Aiming to lead a healthy life can feel challenging and overwhelming at times — how can we manage working, exercising, maintaining healthy social connections, having time for ourselves, and rest all at once? Well, we’re bringing you 8 wellness recommendations to help guide you toward this holistic balance, step by step!
#1 Eating Healthy
While there’s an ongoing consensus that healthy nutrition means exclusively eating salads, there are limitless options for delicious balanced meals that provide you with a range of essential nutrients! Healthy eating means enjoying a massive range of goodies, between fruits, legumes, lean proteins, healthy fats, and dairy products. Ever tried cooking a butter chicken recipe without butter at all? Or a gooey vegan, gluten-free brownie that doesn’t spare the sweetness?
The culinary world is a mine for creativity, allowing you to switch items according to your taste buds and physical needs. Even switching a store-bought salad dressing for a homemade one can make a yummy and healthy difference! If you are looking to achieve a certain physical goal, referring to a health professional, such as a nutritionist or dietitian, can ensure you’re getting the right support and guidance.
#2 Getting Physical
Exercising regularly is all about introducing some healthy movement into your day. If the gym isn’t really your scene, that’s no problem. You can start slowly. You might take a walk in the park on a bright morning, enroll in a dance class, or stroll to the closest dog park to enjoy some doggy cuteness! The holistic benefits of being physically active are numerous. For example, exercise can help with relieving stress, maintaining a healthy weight, boosting our energy and mood levels, and reducing risks of chronic illnesses. Don’t forget to refer to your medical practitioner to ensure that your exercises are safe and won’t have potential health risks!
#3 Staying Hydrated
Did you know that, whatever your climate, about 3 liters of water a day is essential for our bodies to function properly? The water you drink doesn’t have to be boring; you can enjoy it with some minty leaves and cucumber slices, or you could pair your water with some ice cubes, add the orange peel you were about to throw away, and some basil leaves, and drink away! Staying hydrated can be so underrated sometimes, but it’s not just beneficial for our skin, as you might initially think — it’s also proven to be helpful for cognitive function!
#4 Communicating and Expressing Your Feelings
Recognizing and confronting our emotions in a healthy manner is crucial for our holistic wellbeing, so how can we ensure a healthy method for communicating our feelings? We can start by identifying the positive and negative emotions we’re feeling, without shame, but rather by embracing them with compassion towards ourselves, and processing them. It’s essential that we understand that all of our emotions play a key part in our pursuit of wellness. Journaling can be a great way to express our feelings privately, without worrying about how we’re being perceived or judged for them!
#5 Practicing Self-Affirmation
Our feelings can be conflicted, our situations can be complicated, and not everything passes as smoothly as a knife through soft butter, but do you know how things can get better? Write your positive thoughts down! If you can’t think of something at the moment, write down on a piece of paper something sweet you wish someone would tell you, then place this wherever you spend the most time. Taking a picture and setting it as the lockscreen on your phone, or placing the paper on your nightstand are good ways to ensure you’re regularly reminded of your positive mantra! The more we believe in these words, the more likely we are to believe in ourselves, and our abilities. This can help us confront our unpleasant experiences and process them, as well as inspire us as we continue on our journey. Pair your faith in yourself with an action, and you might just surprise yourself with your own power!
#6 Engaging in Social Activities
Being a socially active person doesn’t necessarily mean hitting up the club every night, or heading from one social gathering to the next. There are an endless amount of ways we can establish, or maintain, social connections that nurture us, and even boost our mental health. Consider volunteering, for example. The special thing about volunteering is that not only is it a great way of doing our part for the community, or even partaking in inspiring goodness, it can also be a pathway to making connections, meeting new people every day, and exchanging love and support along the way.
#7 Exploring Mindfulness
Practicing mindfulness can be done through meditating, but we can also practice mindfulness by recognizing the here and now. It’s really as simple as acknowledging and appreciating our presence and everything that surrounds us, or in other words, being aware of our current feelings, and allowing ourselves to be unbothered by the past or the future. In addition to meditation, we can practice mindfulness through yoga and Tai Chi, among other activities. What makes mindfulness worthwhile, you ask? For one, it can actively help reduce the risk of mental health complications such as stress, anxiety, and depression, while simultaneously increasing your overall happiness!
#8 Prioritizing Sleep
The value of prioritizing and maintaining a healthy sleeping pattern can be underestimated. While setting a nice and proper ambience for a good night’s rest can feel a little bit forced at first, establishing healthy sleeping habits might be just what our bodies need to excel! Do you know what seven hours, or more, of good quality sleep can do for our wellbeing? It can help elevate our mood, promote better cognitive functions, and lower the risk of chronic illnesses, such as cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure.
So, there we have it! 8 wellness tips to boost your holistic health. The one wellness recommendation that we urge you to remember above all else though, is not to overwhelm yourself with all of the wellness tips mentioned above. Juggling all of life’s demands, while attempting to lead a healthy lifestyle can be a challenge, but a nice way to break the cycle is to recognize that even if we manage to cover just one tip, that’s a big in the right direction. It’s important that we appreciate that about ourselves.
Get started with Holisticly today, and book a life-changing session with Holisticly’s team of internationally renowned experts! They’re excited to meet you and help you get introduced with the best version of yourself!