WE’RE ALMOST TWO months into 2018, and if you started the year with good health intentions, no doubt your resolve has already been tested a few times.
Transforming your health doesn’t have to take masses of willpower and hours of your time every day. In fact, there are heaps of smaller-scale changes that can have a huge impact on your overall wellbeing.
For the next five weeks, we’ll be spotlighting some of those changes as part of our new Wellness For Life series with Vitabiotics, one of Ireland’s leading vitamin suppliers.
Throughout the series, we’ll aim to give you the tools you need to make sustainable, long-term progress with your health and wellbeing. We’re starting simple, with six small but effective health changes you can make right now…
Your body is a constant state of water loss, even when you’re at rest. When you sweat, when you pee, and even when you exhale, you’re losing water, and in extreme conditions your body’s water levels can drop by up to 1.5 litres an hour.
With figures like that, it’s clear a few sips of water in the morning or evening isn’t enough to keep your body suitably hydrated. In fact, almost nine in ten Irish adults (86%) aren’t drinking enough water, according to a REDC/Centra survey in 2016.
While it may not be realistic or appealing to suddenly up your water intake to the recommended eight to ten cups of water a day, you can boost your body’s H2O levels simply by swapping out one other drink every day – tea, coffee or OJ – for a glass of the good stuff.
If you’re in the habit of daily or weekly weight check-ins, you could be getting a skewed perspective of your overall health.
Why? Fat takes up around four times as much space as muscle tissue, so a single digit is never going to be an accurate calculation of your body’s make-up. Additionally, your body weight can fluctuate by around three to five pounds each day depending on how much water you’ve consumed, what time it is and what you have eaten.
Ditching the scales can go a massive way to changing not only your perspective on what a ‘healthy’ body is, but also to improving your mental health. Gain a broader understanding of your body by considering the way your clothes fit, the way you feel overall and the amount of energy you have.
It’s far easier to add certain ingredients or nutrients to your diet than to take them away. Rather than setting yourself up for failure and negative self-talk with a restrictive no-sugar or no-carb plan, consider incorporating something new into your daily menu.
Adding more protein to your diet is a great starting point. Eggs, seafood, nuts, pulses, and lean poultry are all versatile, tasty sources of protein that, when added to your diet, will help to satisfy hunger and aid the body’s repairing processes.
You might be secretly proud of your ability to get by on five or six hours sleep a night, but if lack of shut-eye means you’re getting less time in the regenerative ‘deep sleep’ stage, you could be impacting your health in the long term.
“When we don’t get the deep sleep we need, it inhibits our ability to learn and for our cells and bodies to recover,” sleep scientist Dan Gartenberg said in a June 2017 TED Talk.
To improve your sleep efficiency, aim to wind down for at least 30 minutes before bed each night (or longer), with no screen time, no food, and a gentle evening routine, to help you drift off more easily.
If you regularly eat meals at your desk, in front of the TV or while scrolling through your phone, chances are you’re eating too quickly without realising.
Slowing down your eating and chewing can have massive benefits for digestion and maintenance of a healthy weight. Most importantly, it gives your brain time to signal to your body that it is full and satisfied, a process which takes around twenty minutes from the start of a meal.
Eating mindfully takes practice. First up, try to consume meals in a quiet, distraction-free environment, allowing you to focus solely on the food in front of you. Put down your fork or spoon between bits and – if you’re really struggling – aim for a set number of chews per bite.
In an ideal world, we’d all sail through the day with the minimum of anxiety, but thanks to the reality of busy commutes, work deadlines and long hours, some level of stress is to be expected.
Not all stress is bad – in fact, when well managed stress can increase motivation – but when you’re overworked, overstressed and exhausted you could be putting yourself at risk of heart disease, insomnia, depression and more.
Rather than seeking to cut out stress entirely, learn to control yours. Avoid caffeine, keep a stress diary to identify triggers, and take regular breaks at work to avoid getting overwhelmed by a high workload.
Ready for a fresh start? Ensure your body is ready to meet the demands of modern life with the Wellwoman and Wellman ranges, daily multivitamins packed with high quality nutrients, available in pharmacies, healthstores and leading supermarkets nationwide. Improve your wellbeing, boost your immune system and feel great. Check out the full range here.
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