How much time do you waste every winter being sick? Your to-do list is long enough without getting slowed down and delayed by an illness, and we all know what happens once you skip a workout or two -- it's a slippery slope that's hard to recover from.

So the trick to not falling behind and not falling off the wagon altogether is to keep from interrupting your good flow by not getting sick. And although there's no guaranteed way to never get sick, by eating the right foods and living a healthy lifestyle you can boost your immunity and eliminate most (if not all) illnesses. Taking the time and energy to use your diet to battle sicknesses like the cold and flu is especially worthwhile because medications are so ineffective against them. Most of the best foods to eat for strong immunity have been around for centuries and were probably taught to you by your mother and grandmother. For example tea sweetened with honey can fight a sore throat with its antibacterial and antiviral properties, as does warm broth due to phytochemicals that leaked into the water from vegetables.

The best ways to include cold and flu-fighting superfoods in your diet isn't necessarily to always be looking for them (although that's good too) but instead to just focus on eating healthy and don't skip meals. By skipping meals you're essentially skipping nutrients, and then probably digging yourself into an even deeper hole by grabbing snacks full of unhealthy sugars and fats. The other element is to make sure you don't get stuck in food ruts, but instead keep things mixed up and varied. Eating different things ensures you get a mix of vitamins and nutrients, plus eating different things together at different times can give you the somewhat unknown magical benefits of various food combinations working together.

I think one of the most valuable things you can do is start a collection of healthy recipes that you think taste good. Don't keep anything you don't absolutely love -- you'll never make it! Instead just promise yourself that regularly (maybe once a week or once a month) you'll try making something new, and then when you come across a recipe that really works save it. Pretty soon you'll have a serious collection of healthy, cold-fighting and immune-boosting recipes that you can really lean on to make your every day life a healthier one...with fewer sick days.