When it comes to looking after your health and wellbeing it can be as simple as changing a few basic things in your everyday life to help promote lifelong habit. It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out on your wellness journey or whether you’ve been trying to improve your health for a while, we have a few simple tips to help improve your general health.
Kick-starting your long term health and well-being journey isn’t as difficult as you may think. Making small changes to the way you think, your diet and how much exercise you get each day can be all you need to do.
We looked at a number of basic changes that you can make to your everyday routine to help improve your health and meet your healthy living goals. If you’re looking for a way to feel healthier, look healthier and generally improve the way you get through each day, take a look at some of our tips below for optimal well-being.
Assess your exercise routine
How much exercise do you do each day? How much movement do you get into your day around your work and family commitments? When you think about how much exercise you do each day, you may be surprised at how little or how much you move. Depending on your lifestyle and your work, you may find that you aren’t getting enough exercise into your daily routine. Ideally, you should be doing at least 30 minutes of exercise every day. If you aren’t getting any exercise, it’s essential to take small steps first. No matter how fit or unfit you are, starting a new exercise routine can always be hard. It’s important not to set a strenuous exercise goal for yourself otherwise you’ll end up giving up rather quickly.
You may want to start by aiming for 10 to 20 minutes of exercise per day. If you think this is a little too hard, you may want to start with just 5 minutes per day of physical activity. When starting any habit, it’s important to start slowly and gradually increase the amount you do each day. If you start with 5 minutes, the next day you might try to aim for 7 minutes. The next day, you might aim for 10 minutes, and so on.
It’s important to realise that exercise doesn’t have to be a hard slog at the gym in order to benefit. Your exercise routine may just be walking your dog in the afternoon or it may be a case of parking the car further away from the shops when doing your grocery shopping to get more steps in your day.
Get to know what works for you and what you enjoy. There is no point in trying to do exercise that you absolutely hate because it won’t be sustainable. Instead, choose an activity that you love, which will help build the foundation of a solid, consistent exercise routine every day.
Take a look at your food intake
When we are working and looking after our families, it’s easy to eat on the go and not really think about what we are eating each day. Sometimes you may be in a rush and you just want to grab something quick on your way to work. But, this can lead to unhealthy eating habits and unwanted weight gain depending on what you are eating. One way that you can improve the way that you eat and what you are choosing for your meals, is to start a food diary.
Some people enjoy writing down their foods in a traditional notepad but if you want a simpler method for writing down all of your food, there are a number of different food tracking apps available for your smartphone. An excellent choice is an app called MyFitnessPal. MyFitnessPal allows you to track your food, gain a better understanding of how many calories you should be taking in each day and allows you to scan barcodes in order to note down what food you are eating a lot quicker. MyFitnessPal is not just for people who are looking to lose a few kilos. It’s also an outstanding app to understand how many calories you really need to sustain your weight or even to gain weight if you are underweight.
Keeping a diary can help you to understand more about portion sizes and determine if there are any opportunities for improvement such as more vitamins and minerals that you may be in need of. For some people who are always on the go, vitamin and mineral supplementation may be able to boost much-needed minerals throughout the day.
Assess your mental well-being
When we think about health and well-being, it’s always common to consider our physical health. But it’s just as important to reflect on our mental well-being. We live in a day and age where we’re constantly thinking of others and putting other people ahead of our own needs. This can lead to low mental well-being and some people may find this difficult to cope with. Stress, inactivity, lack of sleep and even loneliness can all have a negative impact on your mental well-being.
Think about the types of things that make you feel stressed and impact your mental health each day. It may be that you feel lonely in the evenings after work, you may feel that you aren’t giving back enough to your community or you may be feeling quite stressed in the workplace. Whatever it is, consider what you can do to improve the way you feel about those aspects of your life.
Taking time for yourself and doing things that you enjoy can be a really good starting point for improving your mental well-being. Learning something new, joining a new class, finding an enjoyable hobby and even trying out some new relaxation techniques such as yoga and meditation can be a really great start. If you need to, try and determine what your early warning signs are and if you need help in everyday life, let your family and your friends know how they can support you and when you need to be supported. Having the support network there for you may be all you need to feel healthier mentally.
So what will you be doing to improve your general health and well-being this month? Whether you start a new yoga class or you begin your food diary, let us know what types of things you’re doing to improve your health. Feel free to take a snap on Instagram and tag us and let us know!