking alone increased the risk of dying prematurely by 57 percent. Each of the other three factors considered separately increased the odds by 15 percent.Suggestion #2:Make getting sufficient sleep a priorityPast studies have clearly shown that brains don't function optimally when sleep is shortchanged. Now, the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Brain Study has determined that the aging that typically occurs in the brain accelerates progressively with each hour less of sufficient sleep.Older adults over the age of 55 were used in the study that spanned two years. After initiating the study with questionnaires and cognitive tests, brain scans were done. Testing two years later showed a higher degree of brain shrinkage and cognitive decline in the subjects who slept fewer hours.If you want to know how much sleep you actually need to be at your best, try this experiment the next time you have a full week's vacation. Don't set an alarm for the entire week, but make note of the time you go to bed and naturally wake up.By day four, any prior sleep deprivation should be negated; therefore, the average amount of time you sleep on nights five, six, and seven should be very close to the amount of sleep you need to function most effectively.While it won't be quite as accurate, if you follow the same pattern for a three-day weekend, you can use the amount of time you sleep on the third night as your estimate.