Saturday 12th October
As the 7th of April is World Health Day, this week we are taking the opportunity to talk about health! We will talk about the parts of our lives that we can control to make up the key components to our health and wellness.
Our health and happiness are driven by all the little decisions that we make each day. Over each day, each week, each month and each year, these little decisions add up to determine our health expression. Each aspect of our health; nutrition, sleep, movement and mental well-being, all add up collectively to play a part. We will be looking how each of these components can help us optimise our health and wellbeing, but starting with some small steps in the right direction.
The food that we decide to eat is the fuel that we decide to power ourselves with. There are many things you can focus on when it comes to nutrition and it is easy to get caught up in “eat lots of this”, “never eat this” and “eat this sometimes” that we always hear about. 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 healthy all day everyday but by making some changes to what things you 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 our body. The human body is composed of 60-70% water. Water is the foundation to our function, it is involved in regulating our body temperature, transporting things around the body, breaking down foods so we can use them 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 1.5liters of water, add half a sliced grapefruit, half a sliced orange, one sliced lime and one sliced lemon. Mix these with the water and leave to infuse for 30 minutes then enjoy!
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.
Research has shown links between not getting enough sleep to several types of cancers, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, obesity, heart disease and strokes. Research has also shown how enough sleep is linked to improved mental health.
On average in the UK we are only getting 6 hours 49 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 and it will do more than just make you feel less tired!
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 also help with reducing depressive symptoms. We always get asked “What exercise is best for me?”, and there is no right answer. When you start any new habit, nothing will 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 adding more. Walking, yoga, running, cycling, HITT classes, dancing… whatever you enjoy!
If you are looking to improve your mental wellbeing, it can seem like an overwhelming task. When you break it down, 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, why not dedicate 5-10 minutes at the end of your day to lie down and try to engage with these thoughts. The brain is like a muscle and to have good function needs to be exercised, just like the rest of our body!
Our go to is the free app ‘Calm’, where you can have some help working though some mindfulness exercises.
