Saturday 12th October
Your Food
The food that we decide to eat is the quality fuel, or nutrition, that will power our everyday living. There are many things you can focus on when it comes to nutrition and it is easy to get confused by various conflicting advice like “eat lots of this”, “never eat this” and “only eat this sometimes”. But nutrition doesn’t need to be too complicated. Start with focusing on filling your meals with plenty of nourishing ingredients. Why not start with small steps, like adding in more vegetables or fruits to your meal. It’s not realistic to eat healthily all day everyday but, by making some small changes to the things you do decide to eat each day, is a great way to start.
As a general rule, following a wholefood diet, cooking with fresh ingredients, using a wide variety of vegetables and eating health fats (like avocados… we love avocados!) will serve you well!
Staying hydrated and making sure we are drinking enough water is vital for every body. The human body is composed of 60-70% water. Water is the foundation for the body to function and is involved in regulating body temperature, is the transportation system within the body, breaking down foods ready to be used to give us energy, brain function and so much more! Every cell, organ and tissue needs water to exist.
Why not try fruit infused water to help make it more interesting? For 1.5 litres of water, add half a sliced grapefruit, half a sliced orange, and thinly slice both one small lime and one lemon. Mix these with the water and leave to infuse for 30 minutes then pour a glass and enjoy!
Your Sleep
Sleep is fundamental and a biological necessity. No matter how hard you try, at some point your body will override your ability to stay awake and will force you to sleep, because your body needs sleep to survive! Over the last 100 years, humans on average are getting 15-20% less sleep. In today’s culture, it is easy to push “a good night’s sleep” to the end of your to do list. Society today celebrates busy lives and associates busy with successful. But what’s success if after all the business is over, our health suffers?
On average in the UK, we are only getting 6 hours 49 minutes sleep per night and in the US just 6 hours 32 minutes. Studies have suggested that the optimal amount of sleep is 7-9 hours. So , start to prioritise getting enough sleep in both quantity and quality.
Your Body
Moving our bodies is essential to our health, it is what we are designed to do! Studies have shown that regular exercise can help with not only reducing physical common diseases but can also help with reducing any depressive symptoms. We always get asked “What exercise is best for me?”, and there is no right answer. When you start any new habit, it will not be sustainable if you don’t enjoy it. So find a form of exercise that you like and look forward to doing! Exercise should be something that helps reduce stress, not add more. Walking, yoga, running, cycling, HITT classes, dancing… the choice is endless; find something you enjoy and the exercise becomes easy!
Your Mind
If you are looking to improve your mental wellbeing, it can seem like an overwhelming task. A simple way to start is to work with your mindfulness. Mindfulness simply means spending some time paying attention to how you feel, how you are engaging with the world around you and being present with those thoughts and feelings.
Every day we have between 60,000-80,000 thoughts, so understanding how to process these thoughts and make sure they are not creating more stress in our lives is essential.
You don’t have to spend every second all day practicing this. You could try to set aside just 5-10 minutes at the end of your day to lie down, be still and try to engage with your thoughts. The brain is like a muscle and to have good function needs to be exercised, just like the rest of our body!
Our mindfulness go-to is the free app ‘Calm’, where you can get help working though some mindfulness exercises.
