Good Health Starts at Home
We often think of all the amazing and healthful things that we can do as being out of the home. Going to the gym, swimming, biking riding and walks in the woods. And, there is no doubt about it – those things are a lot of fun and good for us. But actually, there are so many things that you can do from the comfort of your own home to improve your health.
Experts call all of these small ways that you can bring better health to your life ‘lifestyle medicine’. They involve things like looking at your stress levels, changing your diet to something that your body actually needs and moving in ways that you enjoy.
Attitude
This might be surprising to many people, but how you eat, what you eat and why are linked on a much deeper level than you might think. One of the most healthy ways to approach eating is to appreciate every mouthful. The focus should be on how satisfying and wonderful each mouthful is. How energised the food you’re eating will make you. Rather than having a heavy focus on calories and the weight you might gain from eating it.
Pretty much everyone needs to eat more nutrient-rich fresh foods, but just not enough of us are really checking our attitude to food at the fridge door.
So consider what your attitude to food is.
If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy. – Thich Nhat Hanh
Learn Your Hunger
Many confuse hunger for thirst most of the time. Because we are so used to eating at set times in the day, we very rarely let ourselves feel true hunger. And, not only that but unless you are keeping yourself well hydrated you might not even know what your hunger feels like.
Every time you eat, check-in and see how you are feeling. Often when there is a great conversation, we don’t pace our eating and go way over what would make us comfortably full. Try to aim to eat to be satisfied.
Supplements
While you should ideally use food to give you as much of the vitamins and minerals that you need, you would be wise to add a supplement to your diet. You can find what you are looking for at Simple Online Pharmacy. In general, you should make sure you have B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and take a look iron too. Millions of us are going about our daily lives with a definite. And, it is only after we address that, we see how bad we’ve been feeling.
Gratitude
It is very quick for people to become stuck in a cycle of negative thinking. Over time the negative thinking becomes the standard mindset. Which means that no matter what happens – good or bad, it will always be the same in their mind. In order to combat the slippery slope in which this happens, you have to practice gratitude.
This doesn’t mean that you need to start thanking everything from your teapot to your front door (unless you want to). But it does mean that you should be thinking about everything that you have around you that gives you happiness in your life. Things that enable you to be comfortable. It might be that you are grateful that you have a job that gives you the hours that you like to work.
Even if you don’t love the job, you can love what it brings you. Take a few minutes every morning to think about all of the great things that you have around you. It will give you a much more positive outlook overall, and that positivity will help elsewhere in life too.
Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for – Zig Ziglar
Tidy Up
It is hard to feel happy and content in a mess. Even for those of us who would convince you that more intelligent people are messy, or how a mess is great for creativity. Over time it gets to the point where you can’t find what you are looking for.
Dust will start settling between all of those items that are ‘delicately’ piled up on the coffee table. Instead of looking at tidying and cleaning like a chore, consider it to be a respectful thing. Respect for yourself and your belongings.
Now, we all clean and tidy every day, but you might be hard pushed to find many people beyond Mrs Hinch, who simply adore cleaning. However, if you begin to frame it as something that you are doing to take care of you – like a life-admin style of self-care, for example.
Sleep
If you are waking up tired, then there is likely a few possibilities. One of them is that the quality of your sleep isn’t ideal, the other is that you simply aren’t getting enough sleep. Of course, logically, it might be a combination of both of those things.
So what are you to do?
If you aren’t using enough energy during the day, you’ll still have an excess at night. Which is where going for a post-dinner walk would be ideal. Doing yoga or meditation will help you find some calm and wind down before bed too. Sometimes what we eat can change how we relax too. Cherries, chamomile tea, oatmeal and even a whole-grain cereal with milk can help you drift off.
You can take a closer look at your nighttime routine. Are you watching television until late? Or scrolling on your mobile for hours? Both of those have been shown to have a negative impact on how you sleep. Try switching to something with a bit of a slower pace.
Consider something like Calm and try a few of their sleep stories, or the guided meditation. Headspace is great to help people find peace and relax better too. Reading is also one of the most relaxing things you can do to help you nod off.
Relax
Or, in other words, give yourself a break. We can let things build up and begin to bury us if we aren’t careful. It is more important than the more you have going on, the less hard you are on yourself.
Giving yourself is something that many of us feel like we need to get permission to do. Unfortunately, many of us will ‘give ourselves a break’ when we hit a wall at full-speed. And we feel the forces of moodiness, fatigue, a rise in the stress hormone, and so much more. Find things that help you feel calm and relaxed.
Often it will be hobbies that we enjoy and give us a sense of purpose and being outside of work or family. If you don’t have a hobby, or life has gotten in the way a bit – now is the perfect time to get your hobby back in your life.
There are a lot of simple ways that you can improve your life simply by looking at what is going on around you and taking stock of everything. Most often, things become very routine, and we don’t notice the things we love, the things we don’t, and where the dust is building up.
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
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