Important Tips For Your Overall Health And Wellness
Follow these tips daily to start living your best life.
1. Self care
It seems obvious that we need to take care of ourselves in order to live our best, most healthy life, right? However, with all of the busyness of life we sometimes forget to take those moments to recharge our mind, body and soul. Even if it’s just a few minutes, take some time for you.
Some ideas-
Relax in an epsom salt bath
Do a craft you’ve been putting off
Give yourself a facial with a face mask (this is my favorite)
Go to a coffee shop alone with a good book
Get a massage
Go to bed early or sleep in late.
Practice deep breathing-
I like to breathe in for 5 counts and exhale 10 counts. Try that 5 or 6 times. It’s amazing what deep breathing can do to clear your mind and reduce stress.
2. Fuel for your body
Eating the right food to fuel your body is vital. You cannot expect to feel good eating processed food out of a box or from the drive up window. Love yourself enough to fuel your body with whole foods that nourish you.
You’ll also want to be mindful of the pesticides that have been sprayed on fruits and vegetables. I believe it’s imperative to buy as much organic food as possible. For those in the U.S.-If the label says USDA Organic than you can be assured no pesticides have been sprayed on the produce.
Your body is a temple and needs to be fed the proper nutrients for you to feel your absolute best.
3. Go Non-Toxic
This goes back to point number two. If we’re making sure to buy foods that haven’t been sprayed with toxic chemicals that are going IN our body, we need to start looking at what we’re putting ON our body.
They say it only takes 26 seconds for a chemical to enter the blood stream. When you make the decision to start using products in your house and on your body that are not full of harmful chemicals, you’ll be amazed at the transformation in how you eventually feel. Less mood swings, hormonal imbalances, breakouts, tummy issues and more.
4. Exercise
Okay, okay. I’m the first to admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of exercise. I’ve never been an athletic girl and I think somehow equated exercise to athleticism. I’m a big believer in mindset and I realized that I needed to change my mindset on exercising. I always looked at it as something I had to do in order to lose weight. But the truth is, your body craves movement! We’re not meant to be sedentary individuals. It’s actually imperative for overall health to get regular exercise daily. According to an article on Healthline.com “Sitting too much does increase your risk for poor health outcomes, like cardiovascular disease, all-cause mortality, cancer mortality, and even depression. The strongest risk of sitting too much is diabetes — it doubles the risk.”
No matter what it is that you do to get movement in, just make sure and take the time to do it. You deserve it!
5. Gut Health
Gut health is absolutely essential to your overall well being. It’s been said that our gut is our second brain. In order for our body to work well as a whole we need to make sure our microbiome in our gut is at optimal health. We want to make sure we’re giving our gut the good bacteria to keep it running smoothly. It’s essential to give your body probiotics. My favorite way to get probiotics is through cultured foods. I like to make my own kefir, kombucha and sauerkraut. To learn more about cultured foods check out www.culturedfoodlife.com
If you’re having issues with your digestive system, another thing you may want to consider is an elimination diet. I always suggest people eliminate eggs, dairy, gluten, corn and soy for 3 weeks.
Reintroduce one at a time every 4 days to see if there is any reaction.
When you reintroduce, eat the food several times a day for a 2-3 day period. If you have a reaction right away, there’s no need to keep eating it.
You also want to be mindful that most corn and soy is genetically modified and could be causing some issues. Pasteurized dairy is another topic we’ll need to discuss on a future blog post. For now, you can read this Huffpost article on pasteurized dairy. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dairy-free-avoid-this-pop_b_558447
6. Controlling your emotions
This is one of my most favorite topics. When I came to the realization that I am in complete control of how I respond to situations my life changed forever. I use to blame other people if my feelings got hurt by their words or actions. But when I learned that no one can make me feel bad, sad or happy, it gave me a sense of control that I needed.
It’s completely up to you how you feel. No one has power over your feelings other than you.
As an example-If someone says, “I love you”, than more than likely, if you love the person, you will have feelings of love go through your mind and body. However, if someone says “I love you” and you don’t love them you may not feel anything. That doesn’t change how the other person feels, only you. You are the one in total control of your feelings.
When you learn to not react emotionally to others words or actions it becomes very freeing.
Take these tips and start incorporating them into your daily routine. Overall wellness involves changing our habits. We need to look at everything from our cleaning supplies, to food, to exercise to self-care and mindset.